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Tracking Yutu
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What’s in the Night Sky?
According to EarthSky.org this is what will be visible in the night sky over the next several nights:
“The planets Mercury and Jupiter appear quite close together on the sky’s dome during the last several days of October 2018. Far and away, though, the Southern Hemisphere has the advantage over the Northern Hemisphere for witnessing this celestial attraction in the deepening glow of evening twilight. But even from southerly latitudes, Mercury and Jupiter sit rather low in the sky at sunset, and then follow the sun beneath the horizon around nightfall. Our feature sky chart at top is for around 35 degrees south latitude to accommodate our friends in the Southern Hemisphere. We figure that all places north of the tropic of Cancer will have difficulty catching Mercury and Jupiter (especially Mercury) after sunset, although EarthSky watchers have surprised us before and may well surprise us again. Given an unobstructed horizon at 35 degrees north latitude, Mercury struggles to stay out as long as one hour after the sun, whereas Jupiter stays out for about one hour and 10 minutes after sunset. In the days ahead, Mercury will set a little later and Jupiter a little earlier. Given a level horizon at 35 degrees south latitude, Mercury and Jupiter stay out for a whopping 1 3/4 hours after the sun. In the days ahead – just as in the Northern Hemisphere – Mercury will set a little later and Jupiter a little earlier. Want to know when the sun, Mercury and Jupiter set in your sky? Click here if you live in the US or Canada, or click here if you live elsewhere worldwide.”
1.) Periods of heavy precipitation over western Washington, Mon-Fri, Oct 29-Nov 2.
2.) Periods of heavy precipitation over portions of the northern Rockies, Wed-Fri, Oct 31-Nov 2.
3.) Heavy snow for portions of the central Rockies, Wed-Thu, Oct 31-Nov 1.
4.) Periods of heavy rain from the general vicinity of the Lower Mississippi Valley northeast to the Upper Ohio Valley, Wed-Fri, Oct 31-Nov 2.
5.) Slight risk of heavy precipitation from the Lower Mississippi Valley eastward and northeastward to most of the Atlantic Coast, Sat, Nov 3.
6.) Slight risk of heavy precipitation for the northern and central Rockies, Sat-Sun, Nov 3-4.
7.) Slight risk of heavy precipitation for south-central and southeastern Alaska (including the Panhandle), Sat-Fri, Nov 3-9.
8. High winds and high significant wave heights for southwestern Alaska, Tue-Fri, Nov 6-9.
Flooding imminent/occurring over parts of Texas, and along the banks of the north-central Mississippi River.
9.) Severe Drought across the Central Rockies, the Northeast, the Central Great Basin, the Northern Plains, the Southern Plains, the Northern Great Basin, the Southern Rockies, California, the Northern Rockies, the Alaska Panhandle, the Pacific Northwest, and the Southwest.
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Tropical Storm Oscar in the Atlantic
Another named storm has developed in the Atlantic Basin and it’s Oscar! The good news is that this storm is not expected to impact the US and it slowly drifts north over the next few days.
Tracking Oscar
Here’s a look at the official NHC track for Oscar, which shows it drifiting west through the weekend and could briefly become a hurricane early next week as it turns north. Again, the good news is that this storm is expected to remain a “Fish” storm and stay over open water.
Tropical Climatology
Average Peak of Atlantic Hurricane Season
According to NOAA, the average peak of the Atlantic Hurricane Season is on September 10th. Interestingly, things can still be fairly active through October, but we really see a drop in action as we approach November.
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2018 Lightning Fatalities – TWENTY
Did you know that lightning ranks as one of the top weather related killers in the U.S.? An average of nearly 50 people are killed each year in the United States and so far this year, 20 people have died from lightning; 16 have been males and only 4 have been females. Interestingly, from 2008-2017, 236 males have died, while only 65 females have died.
See Lightning Safety Tips From NOAA HERE:
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__________________________________________________________________________PRELIMINARY Tornado Count This Year
According to NOAAs SPC, the PRELIMINARY tornado count across the US this year stands at 984 (through October 27th). Note that this is less than the last couple of years, but more than what we had in 2013. Keep in mind that the short-term average (2005-2015) suggests an average of 1,293 tornadoes.
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Here’s the average number of tornadoes during the month of October by state. Texas sees the most with 8, while Minnesota averages only 1 tornado.
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Here’s the temperature outlook as we head through the next few days. Note that cooler than average temps will be in place across much of the eastern half of the country through early next week, while warmer than average temps will spread from the Central US to the Eastern US. A surge of MUCH cooler than average temps is looking to settle in across the Central US by the end of next week and first weekend of November.
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8 to 14 Day Temperature Outlook
According to NOAA’s CPC, November 4th – 10th will be warmer than average across the East Coast and the West Coast, while folks in the Southern US will be cooler than average.
