This is odd.  :)  NBC 2 out of Fort Myers received a lot of calls from viewers of a mysterious number two appearing live on Doppler Radar as Wilma smashed ashore in South Florida.  NBC 2 meteorologists went back into their data logs and recovered the image and video of this phenomenon.  It has been posted on their website.

 Pretty cool.  :)  Interesting that it was NBC 2.  Perhaps a new form of subliminal messaging during Hurricane events that go on for hours and hours w/o commercial breaks?  hehe

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NBC2 News Online - The mystery of the eye

 File this in the 'woah' department.  Is it an Invasion?  Is it passing a Threshold.  Or is it gonna Surface?  Stay tuned next week...

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Satellite images confirm mystery glow in ocean - LiveScience - MSNBC.com

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FYI...EARLIER THIS EVENING AROUND 724 PM PDT A 4-STAGE MINOTAUR
ROCKET WITH A SPACE TEST PROGRAM SATELLITE ABOARD WAS LAUNCHED FROM
VANDENBERG AFB. EVEN WITH THE HI CLOUDS OVERHEAD WAS STILL ABLE TO
SEE MOST OF THE LAUNCH AS THE ROCKET SOARED SOUTH OVER THE PACIFIC.
THE CONTRAIL BECAME RATHER BRIGHT AND COLORFUL WHICH LINGERED FOR A
WHILE AFTER LAUNCH...AND WAS VISIBLE OVER A LARGE AREA EXTENDING
FROM HERE TO L.A. COUNTY TO LAS VEGAS AND INTO ARIZONA.

My friend Randy captured this phenomenon with a typically blurry camera phone picture. 

 I report, you decide.

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http://marsrover.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20050819a/dd_enhanced_568b-B558R1_th265x228.gif

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Plane Crash @ Pearson Airport in Mississauga (Toronto) During Severe Storm

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This video was actually being recorded when this plane crash happened. first video was filmed at  3:35 PM EST and the last video was filmed @ 3:38 PM EST. You can see the hail in the 4th video and the major increase in wind speed. There was not much lightning at all during this storm, the wind and rain and hail was the most intense part of the storm.

Just before I filmed these video's a plane actually continued south of the airport over my area. And I thought it was strange how low it was and the fact that it was flying right over my area as they usually fly over an area further east. It makes me wonder if this attempt was his second at landing or if he was circling the airport while waiting to make a landing attempt.

Got an IM from Khris who was in the middle of a rather nasty thunderstorm with high winds.  Then a few minutes later word of a Air France jet skidding off the runway in flames.  Hope it isn't as bad as it sounds!

Watch Live MSNBC TV Coverage on MSNBC.com

View radar imagery in Toronto, updated every 5 minutes (storm has passed)

Crash location in MSN Virtual Earth

Keep an eye on Khris' blog...he said he took video of the storm.

*Update: Added radar image from time of accident; added live radar link; added MSN Virtual Earth link.

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Passenger jet in flames at Toronto airport - Americas - MSNBC.com

Purple: Tornado Warning
Green: Flash Flood Warning

LANDFALL 2:20PM

6:40pm Update:  I've turned off my Live Level III Radar data link in the Hurricane Dennis list at right.  The storm has passed out of range of both Mobile, and Panama City radar locations.  There is another storm brewing off in the tropical Atlantic...if that were to develop and threaten the US, I'll reactivate my radar link.

Check this out!  Storm chasers dropped off a "media probe" outfitted with 7 video cameras in the path of a tornado...bringing the best footage yet up close and personal with a tornado.  Select "Direct Hit" for the media probe footage.

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Inside Tornadoes Multimedia @ National Geographic Magazine

It's a technological first. A well-placed probe fitted with 7 video cameras—6 with a 60-degree field-of-view designed to achieve a full 360-degree field-of-view (one failed during deployment, resulting in a 300-degree field-of-view) and one pointing upward—captures footage inside a tornado, providing visual data on ground wind speeds where the storm does the greatest damage. And Tim Samaras with his team of storm chasers are there to make it happen.

Damn...this has to be a record or something.  LOL  I *heard* it before I felt it...I thought it was an incoming helicopter at first.  Then the rumbling came through followed by a real quick bang and some nice shaking.  I wonder how deep and far this quake was given how I heard it before I felt it.  It sure has been an interesting week...

2pm Update:  Near Yucaipa... 5.3 magnitude.

