NASA Satellite Snaps Rare Cloud-Free Ireland

coondoggie writes "NASA's Aqua satellite recently snapped a cloud-free shot of Ireland. The cloud-free view is extremely rare as the country is almost entirely cloud covered 50% of the time according to the Irish Meteorological Service, Met Éireann. There are more clouds during the day than at night, and fog is common."

Comments

Go figure

[yeshuawatso]

No wonder they drink so much. Every time they go outside and look up, all they see is a depressing cloud blocking all the sunlight. Being sh*t faced is probably the only way to get the gloom out of the day.

Re:Go figure

[yeshuawatso]

Never been to Ireland nor London, so, at this point, I don't have logic, just random ramblings.

Re:Go figure

[Hazel Bergeron]

Ireland learnt its two-decade lesson about monetary policy and raised the cloud tax. The invisible hand of God moved the clouds somewhere cheaper...

(...perhaps to Wales, which is reluctantly under Her Majesty's rule, but allows us some payback in local cloud tax for the support we've loaned to our green neighbours. Britain's main industry is clouds, you see... and only the white ones, since Thatcher abolished the black sooty ones after a wrestling match with Arthur Scargill in 1984.)

Re:Go figure

[ischorr]

Pet peeve - is it really necessary to misspell "you're" as "your", throw in unnecessary profanity, and generally use bad grammar/capitalization/etc?

If you're going to be a pedant on style, at least use good style.

Re:Go figure

[ColdWetDog]

I don't know, look at Florida. I can't think of anything more utterly depressing than that relentless heat and glare.

Trenton, New Jersey?

Re:Go figure

[shaitand]

"pet peeve, is it really necessary to quote the fucking post right above yours when your not pointing out a specific part?"

Necessary? No. Courteous? Yes. I for one don't want to have to read back through previous posts to figure out which of my posts you are replying to when your response comes up in my messages three weeks later.

Note how you don't have to dig back through the previous posts to know what I'm talking about. Isn't that nice? I think so too.

Re:Go figure

[yeshuawatso]

I've got mod points but can't use them to mod this up funny.

Re:Go figure

[PsychoSlashDot]

im sorry, I did not realize I was on the association of anal retentive english majors page, its just a forum post don't go killing yourself over it

ok so here is why, even though my post was atrocious by professor tightass standards, you still understood it, when one quotes the entire parent for zero reason it makes it harder to filter garbage from comment, cause you see, all the comments are squashed down so only the first line is shown.

but hey if you want all your comments to look like someone is a retarded parrot then whatever, its just a pet peeve, please dont piss your pants

Relax. You're wrong. Get used to it. First up, if you're going to inform someone "you're doing it wrong", it behooves you to do it correctly. If you fail, the consequence is minor; ridicule. So don't get so defensive (and offensive at the same time); you screwed up while criticizing someone. You're fair game.

Second, as to your original complaint, you're still wrong. I can't speak for the rest of Slashdot's users, but I suspect at least some behave as I do. I sometimes deliberately read comments nested two or three deep into a thread. Sometimes it's because I'm intrigued by a couple words that make it into the single-line summary. Having the parent quoted is convenient for me. It saves me having to expand the parent then scroll back down simply to gain the context that I could have had were it quoted in the first place. Simply put, by quoting the parent a post becomes self-contained and meaning-complete. Without quoting it is referential and fragmentary. It is easier to ignore data that is present than it is to obtain information that is not. Philosophically-speaking, parent-quoting is a superior practice.

Thirdly, for my own amusement, I'd like to inform you that it doesn't require an "anal-retentive english (sic) major" to appreciate or produce grammatically correct writing. I'm entirely sure that my post has plenty that a professional could point out as flawed yet I still strive for a higher level of correctness than you can be bothered to. There's one. People who obviously don't even try to be accurate convey an air of laziness. As well, there's an underlying message: "my words are untidy and so too is my mind." Right or wrong, whenever you can't be bothered to capitalize letters, use apostrophes, punctuate, and generally ill-express yourself, you're asking to not be taken seriously. Why bother writing at all if you're not trying to be heard?

Re:Go figure

[digitig]

im sorry, I did not realize I was on the association of anal retentive english majors page

You must be new here.

Re:Go figure

[PopeRatzo]

pet peeve, is it really necessary to quote the fucking post right above yours when your not pointing out a specific part?

Yes, it is necessary. Clearly you've never meta-moderated here or you'd understand why quoting the portion of previous post in your reply is important.

Also, it's just good manners. When someone makes a half-dozen points, a three-word post doesn't really help the reading flow for those of us who actually like to follow conversations. I prefer conversations to a list of posts of people just tossing out their words like so many bumper stickers.

You're probably used to Twitter, where there are no conversations, just one bumper sticker after another, at best, and at worst isolated meaningless strings of words, misspelled and tossed out like spit on sidewalk.

quote != reply

Pet peeve: people who are so uncomfortable with the language that they have to try to make a point using logical operators or snippets of code. Nobody here is impressed that you've done a PHP tutorial. This is why we need to have better funding for schools (including trade schools for people like you who have never learned to write clearly and convincingly in their native language).

Good news!

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

They finally killed the last male Bundy!

There I fixed it

[atari2600a]

It was hard to look at, so I ran it through The GIMP's auto-white-balance filter. Was this really that hard for NASA's PR guys to do? http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k196/atari2600a/Ireland_amo_2010284.jpg

Question having RTFA

[MattGWU]

Does anybody know if Ireland owes its greenness to moderate temperatures and moist air? I'm no climatologist but does it perhaps come from the Atlantic Ocean, particularly the warm currents in the North Atlantic Drift, which gives the country a more temperate climate than most others at the same latitude?

T.I.A.

Re:Question having RTFA

[amicusNYCL]

I think that Ireland owes its greenness to moderate temperatures and moist air. The Atlantic Ocean, particularly the warm currents in the North Atlantic Drift, gives the country a more temperate climate than most others at the same latitude. Also, Ireland owes its greenness to moderate temperatures and moist air. The Atlantic Ocean, particularly the warm currents in the North Atlantic Drift, gives the country a more temperate climate than most others at the same latitude.

At least, according to NASA.

Re:Question having RTFA

[Pyrus.mg]

The nice thing about cut and paste journalism is that it makes it easier to find the original source.

The nice thing about cut and paste journalism is that it makes it easier to find the original source, according to Pyrus.mg

Pfft, that's nothing

[Lord_of_the_nerf]

Next up, let's see Beijing without smog.

Re:Pfft, that's nothing

[Born2bwire]

Don't hold your breath.

Wait... that might be a good idea if you are in Beijing.

Nasa original article

[xded]

Nasa original article, with better text, 3 Mpixel images and no ads business going on...

Re:Nasa original article

[Yvanhoe]

We need a +1 "replace the article by this comment"

In other news...

[Minwee]

NASA satellites are still trying to confirm the existence of Scotland.

Ouch

[kenj0418]

And tomorrow shares of the company that makes Solarcaine will be up 25% after thousands of gingers are exposed to direct sunlight for the first time.

IMF

[Dartz-IRL]

Jaysus sake, the IMF are taking even the feckin' clouds away now.

Re:IMF

[MMC Monster]

I figured it's just a rolling blackout to save money that, unfortunately, managed to knock out the Internet connection.

Though I had no idea that NASA had a way to visualize the cloud...

Link to the picture on NASA servers

[Johann Public]

http://3.ly/eringobragh
Happy St. Patrick's Day!
Erin Go Bragh!