Monday, October 10, 2016

A Startling Wind-based Website

This is pretty sweet.  The link is a current surface wind map showing in real time.  I caught the picture below at 6:30 PM EST, Oct 10, 2016:


This was sent to me by a reader, who suggested that I might find some utility in it.  I wish.  Unfortunately, unless my game is actually taking place on October 10th, the details have limited practicality.  But this is so cool.

Using hurricanetrack.com, which gives information on hurricanes in real time (also; I love this modern age), I was able to identify that the hurricane north of Puerto Rico is Nicole, which will give some rain to the Bahamas but is expected to take a circle out to sea and die in the north Atlantic, as many hurricanes do.  So no worries with this one; the reader can see from the map that Matthew has completely dissipated.  I'm sorry I didn't have this site two days ago.

Compare the map above with any weather systems map you care to find.  The website will show any part of the world the reader cares to see.  The Antarctic is fascinating, a massive land-based high surrounded by violent lows.

There are also options for ocean currents, for chemicals in the atmosphere and for particulates.  The latter shows a tremendous flow of particulate snow falling out of the Sahara:

Also shown in real time.  To see it, click the earth link in the bottom
left hand corner.

I have no idea how I could use this, but it sure is awesome.  Thank you Erich.


UPDATE:

I am beginning to suspect that it is NOT real time video.  After many hours there are no appreciable differences.  I feel I have not correctly understood what is being depicted.  It matches up with the weather site I've linked but doesn't seem to be updating from hour to hour.  I'll have to see what it looks like in the morning.

3 comments:

  1. That is seriously cool. I suppose most of this movement follows historical patterns relating to the Earth's orbital position and such, although that would still mean that you would simply have some visual evidence for how the wind moves in a given region at a particular time of year centuries ago.

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  2. Playing around with the controls behind the "earth" button I found you can jump the displayed time frame up or down 3 hours or 1 day. After you have pushed it back a day, up in the address bar it's easy to change the date to whatever you are looking for. They've got more than a year of data to browse through.

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  3. Watching the storms off the coast of Oregon and the hurricaines has been fun. I recently noted a pair of fan-like wind patterns in the Mediterrainian. One came from the East, from Turkey through Syria to Hormouz, that flowed to around Alexandria. The second came from the south, from Greece to Gibraltar, and flowed right into Languedoc. It seems like in early autumn, someone could get from Syria to France "easily" with a sailing ship.

    And then I though of the Mary legend. Cool stuff.

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