Dr. Jeff Masters' WunderBlog

Fierce storm hammers Southeast U.S.

Wed, 2 Dec 2009 14:17:00 GMT

The Southeast U.S. is under the gun today from a combination of severe thunderstorms, high winds, heavy rain, and coastal storm surge flooding. A tornado was reported on the ground near Eglin Air Force Base, Florida this morning, and tornado warnings have been posted for two separate squall lines moving through the Florida Panhandle and neighboring regions of Alabama and Georgia. These squall lines are expected to intensify and generate tornadoes, heavy rain, and st...
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Hurricane season draws to a close

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 15:23:00 GMT

It's November 30, and the inconsequential Atlantic hurricane season of 2009 is in the books. Residents all along the Atlantic coast can give thanks for this year's much-needed respite after the pummeling Mother Nature gave last year. The four direct deaths recorded this year represented the lowest death toll since the El Niño hurricane season of 1997, which also had four deaths. This year's season featured only nine named storms, three hurricanes and two major hurr...
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The Manufactured Doubt industry and the hacked email controversy

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 15:07:00 GMT

In 1954, the tobacco industry realized it had a serious problem. Thirteen scientific studies had been published over the preceding five years linking smoking to lung cancer. With the public growing increasingly alarmed about the health effects of smoking, the tobacco industry had to move quickly to protect profits and stem the tide of increasingly worrisome scientific news. Big Tobacco turned to one the world's five largest public relations firms, Hill and Knowlton,...
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QuikSCAT, 1999 - 2009: R.I.P.

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:34:00 GMT

The QuikSCAT satellite is no more. The sad new of QuikSCAT's demise came yesterday in a terse message from NASA:Several hours ago, shortly past 7:00Z today (23Nov), telemetry received from QuikSCAT indicates that the antenna rotation rate has dropped to zero and remains at zero. The motor remains powered. The system can be operated safely in this state for an indefinite period. The QuikSCAT operations team will be meeting later this morning, but in all likelihood t...
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Globe has 2nd - 7th warmest October on record; U.S., 3rd coldest

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:30:00 GMT

The globe recorded its sixth warmest October since record keeping began in 1880, according to NOAA's National Climatic Data Center. NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies rated October 2009 as the 2nd warmest October on record, falling 0.06°C short of the record set in 2005, while the UK HADCRUT3 data set rated October the 7th warmest (this data set does not include most of the Arctic, Antarctic, and Africa, where there are few land stations). NOAA rated the y...
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