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Main US Weather Satellite Fails As Hurricane Season Looms
First time accepted submitter Rebecka writes with bad news, quoting an IB Times report: "Just as the 2013 hurricane season is about to begin, one of the U.S.' main weather satellites failed this week. The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, also known as GOES-13, reportedly ceased to operate as of Tuesday, making it impossible to predict weather patterns on the East Coast."
A note at NOAA's page for the GOES family of satellites says "GOES-13 imaging and sounding operations suspended. Recovery efforts for GOES-13 continue and the spacecraft health and safety are nominal. GOES-14 is being activated." You can follow the progress on the agency's page of General Satellite Messages.
Unfortunately, because of Republican intransigence in Congress, they haven't been able to build and launch a new bird.
Everyone will now be screaming blue murder because of the huge negative economic impact this is going to have. Reliable weather prediction is critical for many businesses, including the ones responsible for the food supply.
I hope the wingnuts are happy.
in the USA weather moves west to east
most times rain in denver or elsewhere in the midwest means rain in NYC 2-3 days later
i also like to which western baseball games were rained out. back when Coors Field was snowed in and the Mets-Rockies games were postponed, NYC got the rain a few days later. same with the other cities west of us
...GOES to sleep.
Meteorologists cannot predict the weather very well WITH the satellite in orbit. So now, all of a sudden, with no satellite, they are going to predict the weather even more poorly?
Perhaps they should invest in a weather rock instead.
sudo make me a sandwich
Try the source at http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2013/05/22/weather-satellite-fails/2351927/
Satellite logs are at http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/PS/SATS/messages.html, it looks like the satellite failed to return imaging two days ago and is now being put into a storage mode.
The way it's been this year, you'd think GOES-13 failed a long time ago.
If the weather satellite fails, we can just get our weather from the Internet like everybody else.
GOES-14 will be on station shortly, GOES-15 is currently in "full disk mode" eg, getting the whole disk of Earth, instead of being zoomed in on the Western US.. Sure, not as much detail as we'd like, but its not like we're totally blind... BUT, now we need to get another bird up... we're running out of redundancy.
Just send the shuttle up to fix it.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Summary says "impossible to" . Article says Next to Impossible to. Let's have the boys in the ISS take a few pics out the window. It's not as convenient and the passes are much less frequent, but hey, it's something. Also GOES 14 is coming on-line. Now if that fails, we really will be limited to ISS observation.
The satellite blog at University of Wisconsin has more information including some images from GOES 14, now turned on.
in the USA weather moves west to east
Except when it doesn't and goes west off Africa and comes in from the southeast and slams across Florida, Texas, Mississippi, Georgia, South/North Carolina, Virgina, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, etc.. Or when it comes in from the North Atlantic from the northeast....
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Your typical monster hurricane track starts off the west coast of Africa. It moves WEST in the tropics, then heads NORTH along the eastern US, often continuing some westward motion even well north of the tropics. It does eventually head east, but usually not until the damage is done. Think of it as a big C curve that is mostly over the Atlantic and/or Gulf of Mexico. If we're lucky, the left side of the C doesn't intersect land.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I feel like the article is a bit more doomsday than it should be. "impossible to predict weather patterns"? Hardly. Goes 14 is already active as of today according to the NOAA CLASS database and covers a good portion of the area GOES 13 covered even before they move it to a new spot. Also don't forget the polar orbiters (POES) satellites that will cover the same area several times a day with equally, or more in the case of Suomi NPP, advanced instruments. Plus the European satellites contribute to forecasts. So it's hardly like a hurricane will form without us knowing...
Why not get weather data from military satellites? With better resolution and guaranteed performance, military satellite data ought to be able to help us through this crisis. Fudge and jitter the data, shake out any tactical value, but don't blind us to the next hurricane.
Hello? Louisiana.....
Did we just suddenly fall off the fuckin' hurricane map?!? WhooHoo...I certainly hope so!!! That way, I can get rid of that damned flood insurance, and not have to leave town a couple times each summer...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Based on how poor the weather reports along the East Coast have been for the last few months, the satellite must have gone down much earlier.
