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Week of February 5, 2024

Welcome to our weekly digest of articles from the media on topics related to the weather industry.

What’s an atmospheric river? A pineapple express? AP explains the weather phenomenon

The storm that pummeled California this week was fueled by an atmospheric river, a plume of moisture that extended across the Pacific to near Hawaii. Here’s a look at the phenomenon.

Severe weather can have long-term impact on solar generation

Events such as hail or high winds can have a lasting impact on solar panels’ productivity, an NREL study found.

The animals you can count on to predict weather, according to science

Phenology is the study of how seasonal events in the lives of plants and animals shift according to the weather and climate, such as how fish or migratory birds respond to the temperature of water and air.

Hurricane maps predicting the 'cone of uncertainty' will change this year. Here's why.

This year, the National Hurricane Center will deploy an experimental product that will change the way you view hurricane forecast cones, which show the likely path of a storm, otherwise known as the “cone of uncertainty.”

In a warming world, climate scientists consider category 6 hurricanes

For more than 50 years, the National Hurricane Center has used the Saffir-Simpson Windscale to communicate the risk of property damage; it labels a hurricane on a scale from Category 1 (wind speeds between 74–95 mph) to Category 5 (wind speeds of 158 mph or greater).

Powerful weather event sparks rare phenomenon along Lake Erie: ‘It’s not something you see often’

Powerful wind gusts of up to 65 miles per hour battered northern Ohio in mid-January, pushing shallow water out farther into Lake Erie and revealing portions of the lake bed.

Deadly California storm triggers flooding, mudslides, power outages

A deadly Pacific storm, the second "Pineapple Express" weather system to sweep the West Coast in less than a week, dumped torrential rain over Southern California on Monday, triggering street flooding and mudslides throughout the region.

The limits of weather forecasting: How far into the future can we look?

"There is still great potential to further improve weather forecasts for middle latitude regions," said Dr. Michael Riemer from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU). "But there is also a point beyond which reliable prediction is just not possible."

How scientists are using artificial intelligence to predict wildfires

"The best kinds of improvements AI can bring is probably helping humans distinguish the unusual with the exceptional," Hockenberry said. "There are over 80,000 wildfires each year, which is substantially more than the number of tornadoes or hurricanes in a year. AI and other machine learning will most likely continue to narrow down these thousands and thousands of fires into the ones posing the highest risk to our nation."

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