Tim: September 2009 Archives

Gusty west and northwest winds will make it really feel like fall for the next few days.  According to our WeatherBug network, several locations have reported gusts close to 50 mph since midnight.

Here are some of the stronger gusts through 6 AM today:

Gust          Location

49 mph      Chicago Heights

48 mph      Naperville

48 mph      Burlington

48 mph      Geneva

A wind advisory is in effect for most of us from 10 AM until 7 PM today.  A lakeshore flood warning is in effect for Lake and Porter county Indiana from 10 AM until 1 PM today.  Strong winds could produce waves 12 to 15 feet high.  The National Weather Service warns, "DOCKS...PIERS...AND BREAK WALLS WILL BE DANGEROUS PLACES TO BE
DURING THE HIGH WAVES AND SHOULD BE AVOIDED."

French photographers have painstakingly stitched together 1200 digital images to put together an amazing panoramic view of the Milky Way galaxy.

The image was produced by the European Southern Observatory's GigaGalaxy Zoom project.  The original image contains about 800 million pixels.  A zoomable image can be found by clicking here.  It has a measly 18 million pixels.

For you photographers, a Nikon D3 digital camera (50 mm lens open at f5.6) was used for the photos used to piece together this awesome view.

NOAA has just completed the final phase of a nine-year, $180 million plan to upgrade the computer system that powers our nation's forecasts for the National Weather Service.  These aren't your parent's computers.  These IBM supercomputers would fill about half of a tennis court and are 34 times more powerful than the most powerful supercomputer that existed just 10 years ago.  According to NOAA, it would take someone with a calculator 3 million years to match the number of calculations the new "Stratus" supercomputer system can whip out in one second.

All this extra power should enable the use of more complex weather models that should improve accuracy and lead to more lead time for severe weather warnings.

Check out NOAA's article for more information.