Blog Posts by Scott Sutherland

NASA's Earth Observatory released an animation of images taken by the NOAA GOES-East satellite yesterday, as storms raged through Oklahoma far below.

They have a terrible beauty to them, knowing what was going on beneath the clouds, but for people looking for more information about the hows and whys of tornadoes, watching them from above can show the ingredients that went into making the deadly storms.

[ Related: Monster tornado tears through southern Oklahoma City area ]

Let's break that down.

This first time step, around 11 a.m. local time, shows the flow of moist air coming north off of the Gulf of Mexico — you can see that in the streaks of clouds over Louisiana. You can also see how over north central Texas and south central Oklahoma, they're getting some morning sunshine. Warming the surface like this is an important part of developing the unstable conditions that will generate storms later on.

In this second still, you can see the beginnings of a line of clouds over central Oklahoma

Read More »from Oklahoma tornadoes: The view from space

While much of the country was enjoying pleasant weather over the Victoria Day long weekend, for residents of central Newfoundland, the holiday could easily have been mistaken for Christmas, as a freak storm dumped record amounts of snow on them over the weekend.

The Town of Gander, in the northeast part of the island, saw a total of 58 centimetres of snow on the ground by Sunday night, taking just a day and a half to beat a 41-year-old record monthly snowfall total of 39 cm from back in May 1972. That's just what ended up sticking as well, as the city's weather station recorded a total of 69.2 cm of snow falling, but around 11 cm of it melted as it hit the ground.

[ Related: Canadians can count on a more ‘normal’ summer this year ]

Environment Canada meteorologist Rodney Barney, who works at the Newfoundland & Labrador Weather Office, tweeted up a storm... during the storm.

Backyard view in #Gander this morning, as the snow just gets started. #nlwx twitter.com/rcbstormpost/s…

— Rodney

Read More »from Record Gander snowstorm turns spring back to winter for holiday weekend

The intense outbreak of severe thunderstorms in the United States over the past week has spawned at least 38 confirmed tornadoes, with further, unconfirmed reports of nearly twice that number. And the threat isn't over, as more are expected today and tomorrow as well.

The term Tornado Alley is probably quite familiar to everyone. It's an unofficial name given to a swath of land that includes northern Texas, western Oklahoma and most of Kansas, and is where the majority of tornadoes form in the United States. There's a Tornado Alley in Canada as well — actually two, depending on how you look at it. One stretches from Edmonton to Winnipeg, and there's another that runs from Windsor to Ottawa. There's also a tornado season, considered to be from March through August.

However, tornadoes don't obey geographic borders or time schedules. They form at any time of the year and in any location on the planet, as long as there's the right combination of weather conditions.

[ Related: Monster tornado

Read More »from The science of tornadoes: How and where do they form?

Updated at 11:30 a.m. EDT, May 21.
A monster tornado cut a mile-wide swath of destruction through the southern Oklahoma City suburb of Moore on Monday afternoon, leveling entire neighbourhoods along its path. At least 24 deaths have been reported, including several children, and there have been an untold number of injuries.

According to eyewitnesses, the tornado formed very quickly, touching down southwest of Oklahoma City at 2:56 p.m. Central Time, and cutting a roughly 30-km path across to the east, straight through the middle of Moore, in the southern part of the Oklahoma City Metro Area.

[ Related: Huge tornado flattens area near Oklahoma City ]

RT @nwsnorman: PRELIMINARY tornado damage track for the Newcastle-Moore-South OKC tornado. #okwx twitter.com/NWSNorman/stat…

— NASA Earth (@NASA_EO) May 20, 2013

The massive twister destroyed everything in its path, taking out entire neighborhoods and flattening two schools — Briarwood Elementary and Plaza Tower Elementary. According to

Read More »from Monster tornado tears through southern Oklahoma City Metro Area

Canada can expect nice weather this summerWith Victoria Day being an unofficial start of summer in the minds of Canadians, thoughts are turning to what the weather is going to be like for us over the next few months. And so far is seems like we'll have a return to a more normal summer than we've seen over the past few years.

The latest forecasts are still painting warmer-than-normal temperatures across the country for this summer, but they're not expected to be anywhere close to the punishing heat experienced in the summers of 2011 and 2012. It looks like the southern parts of B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan, as well as southern Ontario and nearly all of Quebec and the Maritimes will be seeing slightly warmer temperatures to start the season off, with the rest of the country following suit into July and August.

Rainfall amounts seem to be fairly normal as well, with some slightly drier conditions expected to start, and then gradually increasing throughout the season, with B.C. south coast possibly getting a bit of a wet end to

Read More »from Canadians can count on a more ‘normal’ summer this year

Of all the weapons of warfare we've created over human history, landmines have to be the most insidious, simply because they continue to kill thousands of people every year, even in places where wars have been over for decades. Now, though, there's a new crusader joining the quest to track them down — honeybees.

In Croatia, it's estimated that there are around 90,000 landmines still buried in the ground, placed there between 1991 and 1995, during the Croatian War of Independence. Originally estimated at covering 13,000 square kilometres of the countryside, the amount of land suspected of having landmines was reduced to 1,200 square kilometres by 2003. According to statements made back in April by Croatian officials, this is down to just over 680 square kilometres now, with an estimated 74,000 mines still to be found.

[ Related: Manitoba beekeepers lose 70% of bees ]

This map shows the locations of suspected minefields in red

Demining efforts in Croatia have been going on since 1998, using metal detectors, specially-designed minesweeping tanks

Read More »from Honeybees could be the new indispensable tool for finding landmines

After over nine years of roving around on Mars, Opportunity is still racking up some impressive accomplishments, as it just surpassed a 40-year-old U.S. record for off-world driving distance and it's coming very close to setting an all-time record.

As of Thursday, May 16, Opportunity had driven a total of 35.76 kilometres, surpassing the 35.74 kms record set by the Apollo 17 astronauts driving in a lunar rover back in 1972. The overall record for off-world driving was set by the Russian lunar rover Lunokhod 2 in 1973, which travelled a total of 37 kilometres. So, it's not going to be long before it passes that and takes the lead.

[ Related: NASA sees brightest impact on the moon on record ]

Off-world driving distancesThat is an awesome accomplishment for the rover, which is still running over nine years past the end of its 90-sol mission (a 'sol' is a Martian day, equal to 24 hours and 40 minutes in Earth time). Seriously, heartfelt congratulations are in order for those who designed and built the plucky little

Read More »from Mars rover breaks off-world driving record. It’s time we took that back!

The active region on the sun (AR1748) that fired off four powerful X-class solar flares in less than 36 hours earlier this week erupted again Friday morning, producing a moderate flare, but this time unleashing an immense coronal mass ejection (CME) aimed towards Earth.

The flare, which ranked as magnitude M3.2, was only a tenth as powerful as the X3.2 flare from Monday night. However, when it erupted, its source — the sunspot-studded area called 'Active Region 1748' (AR1748) — had rotated around onto the side of the sun facing Earth, so the resulting ribbon of solar material that whipped out along the flare's magnetic field lines and then snapped, launching off into space was aimed more or less directly at us.

[ Related: Trio of powerful ‘X-class’ solar flares erupt from the Sun ]

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) captured the flare and coronal mass ejection:

Although solar flares bombard the Earth with X-rays and coronal mass ejections

Read More »from Solar flare unleashes massive eruption towards Earth