I Heart Chaos

Awesome photo of a dust devil on Mars. A Marsnado if you will.

A towering dust devil casts a serpentine shadow over the Martian surface in this stunning, late springtime image of Amazonis Planitia. The length of the shadow indicates that the dust plume reaches more than 800 meters, or half a mile, in height. The tail of the plume does not trace the path of the dust devil, which had been following a steady course towards the southeast and left a bright track behind it. The delicate arc in the plume was produced by a westerly breeze at about a 250-meter height that blew the top of the plume towards the east. The westerly winds and the draw of warmth to the south combine to guide dust devils along southeast trending paths, as indicated by the tracks of many previous dust-devils. The dust plume itself is about 30 meters in diameter.

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So what’s up with this year’s almost complete lack of winter?

Record temperatures across North America and Europe, record low snowfall, flowers and birds thinking it’s spring instead of the dead of winter… what the hell’s going on? Is this global warming? Not exactly… this year’s near-complete lack of winter, especially compared to last year, seems to be mostly due to La Niña, keeping the jet stream pushed way north.

posted 13 January, 2012
by cranberryzero
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Firing laser beams into the clouds could produce rain. LASER RAIN DANCE

Since the dawn of time, people have been trying to have some sort of influence over the weather. Rain dances and prayer don’t do shit, and these days we can have limited success in dropping things like silver iodide into clouds that are close to bursting to induce rain, but an even better method is shooting “lasers” into clouds to speed up condensation.

posted 01 September, 2011
by cranberryzero
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And this is the view from Atlantic Beach, NC, where the Weather Channel states the obvious

And I quote “The beach is just filled with sand!” WITH SAND! The horror!

Photo and video of Hurricane Irene taken from astronauts on the ISS

Since I live in North Carolina, pretty much all everyone is talking about right now is Hurricane Irene and the date that it has with Wilmington, NC and the Outer Banks. Hopefully it will stay along the coast and not veer inland like Hurricane Fran did in 1996. Hopefully where I’m at, we’ll get a lot of rain and a little bit of heavy wind and that’s it.

$NASA astronomy pic of the day: A Pileus Iridescent Cloud Over Ethiopia Pictured, behind this darker cloud, is a pileus iridescent cloud, a group of water droplets that have a uniformly similar size and so together diffract different colors of sunlight by different amounts. The above image was taken just after the picturesque sight was noticed by chance by a photographer in Ethiopia. Via$

NASA astronomy pic of the day: A Pileus Iridescent Cloud Over Ethiopia

Pictured, behind this darker cloud, is a pileus iridescent cloud, a group of water droplets that have a uniformly similar size and so together diffract different colors of sunlight by different amounts. The above image was taken just after the picturesque sight was noticed by chance by a photographer in Ethiopia.

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Watch an F4 tornado rip through Tuscaloosa, Alabama

An F4 tornado is a quarter to a half a mile in diameter with winds between 166-200 mph. Think about that as you watch this beast rip Tuscaloosa a new asshole.

Also, this is why you don’t try to outrun a tornado. (Thanks to Delsyd for that link)

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The bad news is that the magnetic poles are shifting rapidly and superstorms are going to kill us all. But the good news is…

Epic flooding in Queensland, Australia followed up by a mega cyclone, massive winter storms across North America and Europe… what does it all mean? According to Salem-News.com, it’s all the fault of the breakdown and rapid movement of the Earth’s magnetic field. Normally, the magnetic field moves at the slow pace of about 5 feet per year, but apparently it’s now shifting at the rate of 40 miles per year and accelerating.

posted 05 February, 2011
by cranberryzero
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This is what this week’s Snowlocaust looks like

See that massive storm front covering the entire US? That’s God peeing all over America. Here in the southeast, we’re just getting rain, but from Oklahoma diagonally up to New England, it’s snow snow snow.

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posted 01 February, 2011
by cranberryzero
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NASA discovers that terrestrial thunderstorms can create antimatter

A space telescope has accidentally spotted thunderstorms on Earth producing beams of antimatter. Such storms have long been known to give rise to fleeting sparks of light called terrestrial gamma-ray flashes. But results from the Fermi telescope show they also give out streams of electrons and their antimatter counterparts, positrons.

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posted 12 January, 2011
by cranberryzero
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Why is it so damn cold this December? Blame the North American Oscillation

This past week’s east coast blizzard simply punctuated the fact that for many parts of northern Europe and North America, we’re facing the coldest December since 1910. After decades of being told that winters would keep getting warmer and warmer, what’s going on? Well, it all has to do with a global weather feature called the North American Oscillation. This meteorological phenomenon is centered off the west coast of Iceland, just under Greenland and determines a lot about how winters in western Europe and eastern North America play out.

posted 29 December, 2010
by cranberryzero
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US Representative thinks that God will save us from climate change, because He said so

US Representative John Shimkus (R-IL) isn’t worried about climate change, manmade or otherwise. Because in the Bible, God promised that after the great flood that saw Noah and his family as one of the few human survivors, God promised that He wouldn’t do that again. His days of destroying humanity were done. So that’s that, then.

posted 16 November, 2010
by cranberryzero
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Taiwanese sexy weather girls rule the skies

NMA, the Taiwanese news agency that’s pretty much ruled the internet this year with their cheesy and hilarious CGI news recaps have another ace in their sleeve: Super futuristic, sexy as hell Asian weather girls. C’mon, it’s the 21st century… we don’t need the likes of Al Roker standing in front of a green screen. All we need is this right here.

See more sexy weather girl videos here or by clicking through the video.

posted 08 November, 2010
by cranberryzero
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The weather is a dick

There’s been weather map dicks before— when you’ve got random blobs of weather on a map, eventually you’re going to end up in the shape of a penis, but this one is just the all-time weather map dick winner.

posted 25 October, 2010
by cranberryzero
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Check out this photo of the Statue of Liberty getting hit by lightning

I’m sure that obviously the Statue of Liberty gets hit by lightning plenty, but rarely is such a thing photographed, or photographed so well. The picture was taken by 58-year-old New York photographer Jay Fine, who said that he “waited 40 years for this image”.

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