Case in point, the weather for New York on 5/20, after looking at several different sources the day before, all said the same thing: low 70s with partly cloudy skies. The result: cloud blocked skies and light rain.
If you can't get the report right 12 hours before something happens, why should we listen to you for something a few days down the road?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
the most accurate weather report comes from 1) look outside your window and 2) open the door.
This same satelite, GOES-13, already failed (according to reports from September 2012)- http://news.yahoo.com/key-us-east-coast-weather-satellite-goes-13-141636708.html
Maybe it was fixed, but—at least according to the above referenced article—GOES-14 took over as the main satelite for the East Coast since 2012.
http://blog.xkcd.com/2011/08/24/earthquakes/
Just set up a script to scan twitter for #hurricane and plot the results.
the loss of a forecast satellite is an event that can be computationally determined to a certain degree of accuracy.
id like to think its all part of gods divine plan to obliterate as much of the bible belt as possible each year.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Did we just suddenly fall off the fuckin' hurricane map?!?
Sorry, didn't realize you were still around after that last hurricane.
Most forecasting is done by meteorologists viewing the predicted conditions based on a numerical model that normally gets run every 12 hours. The model's forecast is usually pretty good out to 72 hours or so. What happens is that an experienced weather-guesser (ex-Navy, here) will look at the model's output (which lags realtime to some degree) and compare the prediction to the actual conditions for the timeframe in question. If the correlation is high, he/she will put more faith into the model's longer term predictions. If the model isn't tracking reality very well, the forecaster will rely on experience rather than the numerical prediction for the longer-range forecast.
Sounder data from the available weather satellites is used to seed the modelling software as close to its run time as possible, to set up starting conditions for the observable areas. If that data is lacking, the previous model run data closest to the time of the new run is used. (GIGO applies...)
The realtime data can also come from radiosondes, official observations stations, buoys, or what have you. Losing a bird doesn't mean the forecasting infrastructure will fall apart; it just means that imagery will come from a different source (= different angle, with attendant distortion), and some loss of realtime input for the model run.
Hrmm.. Kinda fits inline with the global warming models. Can't tell me what it's gonna be tomorrow, let alone next week, next month, or 50 years from now.
There is a good chance that the GOES engineers and technicians will be able to get #13 back online. If not, #12 is still operational (though currently covering South America) and #14 is already in orbit and being brought online.
Please tell me that GOES-R will be sporting some sort of ghostbusters reference...
Please help metamoderate.
Unfortunately, because of Democrats intransigence in Congress, they haven't been able to build and launch a new bird.
Everyone will now be screaming blue murder because of the huge negative economic impact this is going to have. Reliable weather prediction is critical for many businesses, including the ones responsible for the food supply.
I hope the wingnuts are happy.
I forced refresh my WeatherBug so many times earlier this week. I'm in NYC, and I was dumb founded at how bad the weather reports/predictions were. At one point, I'm standing in the park, it's about 70 degrees, and weather bug says in an hour it's going to be 84 degrees. And hour later it was 71. It stayed under 75 the whole day.
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
...GOES to 11!
I keep hearing how there's all this free money from the gov't. Show me where to get it. I got a buddy that fell on hard times. He found out real fast it's not there. Turns out it's damn hard to get all that free gov't cheese if you're not bribing a congressman. Most states fight tooth and nail to stop you from getting health care, housing and food, let alone cash.
But go ahead. Keep on believing there's this magical gov't safety net waiting there if you stumble. And if you ever do trip up, have fun finding out there's no net to catch you...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
NOAA never used any 'data' from GOES-1 through GEOS-14 and have plans to ever use data from any satellite.
'EEEEEEEEEhhhhhhhh nan da'
Its true !
NOAA makes it up on the fly using Excel.
AAAAAhhhhhhh so nan da'
We must borrow more trillions of monies from China to invade another country. It's the only way we can prevent losses like this and crumbling infrastructure like the bridge collapse in Washington.
It's the only way.
Lichtenstein must pay.
Sweden will suffer for its smoked herring embargo of New Jersey.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...