Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Central India is active again, and signs of cloud mass gathering over north-west Bay .. http://ping.fm/9SLbZ
Latest satellite shows, a disintegrated LOW, and medium showers over East-central India .. http://ping.fm/tJJPl
Australia approves huge China, India gas project: SYDNEY: Australia Wednesday approved a massive energy project .. http://bit.ly/12i2He
Hurricane Bill
Hurricane Bill moved quickly northward through the Western Atlantic in the third week of August 2009, staying well away from the U.S. East Coast, but pounding the seaboard with large surf. This pair of images from August 22 shows a natural-color (photo-like) view of Hurricane Bill captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite (top) combined with a view of the vertical structure of the clouds measured by the radar on the Cloudsat satellite (bottom).
The photo-like view has been rotated so that North is to the right. The gray line shows the track that Cloudsat followed as it passed from south to north over the storm shortly following Aqua. The radar reflectivity measured by Cloudsat is the echo made when the pulse of energy the radar sends out bounces back from the ocean surface or from cloud particles in the atmosphere. The radar picture gives an idea of the shape and height of the clouds you would have seen if you could have sliced away the eastern half of the storm and looked in at it from the side.
As Cloudsat flew over the storm, it first encountered only patchy clouds, followed by the outermost band of clouds associated with the hurricane. As the radar scanned northward, it saw a pocket of air that was mostly cloud free; only a thin patch of high-altitude cirrus clouds capped a column of relatively clear air. Clouds in the southern eye wall reached about 15 kilometers in altitude, while those to the north were lower
Tropical Storm Hilda
Tropical Storm Hilda was about 540 miles southeast of Hawaii on the morning of August 25, 2009, heading west at about 9 miles per hour. According to the 5:00 a.m. (HST) advisory from the Central Pacific Hurricane Center, wind shear in the vicinity of Hilda was predicted to decline, increasing the probability that Hilda would reach hurricane strength after 48 hours.
This view of the wind speed and direction of Tropical Storm Hilda was captured by the QuikSCAT satellite on August 24. Colors indicate wind speed (highest speeds are purple), barbed lines indicate direction. White lines indicate areas where winds were accompanied by heavy rain. Like the air flow in all Northern Hemisphere tropical cyclones, the winds spiral inward in a counterclockwise direction toward the eye—where the air pressure is lowest.
Quikscat measures wind speeds over the ocean by sending pulses of microwave energy through the atmosphere to the ocean and measuring the echo—the energy that bounces back from the wind-roughened surface. The intensity of the microwave echo changes depending on wind speed and direction, and scientists relate the radar echo to actual wind speed by correlating it with observations from ground stations and buoys.
Because the high wind speeds generated by cyclones are rare, scientists do not have corresponding ground information to know how to translate QuikSCAT data for wind speeds above 50 knots (about 93 km/hr or 58 mph). Also, the unusually heavy rain found in a cyclone distorts the microwave pulses, making a conversion to absolute wind speed difficult. Instead, QuikSCAT images provide a picture of the wind structure within the storm, which, among other things, can reveal whether a storm has developed a strong eye.
Bad weather stalls Port Blair
A Kingfisher flight to Port Blair with 49 passengers was brought back to Chennai after it flew 70 miles on Monday morning, as the pilot was told that the runway at the destination was unusable after rains.
The Kingfisher Red flight took off at 5 am reportedly came back after an hour’s journey as the pilot was told that the runway in Port Blair was flooded and no landing was possible. The passengers who were disembarked from the flight were irked after they heard rumours of an Air India flight taking off to Port Blair. “Some of the passengers heard that an Air India flight had gone to the same destination and that is why they were irritated about their cancellations.
They are however flying on Tuesday morning on a special flight,” an airport official told Express.
The Port Blair airport go under such contingencies very often during the monsoon, say experts. “Rains flood the runway during monsoons and many such last minute cancellations occur,” says an airport official not willing to be identified.
Apart from this the Port Blair runway is also smaller in its length and no landing is generally possible there after 11am as the wind speed can affect the landing. “The runway is smaller so it leads to displaced threshold whereby a pilot can’t make a long landing” according to an operations expert.
Meanwhile, it is learnt that Kingfisher has not posted a qualified dispatcher in Chennai, a gross violation of the Civil Aviation requirement set by the DGCA. Pilots get their briefings and flight information through a Bangalore dispatch office or an Operations staff who has no clue of the role he plays.
The Kingfisher Red flight took off at 5 am reportedly came back after an hour’s journey as the pilot was told that the runway in Port Blair was flooded and no landing was possible. The passengers who were disembarked from the flight were irked after they heard rumours of an Air India flight taking off to Port Blair. “Some of the passengers heard that an Air India flight had gone to the same destination and that is why they were irritated about their cancellations.
They are however flying on Tuesday morning on a special flight,” an airport official told Express.
The Port Blair airport go under such contingencies very often during the monsoon, say experts. “Rains flood the runway during monsoons and many such last minute cancellations occur,” says an airport official not willing to be identified.
Apart from this the Port Blair runway is also smaller in its length and no landing is generally possible there after 11am as the wind speed can affect the landing. “The runway is smaller so it leads to displaced threshold whereby a pilot can’t make a long landing” according to an operations expert.
Meanwhile, it is learnt that Kingfisher has not posted a qualified dispatcher in Chennai, a gross violation of the Civil Aviation requirement set by the DGCA. Pilots get their briefings and flight information through a Bangalore dispatch office or an Operations staff who has no clue of the role he plays.
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