Weather

"There was a lot of speculation going on yesterday, here and elsewhere, about whether or not there were thunderstorms around the Air France flight, and whether or not there was lightning nearby that could have hit the plane. This afternoon that is starting to become irrelevant as Fox News reports that messages from the plane indicated "it flew through towering thunderstorms" and "observed a strong and bright flash of white light that took a downward and vertical trajectory and vanished in six seconds" just before it crashed." - Jason R. Hunter from Bookmarklet

"CHICAGO (Reuters) – Ice crystals plucked from clouds and quickly analyzed in flight show bits of biological material -- bacteria, spores and plants -- play a role in the formation of clouds, U.S. researchers said on Sunday. The finding, reported in the journal Nature Geoscience, offers the first direct evidence of airborne bacteria in clouds, they said." - Jason R. Hunter from Bookmarklet

"An area of showers and thunderstorms is over the southeastern Bahamas and eastern Cuba, in association with a trough of low pressure. The latest 00Z and 06Z runs of the GFS, UKMET, NOGAPS, and ECMWF global dynamical computer models continue to forecast that this disturbance will develop into an extratropical low by Tuesday. The low should bring heavy rain and possible flooding problems to Florida and the Bahamas this week as it lifts northwestward over Florida. Up to nine inches of rain may fall over Florida by Friday (Figure 1), thanks also to a cold front expected to move over the state over the next two days. The exact timing and location of the rains over Florida are still uncertain, as the GFS model predicts development of the low over the Bahamas, while the ECMWF and UKMET models predict development over South Florida. At present, it appears wind shear will be too high to allow the extratropical storm to transition into a subtropical or tropical storm. However, if the storm's... more... - Jason R. Hunter from Bookmarklet

"Here's a clip of a 5 story tree falling on our house. This occurred during the 5/8/09 derecho storm that moved through Carbondale, IL. " - Jason R. Hunter from Bookmarklet

"The ice jam that sunk Eagle Village and swamped the newer, nearby community of Eagle shifted last night. The water rose even higher, pushing ice over a retaining wall and slamming “house size” chunks of ice into buildings along Front Street, according to the National Weather Service. Then, this morning, rising waters “lifted some buildings along Front Street off of their foundations and sent them down the Yukon River,” the Weather Service reports." - Jason R. Hunter from Bookmarklet

These were taken from the west side of Anson, TX on May 1, 2009. - Jason R. Hunter

You should upload some of these to http://imapweather.com We're going to add Flickr integration really soon, too! :-) - Chip Hanna

These were taken from the west side of Anson, TX on May 1, 2009. - Jason R. Hunter

"Earth-bound tornadoes are puny compared to "space tornadoes," which span a volume as large as Earth and produce electrical currents exceeding 100,000 amperes, according to new observations by a suite of five NASA space probes. The probe cluster, called Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms (THEMIS), recorded the extent and power of these electrical funnels as the probes passed through them during their orbit of Earth. Ground measurements showed that the space tornadoes channel the electrical current into the ionosphere to spark bright and colorful auroras on Earth." - Jason R. Hunter from Bookmarklet