2:05: Added KCAL 9 Seismograph & quake map showing the last week worth of quakes.  WOW!  LOL

2:10: Riverside resident; "I feel like I lived in a bowl of jello; glass was falling out of my cubboards!"

2:30pm: Interesting.  Check out the list of quakes down there in the last week.  This 5.3 has had a lot larger aftershock profile when compared with the 5.2 Anza quake on Sunday morning.

2:45pm: MSNBC article on the quake; Verizon reporting congestion on their phone network...a lot of people including myself were unable to make calls immediately after the quake.  It was like everyone in LA decided to pick up the phone!

I gotta run some errands - here is a live stream from ABC7 covering the quake.

After Florida was struck with a record 4 tropical cyclones in 2004, local TV stations across the state have gone all out this year outfitting their weather departments with an array of new technologies.  During Tropical Storm Arlene, I went on my typical hunt for hyper-local information via local tv news station websites in the affected area and found them all armed with new-fangled tools with names like "Vortex" and "Titan". 

I'm not sure whether to feel alarmed or safe!

Not to be outdone...WTVJ, the local NBC affiliate in Miami has a new "Hurricane Hummer" (I can see an adult flick by this title) outfitted with a slew of weather instrumentation capable of delivering real-time information back to the station via satellite.  This actually sounds somewhat interesting.  According to the graphic I attached, it sounds like they are building a "fleet" of these vehicles that can be dispatched to multiple locations (how about with each reporter?) during a Hurricane.

I know there are a few of my weather buds reading this...what do you guys think?  useful or another gimmick?  My take - at least we won't have to guess if the reporter is faking the impact of the wind or standing in some wind tunnel.

As an aside - it appears all the local NBC affiliates who are broadcasting NBC Weather Plus, a 24/7 HDTV only weather service are now starting to stream it live over the net.  Check out Miami and San Francisco. (Windows Media Video)

Magnitude estimated anywhere from 7.1 to 7.4...only 1.6 miles deep...very shallow thus the potential for a tsunami is here.

Latest Tsunami Warning Message

Latest Tsunami Warning Map

Update: It should be emphasized that it is not yet known that there *is* a Tsunami...but the potential is there.  Since many coastal dwellers are not aware of what to do in the event of a Tsunami, a prepardeness website is up @ http://wcatwc.arh.noaa.gov/tsunamiready/tready.htm.

Update: Thanks Randy for this url.  Scary timing...check out this article on SFGate.com on the potential tsunami risks in the Cascadia Subduction Zone where this quake struck.

8:50pm Update:  LIVE webstream coverage from KGW.com!

9:15pm Update:  Reports to the contrary aside...the Tsunami Warning was only cancelled at 9:09pm...not any earlier.  It seems local news were tripping over themselves and got confused over the official repository for Tsunami bulletins.  It has been reported that a small Tsunami was generated...but no wave has been detected.  Uploaded screen capture of KCAL 9's coverage and an interview with every Angeleno's favourite sesimologist, Kate Hutton.  Something about that squint and those glasses is so endearing!

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Maps of Recent Earthquake Activity in California-Nevada

It is official.  Everything in life right now is determined to undermine my neccessity for sleep!

Los Angeles.  A proclivity towards thunderstorms this city is not...yet month after month this season we've had continual bouts with them.  Amazing.  We're in *May*.  2am on the 6th and rip-roaring through here comes a nice little line of thunderstorms.  Lightning is still illuminating my room through my blinds every few seconds.  Another batch just offshore.  See you in a couple hours mother nature.

Two sweet Windows Mobile apps in a row!  What to do!  I already have my own personal radar solution setup...but the 'live' data capabilities of this app on a smartphone seems pretty cool.

Someone needs to write a review of this sucker!  Hey, Ed, think you still got some pull over there at WeatherBug?  Maybe I'll hit up Ray or see if I can find Justin on the internet somewhere. 

[via SmartphoneThoughts.com]

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http://blog.weatherbug.com/index.php?/corporate/my_smartphone_can_beat_up_your_pda/

Forget "Meteorlogical Spring" and calendar dates...today I saw my first ice cream truck roaming around while coming back from lunch blasting "Old MacDonald had a farm" !

