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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.
Excepting when it comes off the gulf, or from Canada. Or when it becomes suddenly severe. But yes, typically it does come from the west.
in the USA weather moves west to east
Generally, yes. But many tropical systems that affect the eastern US start their formation off the coast of Africa and move East to West.
In the meantime, they'll just give each weatherman a D20 and a roll-sheet and tell them to predict that way.
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.
If the weather satellite fails, we can just get our weather from the Internet like everybody else.
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
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"
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...
Were you even alive before weather satellites? I remember what it was like 40 years ago, and the accuracy of prediction is now far superior to what it used to be.
The prediction of storm tracks in particular has gotten to be really good. For example the Sandy track prediction was excellent despite the complexity of the situation.
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
Hang on. Are you asserting that "one foot of snow predicted; three inches of snow in reality" is the worst possible prediction? So if they had predicted two feet of snow or a sunny 90 deg. F those would have both been better predictions? What metric are you using here?
Note that "superior" does not mean "the best possible", it just means "better". Either you know (but didn't bother to mention) that 40 years ago weather prediction was so significantly more precise that your single anecdote is sufficient to illustrate that fact or you believe (as I have asserted in the first paragraph) that the prediction in your anecdote was literally the worst possible weather prediction imaginable, which would make it very likely that predictions were more accurate 40 years ago. Neither position makes a lot of sense.
For the sake of my amusement I shall assume that you indeed consider the prediction to be the worst possible because of your irrational hatred of things that are one foot long.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
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.