Strong Storm Rips Through Parts of NY City

Attached are 2 weather photos of the storm that came through New York on Thursday 9/16/10. The extreme weather shown in red can be easily distinguished from the strong weather which is shown in green and blue. NY City is in the center of the screen towards the bottom. It is clearly in the green and blue section. Parts of Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island took the brunt of the storm.

"Weather officials confirmed Friday night that two tornadoes and a macroburst touched down in New York City the previous day.

The National Weather Service said that the first EF0 tornado touched down in Park Slope, Brooklyn with winds of 80 mph after 5 p.m. Thursday and traveled two miles northeast.

The second EF1 tornado touched down about 2.5 miles south of Flushing, Queens and traveled north to Bayside with winds of up to 100 mph, before lifting over the waters. Middle Village and Forest Hills, Queens were the neighborhoods hit hardest.

The macroburst, which is a sudden acceleration of wind coming out of a fast-moving storm that's more than 2.5 miles long, created the most damage in Queens, moving through Forest Hills and Middle Village with winds up to 125 mph. "The [macroburst's] actual width upon touchdown was on the order of about 1.5 miles wide and the damage path that spread out made a cone of up to five miles wide," said Gary Conte of the National Weather Service.

If you are interested in more information on tornadoes and other storms in New York - check out this link http://www.tornadoproject.com/alltorns/nytorn.htm#Nassau You can also click on the Storm Events Page on the top right corner to get more specific information on tornadoes in specific areas.

Watch the video below to see a newscast of the Storm that came through New York on Thursday 9/16/10.

Just for Fun - Snow Shoveling

What is a Nor'Easter?

The issue of the Nor'easter is that it brings wind from the Northeast which is over the ocean which energizes the storm with tons of moisture. Watch the time elapsed video below to see how much snow was precipitated during 1 day.

Tornado in Texas

Today, 10/25/10, a tornado set down in Texas and was caught on tape. It is a rare occasion that this kind of tornado activity is caught on tape. Additionally, other storms pelted the surrounding area with hail the size of golfballs.

Phases of the Moon

Watch video below to see how the phases of the moon and eclipses are created.

Total Lunar Eclipse on December 20, 2010

Read the article below to learn about the upcoming lunar eclipse for Monday 12/20/10.

Click on the link below to learn how an eclipse occurs.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11947384/ns/technology_and_science-space/

A total lunar eclipse set to take place next Monday night and Tuesday morning (Dec. 20-21) will be well-placed for observers across North America to catch a view.

On the East Coast, it begins half an hour after midnight on Tuesday; on the West Coast, it begins around 9:30 p.m. PST Monday. In all cases, the whole eclipse will be observable before the moon sets in the west just as the sun is rising in the east. Maximum eclipse is at 3:17 a.m. EST/12:17 a.m. PST.

During a total lunar eclipse, the Earth gets between the full moon and the sun, blocking the sun's light from bouncing off the lunar surface. Although lunar eclipses occur fairly frequently, usually at the rate of about two a year, they often hold surprises.

No one knows until the eclipse actually occurs how deep it will be and what color the moon will show. This is determined by weather conditions around the Earth's rim at the time of the eclipse, as the sun's light is colored and refracted inward by thousands of sunsets and sunrises.
If the air is clear around the rim of the Earth, the eclipse may be quite light; if cloudy, quite dark. Again, depending on those sunrises and sunsets, the moon may appear orange, red, dark brown or slate gray.

Astronomers often try to estimate the magnitude, or brightness, of the eclipsed moon. Because the moon is much larger in apparent diameter than the stars and planets, it's necessary to "shrink" the moon to make comparisons more accurate. One way to do this is to view the moon through binoculars the wrong way around, looking in the objective end. Another way is to view it in a reflecting garden globe.

It is fun to repeat the observations made by early Greek astronomers of the curve of the Earth's shadow on the moon's face, which they used to prove that the Earth was round. Greek astronomers also used the curve of the Earth's shadow to calculate the relative sizes of the Earth and moon.

One thing worth observing is how different the shadow of the Earth falling on the moon looks compared to the regular phases of the moon observed every month during the year. There's a common folk belief that the moon's phases are caused by the shadow of the Earth falling on the moon, rather than by the sun illuminating the spherical globe of the moon from different angles.