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Weather Outlook Ahead
Lingering precipitation will be found across the Northeast through the early week time frame. Meanwhile, a much larger storm looks to be brewing in the central part of the country as we head into the middle/end of the week ahead. Areas of showers and storms will develop in the central part of the county, where areas of heavy rain will be found.
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According to NOAA’s WPC, the 7-day precipitation outlook suggests heavy rains moving into parts of the Lower Mississippi Valley and Ohio Valley as we head into the week ahead. Some locations could see several inches of rain through the end of next week. There will also be areas of heavy precipitation across the Pacific Northwest, especially in the Olympics and northern Cascades, some of which could be in the form of snow.
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Thanks to areas of rain across parts of the southern and southwestern US during the month of September and October, there have been some much needed improvements in drought there. However, there is still a big chunk of extreme and exceptional drought that is lingering across the Four Corners Region, so hopefully we’ll get in on some good moisture there over the coming weeks and months!
“Antarctica has been really been letting its hair down lately. First, there was news of a haunting hum coming from one of its ice shelves. Then came the weirdo rectangular iceberg. It’s enough to make you think aliens inhabit the Seventh Continent. But no, it’s just our freak show planet doing its thing. And people sure seem to have to enjoyed the latest spectacle, including the scientist who captured the viral images of the sheet cake-shaped floating hunk of ice. “Everyone from cousin-in-laws to parents to a friend over in Europe has [messaged that they’ve] seen it,” Jeremy Harbeck, the NASA scientist who snapped the images, told Earther. Harbeck is a senior scientist with NASA’s Operation IceBridge, a mission that flies instrument-laden planes to document the state of the ice at both poles. He told Earther he’s been on 62 IceBridge flights—most of them over the Arctic’s sea ice—so “I like to think I’ve seen a lot.”
______________________________________________________________________________“New Report Lays Out a Plan to Suck Carbon Out of the Sky”
“The world’s leading scientists issued a stark warning this month that we have a decade to get a handle on our carbon pollution or risk warming the world more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. Embedded within the pathways to keep things under control was a little-heralded finding: We need to rely on largely unproven technology to pull carbon out of the atmosphere. With the clock ticking, a report released Wednesday by the largely federally-funded National Academy of Sciences lays out an ambitious research agenda for how the world could create and implement what are known as negative emissions technologies. And frankly, it shows we have a lot of work to do. The idea of negative emissions is alluringly simple. It’s unlikely the world’s energy system will turn away from fossil fuels fast enough to avoid dangerous climate change, and there are other activities like agriculture that are tough to decarbonize. That means the world will have to deploy negative emissions technology to suck up excess carbon dioxide. We could, for example, use fancy machines that pull it out of the air, or plant forests and restore coastal wetlands that do the same thing naturally, or burn biomass for energy and capture the carbon emissions from burning it.”
_______________________________________________________________________________“WATER STUCK IN GLACIERS MAY CHANGE SEA LEVEL PREDICTIONS”
“Researchers have discovered water stored within a glacier in Greenland. The water storage has been a missing component for models aiming to predict how melting glaciers will affect the planet. The rapidly changing Greenland ice sheet is a major contributor to the sea-level rise that North America will experience in the next 100 years. The researchers made the discovery looking at data intended to reveal the changing shape of Store Glacier in West Greenland. But graduate student Alexander Kendrick figured out that the same data could measure something much more difficult to observe: its capacity to store water.”
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“Tyndall Air Force Base was heavily damaged earlier this month after the Category 4 storm tore through the base with as many as 17 F-22 Raptors stuck there. The Air Force has not disclosed yet how many Raptors were exactly damaged and the extent of such damages but the more recent figures point to 10 to 14 Raptors. Each Raptor costs about $140 million and represents an invalulable asset as only 183 were made. Tyndall Air Force Base was heavily damaged earlier this month after the Category 4 storm tore through the base. As Hurricane Michael approached the base, mission capable F-22s assigned to the 325th Fighter Wing were “Hurrevaced” to Wright-Patterson AFB (and later relocated to Joint Base Langley-Eustis). According the data emerged thus far, at that time 31 percent of 55 Raptors assigned to the unit were NMC (non-mission capable) and could not be moved away. So they were sheltered in place and consequently damaged: photos of F-22s and QF-16s in Tyndall’s shredded hangars have already made the news after they startedcirculating social media.”
See more from Business Insider HERE:
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This hurricane season is the busiest we’ve ever seen—and we still have more than a month to go before it’s over. If you combine all the hurricanes and tropical storms that formed in both the Atlantic and eastern Pacific oceansthis year, the 2018 hurricane season is the most active in recorded history, USA TODAY reported, citing Colorado State University meteorologist Phil Klotzbach. To measure the activity of a hurricane season, meteorologists use the Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) index which takes into account the combined number, strength and duration of tropical cyclones that formed. The average ACE for the Atlantic and eastern Pacific seasons together is 221 units of energy. But this year? The combined Atlantic/Pacific ACE is 432, breaking the previous record of 371 set in 1992, according to Klotzbach.”
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