One of my Reading classmates emailed me the other day, which was a pleasant surprise. He's with the UK Met Office, & said that UKMO is currently centralising its operations. He was writing during his shift, and ended off with :
"It's a quiet night because pressure is high. Just had some excitement because there is some noctilucent cloud outside - the first time I have ever seen any. It's very high cloud (mesospheric I think) which catches the sunlight long after the sun has gone down - rig
I thought I would mention that I'm currently on long leave. Here are the two reasons for that :
I won't return to work till May next year. Things are quite busy now, looking after 2 children, so I only manage to get a few minutes online at intervals during the day. I decided that I would at least get my blog done (maybe I should rename it "Memoirs of a Meteorologist") before my leave is over, and also brush up a little on my met. knowledge.
Incidentally, I was due to give birth to No. 2 on 3
There are a lot of funny weather cartoons on the net, like this one :
However I can't find any I like as much as the following two, which have been pasted on my locker for years :
I love Woodstock; :lol: he's just so cute. :lol:
This is one of my favourite photos, of a cap cloud over Ball's Pyramid, New South Wales :
It would be interesting to know what atmospheric conditions had been present that day, & whether this is a common phenomenon. As I mentioned before, I like cap clouds a lot and this must be the Mother of all Cap Clouds.
The other photo I really like is this one of a cumulonimbus, over Point Lookout, also in New South Wales :
I've seen a lot of cb clouds since then, but somehow nothing can beat th
We had a flurry of calls from the police, civil defence and the public today, because a distinct waterspout was sighted off the southeastern coast of the island.
Our radar showed that the weather system producing it was just a small thunderstorm. Which goes to show that you don't need a large and impressive thunderstorm to produce an impressive waterspout.
What is as amazing as the waterspout is the speed at which news travels nowadays. Practically everyone on this island has a cellphone
A water spout was spotted off Sentosa's Siloso Beach on 14 Aug, according to an article in the local newspaper, The Straits Times.
In the article, "A Sentosa spokesman said such waterspouts are common but they never occur on the island. 'Usually, they are very far away but can be seen from Sentosa. They don't last long,' he added."
Unfortunately I don't have access to that day's radar pictures (only the last two hours are available online) or we would be able to have a look at the weather
A Von Karman vortex street caused by the airflow over the island of Jan Mayen in the Greenland Sea :
Such vortices can be seen in many other places; these trails off Alaska's Aleutian Islands are even more spectacular :
I must confess I have a soft spot for the Jan Mayen vortices, though, because Jan Mayen was where I first heard of the phenomenon ... the book Spacious Skies had several photos of them. I find them amazing - never realised such regular & intricate cloud patterns existed
When Pat & I started work, colleagues would sometimes joke that we should double up as TV weather girls for MSS. Fortunately, MSS tried this out sometime before we joined & scrapped the idea because none of the forecasters was telegenic enough. Personally I would find it quite horrid to have to appear on TV. :lol: Some years later we really did have some weather girls, the first of which was Charlene, sister of one of our local actors Adrian Pang.
Presenting weather on TV isn't as s
A tsunami hit Java in Indonesia on 17 July. (See article).
I am on leave so I wasn't in the office that day, but I knew there had been a large earthquake because my mobile phone received at least 20 SMSes, including 2 tsunami alerts. (D is involved in running our seismic system, & since he doesn't have a mobile phone he uses mine to test the system).
Since the 26 Dec 2004 tsunami, attempts are being made to set up a warning system for our region. Singapore itself isn't in an earthquake zon
Pat is one of those ultra-neat people. When we were in Reading her room was always unimagineably tidy, & in the office her locker is always spick & span, books nicely arranged, not a thing out of place. She is always careful & meticulous in her work, and I have never seen her lose her temper.
She was posted to our climatology section recently, where our archives are kept & which is in charge of met. equipment. Part of her work involves providing weather data required for insuran
Tropical Storm "Greg" (43W) was an unusual weather system in that tropical cyclones (TCs) seldom occur at latitudes low enough to affect Malaysia. The country is divided into West Malaysia (Peninsular Malaysia) and East Malaysia (consisting of the states of Sabah & Sarawak).
GMS IR image at 240400Z. 2 hours later, the JTWC upgraded the cloud cluster to Tropical Depression status
"Greg" was first observed as a cloud cluster that developed on the night of 20 Dec 1996, over the South China
May 15, 2007 The sun rises on S'pore's solar industry Landmark buildings may go solar; NUS in talks on research, teaching centre By Jessica Cheam THE solar industry is shaping up as a sunrise one. Landmark buildings - and there are so many on this sun-drenched island - may soon sport solar panels that do double duty as roofs. Solar-energy architects here are pushing for more than just solar panels slapped atop buildings to turn sunlight into electricity: They want to make what are called p
Ask a weather watcher what his/her favourite weather is, & the popular answers are usually thunderstorms/hurricanes/tornadoes. Either that or it would be sunny weather, or snow. But since the atmosphere produces a host of other phenomena as well, I always find it interesting to discover those that are less well-known.
