Seeing how ugly it can get

January 7, 2009 in Art, Business, Fun, Gear, infrastructure, Journalism, Photography, Places, Science | 8 comments

Since I’m an aviation freak, I’m also a weather freak. I remember committing to getting my first color TV, back in the mid-70s, because I wanted to see color radar, which at that time was carried by only one TV station we could get from Chapel Hill: WFMY/Channel 2 in Greensboro. These days TV stations get their radar from elsewhere, and have mothballed their old radar facilities. (Here’s one mothballed TV radar tower, at the WLNE/Channel 6 transmitter, which is istself doomed to get mothballed after the nationwide February 17 switchover to digital TV — marking the end of TV’s Mainframe Era.)

Online I’ve been a devoted watcher of both Weather.com and Weather Underground. Both those last two links go to local (Cambridge, MA) maps. They’re good, but they don’t quite match Intellicast, source of the map above. Play around witht the pan & zoom, the animation and the rest of it. It’s a nice distraction from weather as ugly as we’re getting right now here: sleet and then rain atop enough snow to cancel school today,.

Tags: , , , , , ,

8 comments

  1. david parmet’s avatar

    david parmet on January 7, 2009 at 12:03 pm

    I’m right at the edge of that pink blob. It’s been very pink all day

  2. Greg Ness’s avatar

    Greg Ness on January 7, 2009 at 1:24 pm

    Nice feature, Doc. Thanks for the point.

  3. Doc Searls’s avatar

    Doc Searls on January 7, 2009 at 8:54 pm

    It was blue, then pink. After it was green for a few hours, all that was white on the ground was now gray slush. I shoveled that. Fun.

  4. Russell Nelson’s avatar

    Russell Nelson on January 7, 2009 at 10:18 pm

    We drove through the pink today, from Potsdam, NY to Storrs-Mansfield, CT. Rain the whole way … combined with slush. Made for very uneven driving.

  5. Chip’s avatar

    Chip on January 8, 2009 at 7:40 am

    Doc
    Concur on your choice, intellicast is my default
    Hurricane season (property and friends in Fla) I pull up some Navy sources – really blowout, will forward if I can find the links

    Maybe start here http://www.nrlmry.navy.mil/tc_pages/tc_home.html

    Use to get up early, watch “Aviation Weather” on PBS

  6. cape town travel’s avatar

    cape town travel on January 9, 2009 at 12:11 pm

    any idea where weather.com receives it’s data from?

  7. Doc Searls’s avatar

    Doc Searls on January 9, 2009 at 4:33 pm

    nbsp;Weather.com aggregates data from many sources, including their own and the National Weather Service. See here.

  8. George J. Janczyn’s avatar

    George J. Janczyn on January 10, 2009 at 12:35 am

    You probably know about this, but just in case: the National Weather Service forecast discussions get a little more technical than the standard forecasts. I find them pretty useful (I use the Extreme Southern California discussion since I’m in San Diego). For the Santa Barbara area, the Ventura/Oxnard discussion is closest to you. Here’s the address:

    http://forecast.weather.gov/product.php?site=NWS&issuedby=LOX&product=AFD&format=CI&version=1&glossary=1

    Regards,

    George

Comments are now closed.