Fog Bank, April 27, 2015

Hello WeatherBrains listeners, this is David Phillips. You can see my links at skydaver.blogspot.com

From Lifehacker, an article about a new app from the American Red Cross. It lets you monitor weather alerts for multiple cities.
http://lifehacker.com/emergency-sends-you-weather-alerts-for-multiple-us-ci-1699284234

Brad Panovich tweeted a Brian Kuntz photo of an incredible thunderstorm from Texas
https://twitter.com/wxbrad/status/587973939877412867/photo/1

Capitol Weather Gang had a set of photos from that same storm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2015/04/13/towering-thunderstorms-explode-in-texas-photos/

APOD has a video of an aircraft passing through the shadow of the eclipse
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap150414.html

ESPOD with a hole punch cloud near Aubrey’s area of the country
http://epod.usra.edu/blog/2015/04/hole-punch-cloud-over-christiansburg-virginia.html

Thanks for listening, Skydaver out.

Audio Fog Bank

Fog Bank, April 13, 2015

A great cloud photo, taking from an airliner in flight. Thanks to Rob Herrin for RT from Sean
@rherrin828
@SkyDaver pic o the week via @Shwags_wxchaser don't even know if he knows what weather brains is but aviation and wx pic.twitter.com/h6VWUuh4Hw

APOD, with an eclipse picture
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap150331.html

ESPOD with an Aurora seen in Northern Michigan
http://epod.usra.edu/blog/2015/03/aurora-observed-over-northern-michigan.html

I ran across a photo on Twitter of a lightning bolt in a rainbow
https://twitter.com/SciencePorn/status/584779777120276480/photo/1

SPC Products Page:
http://www.spc.noaa.gov/misc/about.html#Severe

Jason Samenow writing about the new graphic for severe weather risk
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2015/04/07/weather-service-develops-excellent-new-graphic-for-communicating-severe-weather-risk/

Steve Miller @stevemillerok, took AccuWeather to task for their criticism of the SPC after the March 25 tornado in Moore, OK. Crude language warning.
http://www.stevemillerok.com/2015/03/weather-company-flips-shit-over-its-own.html

Audio Fog Bank

Fog Bank, April 6, 2015

In which Skydaver goes on a rant...

A nice winter sunset photo at ESPOD. JB would have loved this
http://epod.usra.edu/blog/2015/03/glorious-winter-sunset.html

NOAA Weather Partners posted a video of tornado damage from the March 25 storm in Moore, OK
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmiIhsGWd8c&feature=em-uploademail

They also have a video on the SPC Day 4-8 Convective Outlook changes that went into effect in December, 2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX3AWpmD_sc&feature=em-uploademail

The Memphis Weather blog had an interesting post back in February about disappearing snow
http://blog.memphisweather.net/2015/02/weather-mythbusters-disproving-urban.html



Finally, a short apology to Accuweather. Motorola Android phone have a nice widget called Command Center, that includes a weather button. That button, however, is often way out of date, showing sunshine after sunset, or rainy conditions, when it’s sunny out. When you press that button, the widget goes full screen, and that screen shows a tab that reads ‘accuweather.com’ I thought that portion of the widget was by Accuweather, but it isn’t. I apologize for ranting at Accuweather about that widget.

However … The Accuweather app isn’t anything they should be proud of.

First, it uses location services (which is fine) but way off on the address it shows. If they’re going to show an address, they should at least show the margin of error for the location. For me, they’re off by a full four streets, over 400 1000ft, and list an address that doesn’t even exist. Fix that, or just stop.
(2015-04-07 Edited info about location services to correct a mistake.)

Their minute cast is as bogus as their 45 day forecast. This morning, they told me that the rain that wasn’t falling would continue for another 47 minutes. Later on, they told me that rain would come in 75 minutes (which didn’t happen. Right now, I’m being told that rain will start in 97 minutes. This kind of faked accuracy helps no one. If you’re going to fake precision, why not tell me that the rain will start in 97 minutes, 37.45 seconds?

Accuweather, you didn’t deserve my scorn for the Command Central widget, but you deserve double for your crap app. You are damaging your brand.

Thanks for listening, Skydaver out.

Audio Fog Bank