Snowflakes might revolutionize weather forecasting
By Laura Dattaro, Weather Channel
When it snows in Utah, Tim Garrett likes to watch the storm. He looks outside, watching the blurry mess of white fill the window, the Wasatch Mountains in the background. But he also looks at his computer screen, where he sees a live feed of photographs of tiny, individual snowflakes, each shot from three different angles as it makes its way to the ground.
Garrett is a University of Utah physicist who founded the Alta Project, an effort to photograph falling snowflakes in real-time to help improve models used to forecast winter storms. Along with a student at the university, Garrett developed the Multi-Angle Snowflake Camera (MASC), which, so far, has taken millions of photos of snowflakes at the Alta Ski Resort, along with data on how fast the flakes fall.
“This is an instrument that I think is revealing an aspect of nature in a way that it has not been seen before,” Garrett told weather.com. “I mean for me, what we’re seeing is astounding. I really did not appreciate the variety of what is out there until we actually started measuring it.”
Interesting choice of weather related article. I wondered when you would dig into the weather issues. I mean considering all the climate change experts here in the “Anti Family” town of SLT….
I thought that you would all be clamoring for the chance to explain all the climate and weather news, yet not even a peep.
How many idiots does it take to make an Al Gorebot?
As Bob Dylan famously wrote, “You don’t need a weatherman to see which way the wind blows”, a line which inspired a destructive revolutionary group in the ’60’s. . .
Mr/Ms McCoy seemed to be itching to make his comment in the Al Gore direction, when in fact nature has much to offer when it comes to “astounding” us, as both Mr. Gore & Mr. Garrett have found. . .Mr/Ms McCoy (& Mr. Garrett as well) might be awe-inspired a little more than mere “polemics” allows, in looking into the field of fractal geometry (Benoit Mandelbrot), as marvelous replicative patterns can now be found in most all of nature: this is now known as ‘Nature’s Mathematics’, and it may be used in the future to allay some of the ignorance about the world around us, so we can understand each other’s concerns rather than just keep destroying it while keeping such ignorance alive.
At least Mr. Garrett is learning something useful. . . as I did at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the premier source of climate knowledge in this country (in the hills above Boulder, CO). . .
Best Wishes for the Season and Our World. . .
Hey CJ Pub! You don’t understand or care about Science anyway, so what would be the point of explaining the obvious. You have been completely taken in by the folks that brought us “safe” cigarettes from the 1960’s. They all got new jobs working for Oil, Coal and Gas industries and now they say how “safe” Oil, Coal and Gas is for the entire planet. Look no further then Santa’s workshop in China for a glimpse of the future; pollution and filth so thick you can cut it with a knife. But hey, WalMart has some really good deals on cheap flat screen TV’s.
CJ is full of it.
Notice how it is all bark and no bite. Lots of words, not much actual content
Never referenced any research.
I always like it when they do so I can do the detective work and find the BS.
Take a look at the trend in multi-year sea ice. Overall coverage is one easy way to look at it. But the real story is in how many layers persist over the years.
One great dataset was collected by the Navy. They were only interested in knowing where their subs could breach and when. And guess what the data reveals….