Whipped into fantastical shapes, these clouds hang over the darkening landscape like the harbingers of a mighty storm.
But despite their stunning and frequent appearances, the formations have yet to be officially recognised with a name.
They have been seen all over Britain in different forms - from Snowdonia to the Scottish Highlands - and in other parts of the world such as New Zealand, but usually break up without producing a storm.
And some experts believe the stormy weather phenomenon deserves its very own classification.
Experts at the Royal Meteorological Society are now attempting to make it official by naming it 'Asperatus' after the Latin word for 'rough'.
If they are successful, it would be the first variety of cloud formation to be given a new label in over half a century. 'It is a bit like looking at the surface of a choppy sea from below,' said Gavin Pretor-Pinney, founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society, who identified the cloud from photographs sent in by members.
Hi! I thought you'd be interested in this story from Science@NASA: A team of NASA and university scientists has discovered substantial plumes of methane floating through the atmosphere of Mars. The discovery indicates Mars is either biologically or geologically active. The Red Planet is Not a Dead Planet! Click here.
Hey ya'll,
I'm really sorry for taking so long to update the snowstorm story, but I had and still have really loads of stuff to do. So anyway, I'm gonna translate you some information about the cyclone we had from www.meteo.lt so here it goes:
Between the 24th and 25th of November Nida had a really snowy night while a small-sized cyclone was whirling above it. The heaviest snow fall was in the evening and at 8-11pm and the layer of wet snow got as thick as 36mm - during the first 3 hours there was 20cm of snow and during the whole day - 36cm. This is the biggest snow increase since 1936. The heavy snow storm lasted till the morning and was lead by thunderstorm. The amount of precipitation during the night - 66mm. In the morning measured coat of snow was 45cm thick. This reached the catastrophic meteorological phenomenon criterion.
Well, in my city the coat of snow reached only 5cm (I live in opposite side of Lithuania). Now the snow is gone in all Lithuania and we're waiting for some more. I don't think we'll get snowy Christmas this year... By the way, you can find some photos of Nida after the snowstorm here. And here:
2008-11-25 from Marius www.mvideo.lt on Vimeo.
Have a nice weather!
~NC
Hey everyone, AT LAST! It's snowing in Lithuania... And I'm not talking about simple pure few ice crystals falling from the sky... It's a snowstorm! WOOHOO! I'll post some information about this storm later (after it'll end) but I made a video that you can watch till then. Here you go:
I wanted just to post one article from LiveScience.com so here you go:
Developer Zero Pollution Motors is working on a compressed air vehicle (CAV) that could run "all day on nothing but air and a splash of salad oil, alcohol or possibly a pint of gasoline." Cost: $20,000. Timing: 2011.
When using regular gasoline, the flexible-fuel-format (and tiny) car would average 106 mpg, more than double the industry-leading Toyota Prius. As auto sales dip, aiming for higher mpg is likely a smart business strategy. After all, it's what sells: "The Prius, the Yaris, the Matrix, and even our Scion brands. Anything that's going to give them the most miles for their buck," is what Missouri Toyota dealership sales manager Brian Cowles says of what's hot.
As far back as 2005, however, experimental vehicles were getting up to 250 mpg. Getting these sorts of vehicles into production requires serious industry and political willpower, not just hot air. Meantime, there are a slew of hybrid SUVs and trucks that get around 21 mpg ... progress?
Firstly, I want to introduce to you a web page I'm reading constantly for few months now. It's called Gizmodo. I've found it when I was looking for some information about iPhones, because I got one of them few months ago. So anyway, the site is kinda interesting and different from other similar pages. I found it interesting because you can find not only news about real and relevant technologies but also about absurdities that often make you laugh.
Let's get to the point now. One of article was named "Moller Says flying Ferraris taking off in two years" but it was taken off the site after few hours (I suggest reading the article first; it's given below my blog). Also I've accidentally found similar article under the same topic in LiveScience.com and you can read it here but my thoughts and interpretations will mostly be under the article from Gizmodo.
Well, maybe it's only me, but when I read something about flying I read the whole thing because it often has something to do with the air and I'm going to be a meteorologist after all (In a simple way – everything interests me that has something to do with atmosphere). So this article caught my eye not only because of car development but also because of flying.
