GeekwithEnvy

Weather

Catch The Lyrid Meteor Shower This Weekend

by Leave a Comment

lyridsFromSpace
The Lyrid Meteor Shower as seen from the International Space Station (Source:NASA)

Every year the Earth passes through an area of debris in space that is left behind from Comet Thatcher. When we pass through this area of dust, we on the Earth’s surface get to see quite a show.

This meteor shower is known as the Lyrid meteor shower and the radiant of the shower (where the shower appears to originate) is near the brightest star in the constellation Lyra, Vega. The shower will be at it’s peek this weekend on April 21 and 22 (Sunday night and early Monday morning).

Unfortunately, many of us will have difficulty observing this event as the Moon will be very bright, almost full. No need to get discouraged though as you should still be able to see many of them anyway, especially farther away from sources of light pollution like bigger cities. As you watch space debris streak across the sky, think about how they are moving at over 100,000 mph or 160,934 km/h, it’s pretty cool stuff.

Powerful Solar Flare Hits Earth

by Leave a Comment

SunimageNASA
Image Credit: SOHO/Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT) consortium

We are getting closer to a solar maximum, the peak of the sun’s activity, which will occur later this year and is part of an 11 year cycle that our Sun goes through. This of course means the the likelihood of major solar flares is quite high. One such solar flare hit the Earth this past Thursday (11th) at 3:16 am EDT and actually caused a short lived radio blackout.

The radio blackout was assigned an R2 on the NOAA Space Weather Scale for Radio Blackouts. The highest rating on the scale is an R5 with the lowest impact being an R1. This is just one of several scales used to determine the intensity of space weather and it’s potential impacts here on Earth. There is also a scale for Geomagnetic Storms and Solar Radiation, all of which can be found on NOAA’s Space weather Scale page.

Increased solar activity can wreak havoc on electronic devices, power grids, satellites and even pose a threat to astronauts in space. In very rare cases, radiation can pose a risk to those flying in aircraft at high altitudes. Fortunately, the Sun has been pretty quite otherwise, with Thursday being the largest event of the year so far.

A Quick Guide to Understanding the Equinox

by Leave a Comment

NorthHemiSeasons

The Earth is tilted in relation to the sun. Earth’s axial tilt to orbit is 23.44°. On March 20th 2013, this marked the Spring Equinox for the northern hemisphere. The Fall Equinox is in September and vice versa for the southern hemisphere. The Equinox is the point at which the Earth is neither leaning towards or away from the sun. The sunlight that hits the Earth is evenly distributed across the northern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere. From space, the terminator (where night meets day on the Earth’s surface) appears to be perfectly straight from north to south.

After the equinox, the sunlight begins to either become more direct or less direct depending on which hemisphere you live in. The Solstice is the point at which the sun appears at either it’s highest or lowest point in the sky or when the Earth is tilted all the way towards or away from the sun. These are known as the summer and winter solstices.

Interestingly, the orientation of the Earth’s axis actually changes very slowly before making a complete circle every 25,800 years.

The illustration above shows how the tilt of the Earth and it’s location in orbit around the sun, change how light falls on the Earth’s surface. For a really cool view of the Earth undergoing seasonal changes in sunlight, you can view this NASA animation made from images from a geosynchronous satellite above Earth.

King Tides Show Up On West Coast

by Leave a Comment

Tidal movements on Earth

For the next few days ocean tides will be much higher ( and lower) than they typically are due to a phenomenon called “King Tide”‘. These tides are popular among surfers as they create the best conditions for the sport. Some people use the very low tides to explore areas of the beach that are normally always underwater, a metal detector could turn up something cool.

So where do these King Tides come from? Well how these tides work is actually pretty amazing. Our orbit around the Sun isn’t a perfect circle, it’s actually an elliptical orbit. As the Moon travels around Earth it also travels in an elliptical orbit. This means that at certain points in our orbit around the sun or our moon’s orbit around the Earth, we are closer and farther away. When we are closest to the sun we call this point, the perihelion. When the moon is closest to Earth we call that point the perigee. When we are closer to the moon or the sun this causes us to see a greater influence from these celestial bodies on our tides.

Every once and a while the sun will be at perihelion and the moon will be at perigee at the same time, or very close to the same time. This causes the greatest posible influence on our tides (King Tide). We are closest to the sun in January and usually within the first week, we are farthest from our sun in July.

Weather Underground

by 1 Comment

 

Are you a weather geek? If you are, chances are you may know about weather underground, but if you don’t your missing out on a great community of fellow weather enthusiasts.wunderground logo

Weather Underground gets its weather data from over 22,000+ personal weather stations which as you can imagine creates some of the most accurate and local weather data you can get. I have been in some locations where a PWS has been within feet of my location. The best part about these Personal Weather Stations (PWS), is that you can become a part of the network. You only need to follow a few simple steps to launch your own PWS.

1. Purchase Weather Station Hardware
2. Placing Your Weather Station to Report Accurate Readings
3. Installation and Configuration of Software
4.Upload Your Data to Weather Underground

For more detailed information on this click here.

Weather Underground offers many maps and different forecasts for just about any of your weather needs including a very customizable live map dubbed the Wundermap, which allows you to adjust things like base reflectivity for radar and live storm cell tracking. Your customized weather page includes lots of information including the ability to change the weather station you get data from with some stations providing updates every few seconds.

Weather Underground also pulls data from other major sources including (ASOS) or Automated Surface Observation Systems which are located at over 2,000 airports and (MADIS) which is managed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Add all this together with local web-cams, an amazing photo gallery, weather blogs and videos and you have one of the most complete weather sources on the net. You can find Weather Underground at wunderground.com. You can also get the weather underground app, which is available for both iOS and Android devices.