Choi-wan's profile

This cross-section of Super Typhoon Choi-wan reminded me (again) that I love subscribing to NASA's Earth Observatory.

The top picture is neat, but I'd never seen anything like the blue profile below it. According to NASA, the Cloudsat satellite flew over Choi-wan about one minute after the photo was taken by NASA's Aqua satellite and took radar images of the clouds. The dark grey line in the photo shows Cloudsat's path. You can clearly see there are no clouds in the eye, which is surrounded by clouds climbing more than 15 kilometers.

Taken the morning of September 15, right after Choi-wan became a super typhoon. Saipan's probably about 200 km south of the eye.

Whew!

Night lights

Our planet from space if everyone left the lights on; just another nifty image from NASA's Earth Observatory.

The images are from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program Operational Line Scanner (whew!) for the year 2003. They filtered out sunlight, moonlight and the aurora.

You can link to a more detailed (3 MB) picture here if you want more details-- it loads too slowly to put on this page.

Red Wind

Just another neat picture from NASA's Earth Observatory: Santa Ana winds pushing wildfires out of control near Los Angeles. Jeopardy trivia for me, but hugely important to Southern California.

Interesting because I'd always been told the Santa Ana, and similar winds like the Chinook, came from warm desert air. It turns out to be the reverse; cold desert air heating by compression. That makes more sense, actually, since they occur during the coldest parts of the year.

Also interesting: the article has some of my favorite Raymond Chandler: "those hot dry [winds] that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen."

I remember the lines, but for the life of me can't recall the plot of the story.

NASA images created by Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.