I first heard of the polar low from one of my lecturers in Reading, Dr George Craig. He was from Toronto, and had studied the convective processes in polar lows for his PhD. T
My cousin Ann is getting married at the end of the year & had her wedding photoshoot on 4 July. In Singapore, a lot of wedding couples opt to have a photo shoot consisting of both indoor shots in the studio & outdoor shots in various locations around the island. Ann informed me that she was bringing 7 BAGS of outfits (a mix of evening wear plus her wedding dress) to the shoot. (D was quite shocked when I told him, well at least I spared him having to endure that many changes during our w
Writing a weather book, that is. This was published in 2003 but I only just chanced upon it while browsing through Select Books, a local book website. It goes without saying that I ordered it straight away. Am looking forward to reading it. As I mentioned before, I still hope Singapore will one day have its own little pocket guide book on weather for the public.
Am taking a break from reminiscing to post something more current.
I was checking out the forum at the Hong Kong Weather Underground for the first time a couple of days ago. This thread caught my attention. I was amused because the members were all lamenting the fact that no tropical cyclone had hit Hong Kong lately, & they were monitoring a tropical depression (07W) currently over the Philippines (see satellite picture below) & debating about whether it would affect Hong Kong or not.
Found this on someone else's website :
Every time we go out
we see it, we breathe it
That is how we know it goes on.
Far across the distance
And spaces it's drifted
And we know the haze will go on
Near, far, wherever we are
We can see that the haze just goes on
Once more we close all our doors
But it still seeps inside
And it's useless to have aircon.
Asthma comes just one time
And lasts for a lifetime
And never lets go till we're gone
The haze should blow to Java
SBY & Ju
I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, from the seas and the streams; I bear light shade for the leaves when laid in their noon-day dreams. From my wings are shaken the dews that waken, the sweet buds every one, When rocked to rest on their mother's breast, as she dances about the Sun. I wield the flail of the lashing hail, and whiten the green plains under, And then again I dissolve it in rain, and laugh as I pass in thunder. I sift the snow on the mountains below, and their great
My first post. I have been wanting to keep a weather blog for some time, because after working for a no. of years in this field, I find that there are quite a lot of memorable events I'd like to record down. I didn't plan to be a meteorologist initially. I did physics at uni & wasn't sure what I wanted to do after that. Most of my classmates planned to teach, or join something related to the electronics sector. In my 2nd yr, one of my lecturers, Dr Lim Hock, gave a lecture on meteorology. I
My latest acquisition :
I saw some reviews in the forum here, so I decided to see if the book was available in Singapore. There are two big bookstores here, Borders and its rival, Kinokuniya. Besides a large collection of books, Borders has comfy chairs, a music section with a good selection of CDs, and a cafe. Kinokuniya has a convenient delivery service where you can order your books online and have them delivered the very next day. Moreover, if you order more than S$50 worth of books, ther
I like this book.
It contains 32 interviews with well-known meteorologists. Each interview was originally published in the WMO Bulletin. In the book, the author Hessam Taba recalls where the idea of the interviews came from : "...when I came back from my summer holiday in Sept 1980, I heard that Professor Jacques Van Mieghem had died. His sudden disappearance affected me deeply; we had worked together for many years and I had conceived a profound respect for him. I wished very much that I had
Super Typhoon "Saomai" about to make landfall on mainland China yesterday :
It really is an awesome system, one of the more powerful typhoons to hit China this year. I like the distinct "eye". B)
A news article on Saomai's impact.
"Saomai" is the Vietnamese name for Venus, or the Morning Star. It was a good move several years ago to start giving local names to this region's tropical cyclones. The Hong Kong Observatory has a nice section on them, including their meaning, country of origin
And I was wondering why the net was so slow. I'd received a dozen SMS alerts on the Taiwan quake, but didn't take much notice because it was so far away ... we're more concerned with quakes around the Sumatra region. Who would think that a quake in Taiwan would still affect us!
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Dec 28, 2006, 0.00 am (Singapore time)
Home users and businesses cut off from websites a
Well, we still have some way to go before biofuels are used in Singapore. But at least this is a beginning.
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The Straits Times
Oct 9, 2006
From DIY biodiesel to slick new venture
By Leong Chan Teik
IF ALL cars in Singapore ran on diesel, some motorists here might discover a new hobby: making their own fuel. Mr Kom Mam Sun, 32, hit on the idea two yea
