Touring Machine Company

This is a phenomenon that happens frequently in coastal California. John Lindsey’s daily weather report triggered this post. “At 5 a.m. this morning’s low at the Paso Robles Airport was 45 degrees while the temperature at the San Luis Obispo County Airport was 63 degrees. Temperatures at Avila Beach and Diablo Canyon were even warmer, [...]

Weather fronts are as familiar as rain. For those who live outside of Earth’s tropics, the movement of warm and cold masses of air creates the weather, and when the two clash, it often rains. Understanding what happens when cold and warm air meet (cold and warm fronts) has given meteorologists the ability to predict [...]

Mammatus are most often associated with the anvil cloud that extends from a cumulonimbus, but may also be found under altocumulus, altostratus, stratocumulus, and cirrus clouds, as well as volcanic ash clouds. In the United States, sky gazers may be most familiar with the very distinct and more common cumulonimbus mammatus. When occurring in cumulonimbus, [...]

Patrick Smith has an interesting post about icing, how it affects the airplane and the airlines, and a bit about accidents due to icing. Airframe ice comes in three basic flavors: rime, clear and mixed. Rime is the common one, appearing as a sort of white fuzz. The rate at which ice accretes is graded [...]

There’s a huge storm in the east right now. Here’s the METAR and TAF for LaGuardia. Update: Here’s a picture from space of the snow on the ground, Output produced by METARs form (0456 UTC 27 December 2010) found at http://aviationweather.gov/adds/metars/index.php KLGA 270451Z 33031G40KT 1/4SM R04/2000V2800FT SN BLSN VV001 M04/M07 A2915 RMK AO2 PK WND [...]

On a recent November morning, around 8:30, I went over to the airport to practice slow flight with our new vortex generators. Since I was there I wiped the dew and bugs off of the Cherokee. We’d had some rain so the dew was pretty thick. While I was wiping the dew off of the [...]

fractus /ˈfræktəs/ Adjective

This spectacular image of sunset on the Indian Ocean was taken by astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The image presents an edge-on, or limb view, of the Earth’s atmosphere as seen from orbit. Read more at NASA. NASA has another view highlighting polar mesospheric clouds which occur near the boundary between the mesosphere [...]

Click on the image below to see a stunning slideshow and explanation of the origins of noctilucent clouds. NASA sent a satellite into orbit to study these clouds and has a site with photos and details on how they are changing over time. NOAA has a page of links to sites featuring noctilucent clouds and [...]

Lenticular clouds form in the lee of mountains. They are associated with extreme turbulence—even as they look very pretty. Below are some examples I’ve been collecting. NASA’s APOD has lots more.  Above Washington  Over Hawaii  Over New Zealand  Nightime over Flagstaff