With the 2004-05 Los Angeles rain year just 2.30" away from the wettest year in this city's history, everyone and their mother is coming out of the woodwork with rain related stories of yesteryear.  Limited space and a spate of similar stories has caused the LAT to be more discerning in their Op-Ed section...here is another rejected piece that was posted over at LAObserved:

In the winter of 1861-1862, the skies in California let loose, unleashing torrents of water around the state. In Los Angeles, rain fell for 28 straight days, pushing the Los Angeles River higher and higher until a waist-high wall of water jumped its banks, ripping away everything in its path.

My great great grandfather, Isaias Hellman, 19, got caught in the turgid waters. He had arrived from Bavaria three years earlier –part of a group of Jews who left their small town in Reckendorf -- to work as a clerk in a dry goods store owned by his two older cousins. The store was set in a row of shops in Bell’s Row, a two-story block-long commercial building on the southeast corner of Aliso and Los Angeles Streets. The Row had long been the favored location for the pueblo’s sizeable group of Jewish merchants. Many early settlers who would later play crucial roles in transforming the small town into a modern American city had their first stores there, including Isaiah and Samuel Hellman, Solomon Lazard, Philip Sichel, Wolf Kalisher, Henry Wartenberg and others.

The surging waters from the Los Angeles River rushed through the small downtown, carrying driftwood, mud and sand as it enveloped the row of shops. Hellman, who not long before had made his home in the store’s back room, rushed with his two cousins to salvage any goods they could. As the three men started to grab shoes, books, tobacco and other goods, the saturated adobe walls started to crumble and they were forced to flee.

When the floodwaters receded, Los Angeles had been transformed. The façade of the Church of Our Lady the Queen of Angeles, which had stood sentinel in the Plaza for 40 years, melted away, its straw and mud bricks unable to withstand the water’s onslaught. The cascading river ripped out thousands of grapevines. Sand lay a foot thick over once-fertile orchards. Roads became so impassable that Los Angeles went without mail for 5 consecutive weeks.

The entire state suffered that year. From early November to the end of January, 37 inches of rain fell in San Francisco. Rain and melting snow turned the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys into an inland sea, 250 to 300 miles long and 20 to 60 miles wide. When the rain stopped, it made the news: “On Tuesday last the sun made its appearance,” The Los Angeles Star noted. “The phenomenon lasted several minutes and was witnessed by a great number of persons.”

The heavy rains were followed by two years of drought, years of sun and wind so relentless the grasses that covered the valleys and gentle hills running from Los Angeles to the ocean 20 miles away turned a brittle brown. Most of the cattle that roamed the hills began to die and travelers taking the stage from the port of San Pedro to Los Angeles saw hills heaped with decaying carcasses. The number of cows in the county dropped from 70,000 to 20,000.

Weather has always been an important determinant in Los Angeles’ history. The twin effects of floods and drought from 1861-1864 completely finished off whatever remained of the rancho way of life, where dons reigned over thousands of acres of land and huge herds of cattle. Many of the Spanish Californios were forced to sell their land to stay solvent, opening the way for the rise of the Yankee economy. The disasters also ruined many small businesses, including that of Hellman’s cousins. It changed the city’s architecture as businessmen replaced adobe buildings with brick structures.

But those living in southern California regarded the disasters as aberrant and moved quickly to repair the damage. The Hellman cousins and other affected merchants relocated their businesses and learned an important lesson about frontier life: to succeed, one had to be flexible and change with the ever-evolving economy. Soon boosters began promoting the region as a place like no other, blessed by sun and fertile soil and ease of life. The rains hit hard again in 1884, when more than 38 inches caused widespread flooding, but by that time most of America thought of Los Angeles as a Mediterranean paradise. Trainloads of settlers poured in, lured by the promise of a golden life. By 1890, more than 50,000 people lived in the city.

By that time my great great grandfather had spent 31 years in Los Angeles and had watched it transform from a dusty pueblo where fewer than 300 people spoke English to a bustling city. As the city grew, he prospered, eventually becoming one of the region’s largest landowners and a major investor in the city’s water and gas companies. He was president of the Farmers and Merchants Bank for 45 years, lending funds to Harrison Gray Otis to buy the Los Angeles Times and to Henry Huntington to build the trolley cars that eventually crisscrossed Los Angeles. He helped build the city’s first temple, B’nai B’rith.

But from the time of the 1862 rains, he always kept a close eye on the weather, frequently noting it in his letters and diaries. He knew that living in Los Angeles meant floods and droughts and even earthquakes, but he didn’t let those threats defeat him. California had become his home and he refused to let nature push him away.