Edited to correct the website address for weather.gov
Good evening and welcome to a rather non-forecast, due to clouds. Last night was clouds most places, too, though activity was high. A couple people got lucky when a break in the clouds appeared up north, and conditions were right. Luck of the draw. I generally don’t forecast when it’s cloudy most places, since it’s kind of managing expectations deal. Plus, I was in a snitty mood because I’ve been reduced to using Weather Underground for my earth-based weather forecasting, and it’s really irritating because they have tons of ads.NOAA is recommending going to weather.gov not Weather.com. Which is better. Sorry about that.
The main thing that really has me worked up is that when you go to NOAA, it’s not there. And we should care about that. I get a million bulletins in my email from the various MESOS and satellites, and right now, a lot of them are either sort of not working, down, or sporadic. We need to care about that. We need to care that the people trying to keep SWPC running right now aren’t getting paid.
I’m not going to start my own weather station. How can I? It’s absurd. But what I can do is realize that this is a line in the sand that has been crossed.
There seems to be something fundamental about withholding universal information from the people. I’m not sure how to explain it. It’s as if the knowledge of the wind, the rain, the sky, the basic elemental foundation of all this life, is somehow being controlled by some force out there that isn’t us. It seems to me that this information shouldn’t be politicized. And yet, here we are for the very first time in my somewhat long life, and NOAA isn’t there.
I actually owned a weather cube, if anyone knows what one of those was. It had a little button, and you pushed it, and there was a real person who was giving the Weather Map Discussion. And I would stand there on the beach, and listen to that, and decide if it was safe or not to go out on those waters. I do not know exactly why but I just feel like this massive wind sucked out of me. People have strange places where enough is enough, and I suppose not having NOAA there is my enough.
But what can I do in rebellion? I guess just keep forecasting space weather as well as I can, and continue to find alternate ways to do what I do. Maybe that is enough of an act of refusing to let anyone take this knowledge away from us.
Ok enough ranting, I will get a tin hat or something, in the meantime, there is mild level activity right now. Probably just for an hour or so. There’s much less of a chance for a cloud break and sightings, due to increased clouds and not as strong activity. But, we are currently at a G1 Yellow level of activity.
Sorry I’m so grouchy. I’m just really not happy about not having good data. Just throw a wind sock at me.