Eye Witness Account of Hurricane Ernesto

About a week ago Hurricane Ernesto made landfall and we could only watch via maps, satellite images and text advisories.

Courtesy of NASA

Now thanks to Storm Chasers from iCyclone, you can see a first hand account of the storm.

 Watch "Hurricane ERNESTO on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula (2012)" on YouTube

Tropical Thunderstorm hits Horsham PA

During what seemed to be a normal day, we initially saw sunny skies on a typical warm day in August.  Well we all know we are not in the tropics, but looking outside at around 2pm yesterday, we all would have thought that we were in the middle of a Hurricane.

I was already aware that thunderstorms were getting closer to Montgomery County but the storms were closing in on our area a bit faster than I had expected. I was shopping for my nephews birthday in a well know toy store on Welsh  Rd in Horsham.  I was in the middle of the store and I could here thunderclaps in the distance, a few children in the store could be heard reacting to the sound of the thunder.  I started to notice lightning flashes through the small skylights and by the time I had picked up a few gifts I walked to the front of the store where I was able to see out the front entrance area and saw a torrential downpour out in the parking lot.  It appeared that we were having storm force winds of at least 50 MPH and after waiting a bit and looking at the radar on my phone, I decided to run out of the store to get to my car where I ended up drenched from head to toe.  The rain was being blown around as in sideways.  This event occurred around 2 PM and after I drove  home I found evidence of wind damage across the street from the former Willow Grove Naval Air Station.

Thanks to all my followers and weather fans,  here are some pictures taken yesterday.

Here is a copy of my storm report documented by The National Weather Service office in Mt. Holly, NJ.

08/04/2012 0210 PM

Horsham, Montgomery County.

Thunderstorm wind damage, reported by trained spotter.


            Multiple large tree branches down along Maple Ave in
            Horsham. Also... fence blown over along Route 611. 

Volcano Early Warning System

Volcano Hazards

Did you know that there are 169 active volcanoes in the United States and that 88 of them could potentially erupt?   Watch this video courtesy of the US Geological Survey (USGS), that explains the work and study to provide an early warning system.  usgs.gov

If you see this story from an email, click on the title to fully open the blog post and you can then see this video.

What is a "Derecho"

There was a terrible storm that hit part our area back on June 29th. This powerful storm left thousands of people without power in the Washington D.C Metro area.  Meteorologists kept saying that is was a Derecho.  A "Derecho" is a Spanish word for Straight and this is regarding the type of winds that this type of storm brings.

It is a widespread, long-lived, straight-line windstorm that is associated with a fast-moving band of severe thunderstorms. Generally, derechos are convection-induced and take on a bow echo form of squall line, forming in an area of wind divergence in the upper levels of the troposphere, within a region of low-level warm air advection and rich low-level moisture. They travel quickly in the direction of movement of their associated storms, similar to an outflow boundary (gust front), except that the wind is sustained and increases in strength behind the front, generally exceeding hurricane-force. A warm-weather phenomenon, derechos occur mostly in summer, especially during June and July in the Northern Hemisphere, within areas of moderately strong instability and moderately strong vertical wind shear. They may occur at any time of the year and occur as frequently at night as during the daylight hours. 
 Definition by and more detailed information at;  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derecho


As of today, the National Weather Service and The Storm Prediction Center, is monitoring a possible repeat of this storm that may come near us tomorrow to the north of Philadelphia  (7-26-12)

Here is a video of that last event.

The Best Time-lapse Video From Orbit

This is incredible, a video composed of photographs taken from on board the International Space Station.  A Photographer complied and edited the pictures on by one and combined all that hard work into an impressive display.  The video shows the Aurora, night views of our cities, glows of thunderstorms, and of course the outbound starlit sky.

This video is a must see, if you can please comment about it.





Many thanks to Knate Myers (the Photographer) and Gizmodo.com that pointed out this video and to NASA for their work in outer space.