Sensational Satellite

Now that the GOES 16 has been orbiting the earth at ~22,000 miles above the earth and sending its vast amount of atmospheric data back down to us earthlings, not a day "goes" by that I don't take even a quick cursory glance at the general circulation of the atmosphere.  As many of you know, I tend to study the weather in the early morning and without any sunlight to reflect off of the clouds, one needs to peruse other bands of data the eye in the sky is capable of detecting.  For me, I like to check out the mid-level water vapor; a very good indicator of the flow in the mid-levels of the troposphere or about 10-20K feet up.  Here what it looks overnight this glorious Tuesday early morning.  (Yellow is very dry; whites, greens and even aquas are very moist). 

Note the very dry air diving south across the Great Lakes from Ontario and Quebec.  That dry air makes for wonderful astronomical viewing even during these very short nights.  At this time of the year in our region, true darkness only amounts to about 4 hours per 24 hour "day"!  And with the amount of light pollution in our region, one certainly needs to look at the summer sky only an hour or so either side of local midnight, currently ~1:07 am...

In the graphic above, I have it set for June 12 (vertical white line) for Harrisburg, PA. The horizontal red line is noon; the horizontal yellow line is midnight.  Being about a week away from the summer solstice, clearly our time allocated for nighttime viewing is certainly limited.  However, this morning was clear, sharp, and vivid helped by the cool, dry low dewpoint air.  And lo and behold, I was actually able to make out a very faint tracing of the Milky Way looking south this early morning!  It was nothing like this, but summer is the best time to view the Milky Way...and it is spectacular!

And Mars is very bright as well as over the next month, we are getting closer and closer to the Red Planet!  This is called opposition; when a planet outside of earth's orbit is directly opposite of the sun...or highest in the sky at midnight.  This also makes the planet closest to earth and therefore quite bright for Saturn, Jupiter, and by late July, Mars.  Note over in the "4pm" region of the graphic below, 2018 Martian opposition is quite close to earth.  And a Mars encounter of this type occurs ~2.1 years.  So enjoy this display from our near neighbor in the cosmos.  

One last thing I'll leave y'all with is the big blow up over the middle part of the country.  This extremely warm and humid air creates a phenomenon known as nocturnal thunderstorms for obvious reasons.  There has been a study ongoing called PECAN (Plains Elevated Convection At Night) trying to determine primary causes of these colossal atmospheric monsters.  These storms drop copious amounts of rain along with dangerous cloud to ground lightning strikes.  Strong damaging winds are also in the equation as vast quantities of rain cooled air rush down from these very high topped cumulonimbus clouds.  The eye in the sky above clearly shows a classic case of this early this day over the central plains.  The progged rainfall shown below over eastern Kansas and western MO as well as eastern IL from these storms...

And note the very dry air over the desert SW as well both on the satellite and on the latest observation.  Also note the humidity over the Gulf of California...and for those of you astute satellite aficionados, the moisture moving north near the Baja and western Mexico from a tropical system (Bud) in the eastern Pacific that will bring rains to the deserts later this week.

OK...enough.  Another cup of Joe and off to the gym to truly start my day.  Not sure what to leave y'all with so I choose this; a "B" side to "one" of U2's biggest hits...One!  Enjoy and and enjoy this glorious early summer Tuesday!

Smitty

AA:  Interpreting a satellite image and inspired by the nighttime sky this morning!  Happy mowing!