Weekend Weather
October 16th, 2009 at 12:29 pm by Bill Steffen under Bill's Blog, Weather
We’ve got a lot of high clouds out there now. You can see a nice plume of clouds coming off Lake Huron near Port Huron. There’s another batch of low clouds to our north, so kind of a variable day with a little dim sunshine poking through from time to time. Winds out of the north will keep us chilly. Here’s the latest satellite loop (daytime)(nighttime). Skies should become mostly clear later tonight. That will set us up for frost and a freeze for most areas tonight. We have good weather for cleaning up the yard, heading out to see the fall colors, or taking in a football game (Michigan, Michigan St. GVSU at home, CMU and WMU). We’ll warm back up to 60 degrees early next week. Here’s snowfall pictures and totals from the storm in Pennsylvania. It’s now the coldest October in 133 years in Chicago. This Saturday is the 20th day in a row with below average temperatures. Today is the 9th day in a row when temperatures have failed to get warmer than the low 50s (average high is 60). We’ve had only 24% of possible sunshine this month and we have had at least a trace of rain on 13 of the first 16 days of the month.
A couple days of 60 would be nice to get out and take some picture of the tree colors!
thank god, sun and warmer temps. 3 weeks of this crap and im sick of it. bring on spring already!
Fix-the-Weather
You should move to Key West, Florida
300 PM EDT FRI OCT 16 2009
KEY WEST INTL SUNNY 90 76 63 SW8 29.86F HX 101
Normal High is 85, Normal Low is 76 for today.
Mike
id love to if i could transfer my job down there.
There’s GOT to be more jobs in FL than in MI! Look at it this way: if you move down there, you get the warm weather that you like. It sounds like you would be leaving employment here, which means that someone here in MI who LIKES our weather can have YOUR job. It’s a win-win! Pack up! FL awaits!
ive got a friend who lives there and the job situation is just as bad. glad you want to get rid of me that easy but im not gonna quit my job to just move to warmer climate. but…detroit here we come in june, no more lake effect!
on a side note, im “loving” the mid 60’s im seeing for next week. hoping it doesn’t change, too early for this cold and snow talk.
Looking forward to more sunshine and warmer temps. I too will be out getting photos of the Fall Colors.. or what is left after that hard freeze…
Should be a nice clear night. Hopefully will be able to see the astroid fly by? The closest time to view it I guess is around 11:44pm tonight!
Peter Chan issued his winter forecast last night. Near to below normal temps with above average snowfall (72″ for GR). Three cheers for that!
any one seeing one of the most increadible auroras in a while…for no sun spots wow, must be a big solar wind stream, we are seeing streamers from 360 degrees
I got off the phone with Bob and these lights are like nothing I have ever seen before!! I didn’t see any of the colored auroras.. but what I did see was way weird in the south sky. I have clouds here but there were these pulses of white light that were on and off then suddenly for almost 1 minute they just went nuts, pulsing rapidly and some where quite bright and then a couple actually lit up the yard! This was all through the clouds… it looked like I was watching a distant storm with nearly continuous lightning. Headed back out now to see what else I can see. Clouds are beginning to clear for me..
Just got back in, after viewing with friends out in the country, Awesome..
Charles I hope it clears for ya Dude, cause this was totally unexpected, even the solar wind stream is not at impressive levels speed: 354.0 km/sec, so hmmmm?
Yeah my clouds cleared I went back out but the sky was blank. What I seen earlier though WOW!
Ahh – just noticed this one. That confirms the ice theory.
Here is a good link for lots of current weather observations in Michigan.
http://raws.wrh.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/roman/raws_ca_monitor.cgi?state=MI&rawsflag=290&timeobs=12&orderby=n&type=0
Mike
Takes a few seconds to laod.
Click this link for an image a friend of mine got from Midland, MI of the auroras tonight!: http://www.wunderground.com/wximage/viewsingleimage.html?mode=singleimage&handle=mactoot&number=527#commenttop
Thanks – I had someone call from Mason asking about it, but I had clouds overhead and checked the aurora map and nothing was showing up around here. Interesting…
Thats the first thing I did too, Rob, my daughter called and said there were strange lights in the south sky, as she was heading back to lansing, she asked if they were Aurora’s ,I said very doubtful, as no sun spots, probably was a city flash,maybe from Lansing airport on the low clouds…she reported back to me then there are several flashes and they are not really moving, so i checked the Space weather page, nuttin, no real solar wind hitting at the time???
