NASA: USA - Winter Storm Stalls Thanksgiving Travel - 11.28.13
Posted by Ricardo Marcenaro | Posted in NASA: USA - Winter Storm Stalls Thanksgiving Travel - 11.28.13 | Posted on 18:22
acquired November 24 - 26, 2013
download animation (17 MB, QuickTime)
As millions of Americans are taking to the highways
for the Thanksgiving holiday, a powerful winter storm is plowing across
the nation. The storm is leaving snow, ice, and rain in its wake,
creating hazardous travel conditions. By the time the storm is over, it
will have brought wintery weather to 2.5 million square miles of the United States.
The storm is big news because it is disrupting travel during one of
the busiest travel period of the year, but it's not otherwise all that
unusual, says NASA research scientist Chris Kidd. “Large storms are
expected a few times each winter, particularly at this time of the
year,” says Kidd. Ocean waters in the Gulf of Mexico are still
warm—around 80 degrees Fahrenheit—and they load the atmosphere with
moisture. Meanwhile cold Arctic air is beginning to sweep down from the
north. When that cold air clashes with warm, moist air from the south,
it is the perfect recipe for a large storm system.
These images and animations show the storm system between November 24
and 26, 2013. The top image and associated animation show water vapor
from the GOES East satellite, while the lower image and animation show
clouds. The clouds offer a familiar view of the storm, but water vapor
reveals the otherwise invisible clash between warm and cold air that is
generating the storm.
“Water vapor imagery shows us the synoptic scale
(large scale) weather patterns of the atmosphere,” says Marshall
Shepherd, a research meteorologist at the University of Georgia and
president of the American Meteorological Society. Water vapor absorbs
very specific wavelengths of energy (6.7 microns). By measuring those
wavelengths, we can find out how much water vapor there is in the middle
and upper parts of the atmosphere, says Shepherd, so it’s useful for
seeing weather features. In this image, light areas have high
concentrations of water vapor, while darker areas are cooler, drier air.
The animation also shows warm, moist air from the Gulf being pulled
into the system. The moist air is rising over cold, dense air near the
surface. As the air rises, water condenses into rain. The storm is most
intense in the stark visual boundary areas between light (cold, dry air)
and dark (warm, moist air). Perhaps the most dramatic example of this
is in the very bright line flowing north over western Florida. The
turbulence in the boundary regions generates powerful thunderstorms, and
in fact, tornado watches were announced for parts of the Florida panhandle.
More broadly, cold air is moving in behind the storm. This section of
the storm is likely to produce snow in many regions. The air is drier
in the south, says Kidd, because it has traveled across the interior of
the United States without access to large bodies of water. The stream of
cold air visible in the north is a bit more moist because it has access
to the Hudson Bay.
The storm system has already brought snow to the Southwest and Southern Plains, resulting in deadly road accidents. It was forecast
to snow in the Appalachians and upper Northeast, while the rest of the
Northeast and Mid-Atlantic expected a mix of rain, sleet, and ice.
References
- Associated Press (2013, November 26) Tornado watches posted through eastern Panhandle. Accessed November 26, 2013.
- NOAA National Weather Service (2013, November 26) Storm summary message. Accessed November 26, 2013.
- The Weather Channel (2013, November 26) Winter storm Boreas spreading snow, ice into South and Northeast. Accessed November 26, 2013.
Images courtesy NOAA-NASA GOES Project. NASA Earth Observatory animation by Robert Simmon. Caption by Holli Riebeek.
- Instrument:
- GOES
NASA: USA - Winter Storm Stalls Thanksgiving Travel - 11.28.13
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