Brilliant Wednesday; cold front ahead Thursday:
Clouds will linger in southeast Minnesota and western Wisconsin early today.
GOES 1km visible satellite images with station ID’s overlay shows clouds just east of hte metro.
UARS mystery solved?
NASA may have solved the mystery of where the doomed UARS satellite broke up as it reentered the atmosphere last Friday night. 70% of earth is covered by water, and it looks like UARS found some in the South Pacific.
UARS RE-ENTRY ZONE:
“NASA has released a new statement pinpointing the re-entry of the UARS satellite on Sept. 24th: “The Joint Space Operations Center at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California has determined the satellite entered the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean at 14.1 degrees south latitude and 189.8 degrees east longitude. This location is over a broad, remote ocean area in the Southern Hemisphere, far from any major land mass. The debris field is located between 300 miles and 800 miles downrange, or generally northeast of the re-entry point. NASA is not aware of any possible debris sightings from this geographic area.”
Valley of the “dusty” Sun: Dust storms reduce air quality in Phoenix:
Numerous dust storms have slammed Phoenix this year, and it’s affecting air quality monitors. Believe me; you don’t want to breathe this stuff during a dust storm in Phoenix.
The story from the Tucson Ciitizen.
“So far this year, dust levels at monitors across the Valley exceeded federal limits 85 times. In many cases, multiple violations happened on the same day, but at different monitor locations.
Local air-quality agencies are unanimous in their belief that 84 of those cases were exceptional events that could be blamed on natural conditions. But to prove it generally would require 60 to 70 pages of documentation for each violation, officials said. A variety of data needs to be presented, including maps, satellite images, monitoring data and radar and meteorological information.
Local officials want to document what they think is the real culprit: several huge dust storms that blanketed the Valley with so much dust this year that they made national headlines.
And because of the Valley’s dry monsoon this year, local officials argue that there was not enough rain to clear the layers of dust, leaving it lingering on the ground and in the air for days.”