The June issue of National Geographic is a must read if you want a lot of good information on the latest improvements in weather forecasting.
It goes into great depth discussing weather models. The models have improved greatly over the last several years. It points out what we have all known for years...the weather observation network needs to be far more dense (with more frequent reports) for models to really be at their best. In some parts of the world, weather observation sites are few and far between. Upper air soundings are even more scarce.
Be sure and see the photograph of a rotating wall cloud on page 95. It's a classic.
Also on page 110, there is a three-page pullout panel showing film clips from the first ever photographs inside a tornado funnel. A storm chaser on a dirt road in Iowa, plasced a camera probe in exactly the right spot and the center of the funnel came as close as 10 feet. A video of that is also on their web site.
Bill Murray will love that, but I wish SCB (Storm Chaser Bill) would have been the first to do that.
I thought it was interesting that NCEP's primary computer...a giant...is called "Blue," The supercomputer crunches numbers that stagger the imigination. It is not running at full speed yet. But by 2009, it will handle 8.6 trillion calculations in a single second! (Yes, that is with a T) It would take a hand-held calculator 15,000 years to process what "Blue" does in one second.
Let's call her a more affectionate name--"Ole Blue." A backup system in a different building is called "White."
Blows my little Molly-sized mind!
It goes into great depth discussing weather models. The models have improved greatly over the last several years. It points out what we have all known for years...the weather observation network needs to be far more dense (with more frequent reports) for models to really be at their best. In some parts of the world, weather observation sites are few and far between. Upper air soundings are even more scarce.
Be sure and see the photograph of a rotating wall cloud on page 95. It's a classic.
Also on page 110, there is a three-page pullout panel showing film clips from the first ever photographs inside a tornado funnel. A storm chaser on a dirt road in Iowa, plasced a camera probe in exactly the right spot and the center of the funnel came as close as 10 feet. A video of that is also on their web site.
Bill Murray will love that, but I wish SCB (Storm Chaser Bill) would have been the first to do that.
I thought it was interesting that NCEP's primary computer...a giant...is called "Blue," The supercomputer crunches numbers that stagger the imigination. It is not running at full speed yet. But by 2009, it will handle 8.6 trillion calculations in a single second! (Yes, that is with a T) It would take a hand-held calculator 15,000 years to process what "Blue" does in one second.
Let's call her a more affectionate name--"Ole Blue." A backup system in a different building is called "White."
Blows my little Molly-sized mind!