The article gave me some food for thought: will car development especially into flying vehicles affect our atmosphere in some unknown or unexpected way? What effect will it have to us not only in meteorological way? Is it economic and/or ecologic?
The author of the article states that "the car features a specially designed hybrid fuel and electric power system for the thrusters". Let's assume the flying car exists and is common in our society which is not equal talking about wealth. We will have the rich part of people that will buy the Ferrari car from the article. On other hand there will be people that won't even afford a flying car and stick to the old one but let's make these two parts of society not so common. The most common people will afford a flying car but will have to find a halfway between price and quality. This leads to wide assortment of flying vehicle's models and engines, of course. There will be not only hybrid ones which are more expensive but also ran by fuel. This leads to pollution. The traffic will pollute not only lower atmosphere and the more polluted layer of atmosphere sooner or later will get thicker (I'm not the one that supports the idea of global warming but I'm against pollution anyway, we have to find a way how rationally use our resources and treasure the environment we live in) and I don't think that sounds very attractive, doesn't it?
Now let's talk about traffic. The government would be in an urgent need to change the whole infrastructure, the technologies would have to evolve more and more and fast. This is because we would need some kind of traffic lights in the air; I don't think it would be very thoughtful to let everyone do what they want up there. Skycar accidents would get common and just think of the consequences – there would be damage done not only to cars but also to buildings that lie beneath the sky-highways. Sounds not very nicely… Even the Skycar pluses like the avoidance of traffic jams don't counterbalance everything. The only plus I totally agree with is the usage of skycar in emergency situations (one of them is shown in a video which you can find in LiveScience article).
And to sum up, skycars still seem to look like a dream creation from sci-fi literature for me, neither economic nor practical use of them for regular people. So let's all regular people stick to regular cars and make them more environment friendly!
P.S. Due to the delete of the article in Gizmodo, I'm pasting it here, so you could read it (I was clever enough to save it ).
Moller Says Flying Ferraris Taking Off In Two Years
Moller International, creators of the first flying car ever made, has said it'll be able to bring a flying Ferrari into driveways in roughly two years. The "Autovolantor," based on the Ferrari 599 GTB, will use eight thrusters to take off vertically, hover, and fly forward at 150mph.
The designer, Bruce Calkins, says the car features a specially designed hybrid fuel and electric power system for the thrusters, and will be able to fly up to altitudes of 5,000 feet and go about 75 miles in the air before running empty. The cost for shooting out of traffic will be about $787,000, Calkins said.
Call me a skeptic, but the whole thing sounds like a load of hot air. The article and a search of Moller's site revealed almost no information about the mechanics of the project. Unless someone actually shows me how they plan on lifting two tons of metal off the ground using “thrusters,” I'm going to file this under the “I'll believe it when I see it” folder.
And I want to paste some interesting comments from Gizmodo readers that cracked me up:
because a stainless steel DeLorean is HEAVY !!!! and...... there is gonna have to be a WHOLE new set of rules for this thing. I would be pissed to wake up to a drunk driver having had crashed into my attic. Ha
now back to Batman LEGO
Nerdtastic.
I'm waiting for the flying Honda Civic Hatchback. The resale value should be better than most comparable flying cars. That's one of the most important things you have to think about when buying a flying car, the resale value.
So I finally wrote a blog about the mist I saw in the morning few days ago (the same day that I've posted last blog post). Nothing very extraordinary, but still very beautiful. I really like mists because of the strange feeling that you're not outside when you're in it I mean, it looks like you haven't left the house, the sky doesn't look so high and there's an illusion of walls around you. Anyways, you can find 3 photos in my gallery or by clocking the image shown here.
The other topic I wanted to talk about was biometeorology (link and link). This is the topic I chose for my term paper. It eventually will be the topic for my grand bachelor term paper... (Or w/e it is called, didn't find the equivalent word for it) It's just I have to choose more specific topic than 'biometeorology'. I'm thinking of taking one of the general study areas of biometeorology. To be exact:
stress, morbidity and mortality in animals and humans (including physiological and psychological adaptations) and the potential impacts of a human-induced climate change
"Light playing on water drops, dust or ice crystals in the atmosphere produces a host of visual spectacles - rainbows, halos, glories, coronas and many more."
my score is 67% that's a total disaster! XD
(0%)
WIDGETIZE