Weather-Related

This is a time-stamped video slowed down 300X showing a massive lightning bolt grow, strike and die.

There is considerable debate about whether it can rain oil.  Some oil industry officials claim it’s impossible because oil cannot bond to water, and therefore oil cannot be carried high up into the atmosphere to eventually fall as rain. 

But a report by the beleaguered and now-renamed MMS says that up to 75% of light crude oil can evaporate.  If oil can evaporate, then perhaps it can be carried up into the cloud as vapor, condense, and fall with water as rain.

It’s also been noted that oil which has been treated with certain chemical dispersants changes properties so that it does bond to water.  In which case, it seems possible that dispersant-treated oil could eventually fall as rain.

Regardless, this video and many others on YouTube claim to show it raining oil.  We may find out for sure with a new tropical storm building in the Gulf of Mexico.

Storm chasers videotape a tornado touching down in Bowdle, South Dakota on May 22, 2010.  Here’s a tip to storm chasers: try to come up with some original dialog, rather than simply repeating “Oh my God” over and over.

Storm chasers follow a series of tornadoes in northern Oklahoma.

110mph Winds On Ski Lift - Watch more Funny Videos

A group of skiers get hit with a 110 mph microburst wind while sitting on a ski lift in Jackson Hole, Wyoming on March 30, 2010.  Warning: some profanity.

NASA has released what it calls the “coolest, most illustrative video” of its kind ever.  The video shows stunning new images of earth, highlighting climate changes and how the weather in one part of the planet impacts the rest of us. 

The cryosphere is the part of the Earth’s surface where water is found in solid form.  This includes areas of snow, sea ice, glaciers, permafrost, ice sheets and icebergs.  In these areas, surface temperatures remain below freezing for a portion of each year.  Since ice and snow exist relatively close to their melting point, they frequently change from solid to liquid and back again due to fluctuations in surface temperature. 

Although direct measurements of the cryosphere are often difficult due to remote locations of these areas, scientists can use satellites to monitor changes in the global and regional climate by observing how regions of the Earth’s cryosphere shrink and expand.

Read the rest of this entry »

Two friends spot a waterspout in Louisiana and chase it down to get a better look.  My favorite part of the video:

Mother:  Y’all be careful.

Son:  All right, Mom, we know…  It’s not a tornado.

Other Kid:  It’s white, tornadoes aren’t white.

After a melodramatic introduction with ominous music, this video gets down to business with a series of impressive lightning strikes.  Warning: Language.  Apparently the most common expression after a close lightning strike is “Holy S***!”

High winds shoved ice into lakeside homes in Linwood, Michigan.  CNN iReporter Heath Bobick talked to Headline News from the scene.

You can see the cloud send out little lightning feeder lines to find the quickest path to the ground.  Once the path is found, the main lightning bolt streaks to the ground.