Went out and wow, looking to the south several white/red pillars, looked to the west 3 bright white pillars, looked to the north more pillars, and to the east two to three pillars, and directly above..white pulses, normally to have such a event we would have had a big solar flare hit the earth creating Geomagnetic storm, but we know the sun is spotless, so it had to be a solar wind stream……but the web site was not showing a big wind stream hitting the earth!!!?????
Sounds like maybe these were “light pillars” where ground lighting hit some mid-level moisture (ice) and looked like aurora. I can’t find any measurement that would give reason for only Michigan having northern lights.
http://www.spacew.com/www/auroras.php is empty other than MI/OH (which happened to have a similar airmass overhead.) I’d have to believe someone outside of the Great Lakes saw them if it was aurora.
I agree Rob, that the “north” areas would of seen a big show..
every once in a while the earth tilts in a way to allow a solar wind stream to enter even at low speeds creates a show…
We had folks in Gratiot County looking at them, several here in St.Johns, my daughter in DeWitt!!!
we had almost completely clear skies here….
dang! i missed this one. and i’m a dedicated sky-watcher too. i live for this kind of stuff! makes me grumpy all day.
maybe i’ll just have to get out and enjoy the sun and the beautiful changing colors. (grumble)
suspect rob’s right about the ice. how widespread is the visibility of these light pillars anyway?
like jack horkheimer always says, “keep looking up!”
Rob… if those were light pillars then I must be delusional…. There may have been some of those too but these were not light pillars. Having seen light pillars and auroras plenty enough in my time here.. I know they were not light pillars. By the way light pillars do not pulse like I saw..
That’s the weirdest thing that nothing was indicating on any of the maps or websites that this was occurring. So the question still remains.. I hope we are able to get this figured out soon.. maybe it was some for of space energy that went undetected? Perhaps made of elements we are unable to detect with current technology?
Light pillars do flash. And you can have them in “clear” skies too because of the ice suspended in mid-levels. But most reports saw them in the clouds, and that CANNOT be the northern lights. And nobody outside of southern Michigan saw them, and aurora are at a level that they’d be seen elsewhere too.
one report in ohio
Right – which I mentioned above, as they had the same midlevel ice crystals around and they also had clouds overhead. So that fits the rest of them.
I forgot what station it was, tv met in Lansing, mention it was light pillars
last night.
Woke up to find a little bit of snow on my back deck this morning. Not much, but it was there!
totally blank…
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/alerts/warnings_timeline.html
Ive been to all my space sites and nothing on last nights event
Because last night wasn’t a space event.
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/news/display_cmsstory.php?wfo=grr&storyid=30988&source=0
Thanks for the link Rob, I was at all the space web sites last night(during and after) and this morning and couldnt locate any information that would suggest a solar event…..but with that said, the “pulsing” lights directly above us is what kept me from believing it was light pillars, My wife (also a star watcher) said she thought they were light pillars, but I tried debunking that, as usually light pillars occur in much colder air (ie: ice crystals).
But to see so many from 20 to 30 degrees above the horizon to 90 directly above us…and as I said…it was clear..except to our south…strange!
So I will have to go along with the pro’s for now……
this explains it, the mother ship has arrived
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2009/10/14/2009-10-14_halo_cloud_over_moscow_ufo_or_natural_beauty_.html
BTW Bill….Good Call on the Snow creating issues with college football games this fall…Look at Penn State U, the homecoming tailgate event has been cancelled to much snow
It was the aliens Charles!
Hey Bill, if I remeber correctly, don’t you and the others at tv13, 17, etc get together every fall on the front of the Sunday Press for the winter outlook ? Any word yet on when ?
don’t know why as they all forecast different things.
Weather you win or weather you lose…it doesn’t matter…. it’s how how the weather is when you play the game.
seriously, love the cold weather patterns across the region, can’t wait to start cross county skiing!!!!!!
Hopefully the polar ice packs are filling in nicely too!!!!