Weather

If You Want a 100% Sunny Wedding Day You Can Pay $150k to Explode Clouds

This sounds fake as hell but it does have some scientific backup: A luxury travel company is offering a $150,000 cloud-killing package to guarantee sunny wedding days in the south of France. Pilots will consult with meteorologists to fly planes near the ceremony space three weeks leading up to the wedding. The planes spray silver…

Riding A Rock Through Geologic Processes Explores The Rock Cycle

Rolling dice is an excellent way to emphasize that the rock cycle is deceptively named. Equally importantly, what felt like a failed lesson in volcanoes to me was not noticably catastrophic for my students. For this ongoing experiment in education, I’m testing out running an active learning classroom for a university introductory geology course. After…

This Fleet Of Micro-Satellites Will Use GPS To Predict The Weather

Weather forecasting is one of those sciences that never seems to be quite as good as we want it to be. But what if it had more data? That’s the idea behind Spire, a tech startup which wants to use a huge fleet of tiny, cheap satellites to tell you when it’s going to rain.…

18 Snowy Photographs That Will Make You Love Winter Again

The holidays are over, and we’re left dealing with the chilling hangover of Christmas-less winter. Luckily, we have these 16 photos you took of snow, too! Winner: Bumper Cars There is actually very little snow left in the St. Louis, Missouri area, so this became quite the challenge. It was too obvious to go to…

Eight Types Of Ice Halos Are Crammed Into One Glorious Winter Photo

This incredible display isn’t some a futuristic domed city in an alien icy landscape or an artist’s concept of magnetic fields, but a very real optical phenomena here on Earth. Here’s the science behind these spectacular ice halos photographed this week in New Mexico. These ice halos were photographed by Joshua Thomas on January 9,…

You Can Trace a Typhoon Through Changes in Ocean Life

You’re looking at a selection of marine life, from shrimp to jellies. But what’s special abou these little blighters is that they reveal the presence of a typhoon in their past. Research Mary Grossmann from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University has been snapping images of ocean life 20 metres below the…

This alien combination of solar phenomena is a real Earth sunrise

Many of us have seen a 22º halo, that surreal circle of rainbow-colored light around the sun, in real life. Some of us have seen a sun pillar in real life. A lucky few have seen a sun dog in real life. But I doubt any of you have seen them all of these super…

Shooting Challenge: Snowy Scenes

The holidays are over, and we’re left with nothing to look forward to but a few more months of bitter cold weather. Oh, and snow! Lots of snow! So let’s take photos of snow! The Challenge Take a photo with snow as its subject—that can be a snowy scene, where everything is dusted, or a…

Here’s What a New Year’s Snow Fall Looks Like at the Grand Canyon

This photo from the Grand Canyon National Park Service shows what the park looked like on January 1, 2015. Snow blanketed the whole thing, with clouds promising another dusting. Image credit: The Grand Canyon National Park Service

Climate Change Is Melting Christmas :(

“I’M DREAMING OF an ozone layer,
 Just like the one I used to know / Which kept out UV rays / Before aerosol sprays / And allowed for actual snow.” OK, so this week’s lyrical New Yorker essay on climate change Christmas carols is a blatant oversimplification of a serious issue—but it is not untrue…

Think You Get A Lot Of Snow? These Are The Largest Snowfalls On Record

Snow can be a wonderful thing—until it buries your car, prevents you from opening your front door, and ensures that you won’t be going anywhere for at least a week. Curl up under a blanket and pray that you don’t see as much snow as fell during these winter storms. The Great Snow of 1717,…

These Mysterious Ice Pancakes Have Taken Over a Scottish River 

Weird things happen in the winter cold. At the River Dee in Scotland, that includes dozens of recently discovered “ice pancakes” floating on the river surface. Their strange shapes boggle the imagination, but rest assured, there’s an explanation for their existence. The River Dee Trust, which first posted the photos online, suggests eddies in the…

Golden-Winged Warblers Can Predict When Tornados Will Strike

A recent study out of UC Berkeley has discovered that tiny golden-winged warblers can predict impending storms — or rather, they can actually hear them approaching. Scientists hope to use what they’ve learned to help save lives ahead of violent weather. Reports The Atlantic: In April, a massive thunderstorm unleashed a series of tornadoes that…

The Grand Canyon Is Full Of Clouds Right Now. Why?

This view may look like it shows the view from high above the clouds, but what you’re seeing is actually the ground-level view of what it looks like to look over the Grand Canyon right now. And it’s not just in one spot. Here are some more views of the upside-down sight that greeted visitors…

An Epic Storm On The West Coast

The weather updates coming out of California read like measurement glitches Between 147 miles per hour wind gusts recorded at Mount Lincoln weather station, and a crest height of 37.6 feet on the Russian River, it’s looking downright apocalyptic. Batten down the hatches, run the bilge pumps, and hunker down for the storm! Top image:…

The Meteorological Phenomenon That’s Flooding California 

After a long drought, California is suddenly getting pounded with its biggest storm in a decade. Whoa, what’s happening? It’s all the work of an atmospheric river, a particular weather event that can be devastating when it hits land. The particular atmospheric river responsible for today’s storm is called the Pineapple Express because it runs…

What Happens When the Weatherman’s Computer Fails

The weather team down at ABCNews4 just made the most of a horrific, live computer crash. Apparently, the computer that generates the graphics for the TV weather forecasts failed recently, but instead of just standing up there and talking in front of a blank screen, the team created some super half-assed chicken scratch pen drawings…

Incoming Storm Looks Like an Alien Threat Ready to Devour Sydney

This nasty-looking storm (yes, that’s a storm not some hostile extraterrestrial unleashing otherworldly Armageddon) only confirms what we’ve always known: Mother Nature can be truly terrifying. This two-minute clip was captured by storm chaser Daniel Shaw on Friday and is stunning visual evidence of the dangerous weather that’s been in Sydney this past week causing…

A Flowchart That Answers Once And For All Whether We’re In An El Niño

Could we still see an El Niño this year? Yes, we could. In fact, it may have started already. Top image: Current sea surface temperatures, as of today via NOAA After the newest El Niño update yesterday — that conditions were still quite good for the potential of developing an El Niño this winter, either…

Google News and Weather for Android is now searchable for stories has rather pretty forecasts. So now you might actually use it!