The moon's shadow during an eclipse is much less curved than the lunar terminator, and always concave. The Earth's shadow is strongly colored by light refracted through the Earth's atmosphere, while the normal lunar terminator is colorless.

One special object to look for in this eclipse is the open star cluster Messier 35 in the constellation Gemini. This will be just three degrees above the eclipsed moon, half a binocular field away. It's also interesting to see how many faint stars you can see when the moon is fully eclipsed you will see far more than are visible against the bright full moon before and after the eclipse.

A lunar eclipse makes for many photo opportunities.

Be sure to bracket your exposures (try different exposures longer and shorter than what your meter says) because a bright moon in a dark sky often fools cameras' exposure meters. If you normally keep a filter on your lens for protection, take it off to photograph the eclipse; otherwise, you may spoil your pictures with a ghost image of the moon. And use a telephoto lens or maximum zoom: The moon always looks larger to the eye than it does on film. Be sure to take some wide-angle shots as the moon gets lower in the sky toward the end of the eclipse.

Solar Eclipse July 2010

This solar eclipse event could be seen on Easter Island on Monday July 12, 2010. Why is it that the solar eclipse can only be seen on a very small portion of Earth? There is a name for the eclipse picture that is shown here. Can you name it?

Leap Year

What is a Leap Year?
A leap year is a year that has one extra day in it. A leap year occurs roughly every four years. Most years have 365 days, but a leap year has 366 days. The extra day is added onto the end of the shortest month, February; in a leap year, February has 29 days (instead of its usual 28 days). February 29 is called leap day.

Why Do We Have Leap Years?
A year is defined as the time it takes for the Earth to orbit around the sun once. It takes the Earth about 365 1/4 days to make one entire orbit around the sun (a day is one rotation around the Earth's axis). By adding one extra day about every four years, the Earth is in the same point of its orbit at the same time of the calendar year each year.

(The Earth orbits the sun every 365.2422 days (0.2422 days is equal to 5 hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds, roughly 1/4 of a day). Every 365 1/4 days (not exactly 365 days), the Earth returns to the same exact spot in its orbit. That is why we have a leap year roughly every 4 years, to synchronize the seasons with our calendar; if we had a 365-day calendar every year, the seasons would drift around the calendar.)

Before a leap-year calendar was used, the seasons drifted around the calendar (the drift is about 1/4 day or 6 hours each year). For example, over three hundred years, July would range from summer to spring. Our current calendar is called the Gregorian calendar; this calendar was devised by Aloysius Lilius (an Italian physician) and named for Pope Gregory who decreed in 1582 that it be used in Catholic areas. This calendar wasn't adopted in Britain and the American Colonies until 1752.

What Years are Leap Years?
Usually, there is a leap year every four years -- but once in a long while, a leap year has to be skipped (this is because the Earth's orbit is 365.242 days, a bit less than 365 1/4).

To determine if the year is a leap year:
Non-century years (a century year is a year ending in 00) are leap years if they are divisible by four. For example, 2004, 2008 and 2012 are leap years; 2009, 2010 and 2011 are not.
Century years are leap years if they are divisible by 400. For example, 1600, 2000, and 2400 are leap years; 1700, 1800, 1900, 2100, 2200, and 2300 are not.

A List of Some Leap Years
A list of some leap years: ...1984, 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016, 2020, 2024, 2028, 2032, 2036, 2040, 2044, 2048, 2052, 2056, 2060, 2064, 2068, 2072, 2076, 2080, 2084, 2088, 2092, 2096, 2104, 2108, 2112, 2116, 2120, ...

Leap Day Birthdays
People born on leap day (February 29) can celebrate their birthday on March 1 (or February 28) on non-leap years. A person born on a leap day is sometimes called a leapling.

What percentage of the population is born on leap day?

Assuming an equal distribution of birthdays throughout the year, the fraction of people born on leap day is the fraction of people born on one day out of four years, or 1/[(365 x 4 ) + 1] = 1/1,461 = 0.068% (less than one-tenth of a percent of the population).

Calendar Rhyme (Two versions)
Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November,
All the rest have thirty-one,
Excepting February alone,
And it has twenty-eight days time,
But in leap years, February has twenty-nine.

Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November,
All the rest have thirty-one,
Excepting February alone,
And that has twenty-eight days clear,
And twenty-nine in each leap-year.

Seasons

Just for Fun - Space Paintings

http://wimp.com/spraypaint/