Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Alaina Ross @circle-and-square.bsky.social · 7d

Another moody system crawling across The Bay last night. It’s possible I’m having TOO much fun learning aerial photography 🤩

Alaina Ross @circle-and-square.bsky.social · 8d

Dramatic rainshower over the Berkeley Marina yesterday evening as our next system arrives #CAwx

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Alaina Ross @circle-and-square.bsky.social · 12d

It’s like trying to choose your favorite children out of a collection of 6000, it’s nearly impossible to narrow down the “best” because they’re all breathtaking 😍

Reposted by Alaina Ross

Dustin Mulvaney @dustinmulvaney.bsky.social · 12d

“The Bay Area sees some of the least frequent lightning in the world. San Francisco County averages less than one lightning strike per square mile, per year, nearly 5,000 times less than parts of Florida.” #CAwx

Anthony Edwards @edwardsanthonyb.bsky.social · 13d

Rare lightning storm lights up San Francisco sky www.sfchronicle.com/weather/arti...

Rare lightning storm lights up San Francisco sky

California was hit by thousands of lightning strikes from Tuesday to Thursday, including parts of the Bay Area that average fewer lightning strikes than nearly anywhere else in the country.

www.sfchronicle.com

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Alaina Ross @circle-and-square.bsky.social · 13d

Last night’s sunset over the San Francisco Bay was downright tropical😍 #CAwx

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Alaina Ross @circle-and-square.bsky.social · 19d

Tonight’s sunset over the San Francisco Bay was a feast of different cloud types! #cawx

(One of my first ever flights with my drone, plz forgive my less-than-perfect handling 🙃)

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Alaina Ross @circle-and-square.bsky.social · Mar 27

This is at the very top of my list of civil service dream jobs. What’s the over/under that positions like these exist in 2 years? www.kqed.org/news/12033338

Bay Area Air Traffic Control Is Down to 1 Meteorologist After Trump's Hiring Freeze | KQED

The federal hiring freeze has left a vital Bay Area aviation weather unit with just one meteorologist, risking flight delays and disruptions. The unit oversees a vast airspace, ensuring the safe landi...

www.kqed.org

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Reposted by Alaina Ross

cira-csu.bsky.social @cira-csu.bsky.social · Mar 24

Smoke from wildfires in Chile wraps around a low off the coast.

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Reposted by Alaina Ross

Seismica @weareseismica.bsky.social · Mar 23

March 27 marks the anniversary of the 1964 Great Alaska Earthquake (M9.2), the most powerful recorded quake in U.S. history. This megathrust event reshaped landscapes, and you can help reshape our understanding by publishing your seismic research in #OpenAccess #CostFree journals

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Alaina Ross @circle-and-square.bsky.social · Mar 18

Stumbled across this 2024 paper researching how people engage with live-streamed Extreme Weather Events, which feels very timely "particularly as recognition grows of the relationship between how extreme weather is understood and remembered determines future risk behaviours" doi.org/10.1080/1747...

Watching the disaster unfold: geographies of engagement with live-streamed extreme weather

An increasing number of Extreme Weather Events (EWEs) – including storms and hurricanes – are now being live-streamed on websites such as YouTube. These streams often repurpose existing webcam infr...

doi.org

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Reposted by Alaina Ross

Malcolm @ecmalcolm.bsky.social · Mar 17

The first Tylertown, MS tornado from the Saturday outbreak has been preliminarily rated EF4, the third tornado to be rated as such from the three-day stretch. #wxsky #mswx

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Reposted by Alaina Ross

Noah Brauer @noaabrauer.bsky.social · Mar 14

A lotttt of blowing dust on true color imagery over Oklahoma and West Texas...

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Alaina Ross @circle-and-square.bsky.social · Mar 6

It’s a shame I couldn’t get a better photo, this little flush of instability across the bay made for some pretty awesome cumulus spires on this morning’s commute 😍

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Reposted by Alaina Ross

Bob Kopp @bobkopp.net · Mar 6

Strong statement from @agu.org

WHAT YOU DIDN'T HEAR LAST NIGHT BUT NEED TO KNOW
Last night, President Trump addressed a joint session of Congress. Titled "The Renewal of the American Dream," there was heavy emphasis on the economy, border security, and foreign relations, but what you didn't hear was the realities of a hollowing out of the federal workforce that has weakened critical scientific expertise, abdicated climate leadership, shrunk important research, and frozen global cooperation. Not a dream but a nightmare of loss and uncertainty for the United States and the world.
Declaring that "America is back" and "at the dawn of a golden age," the president highlighted more than $1.7 trillion in investments made since he took the oath of office, including increases in energy production.
But missing from last night is the reality that fast and furious halts to science funding along with sweeping terminations of federal workers at key agencies is ushering in a dark age of retreat on climate research, leadership, and international engagement.
The United States is becoming increasingly isolated, from our withdrawal from the World Health Organization and the Paris Agreement to a pull back from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, blocking future participation of federal scientists and diplomats.
The nation's vital science is cut off from the world.
The president spoke of "a comeback" - one of economic vigor and committed deregulation, but it is chaos that is reigning with widespread and indiscriminate cuts to federal research funding.

You also did not hear about how proposed funding cuts are causing significant distress among research institutions.
Universities are implementing hiring freezes and reducing Ph.D. admissions. The uncertainty is prompting concerns about a potential brain drain, with researchers considering opportunities abroad if domestic funding continues to dwindle.
If cuts to agency workforces and funding freezes were not enough, just before the president's speech the Administration informed two pivotal centers for weather forecasting that their leases would be canceled.
These are not simply buildings, but nerve centers for lifesaving meteorological information. The NOAA Center for Weather and Climate Prediction in College Park, Maryland, ensures data is correctly processed for accurate forecasting. The Radar Operations Center in Norman, Oklahoma, works to improve and repair the nation's aging fleet of Doppler weather radars.
The president praised farmers in his address, declaring a new day for their productivity and success, but without reliable weather data how can they bank on that bright future?
In his closing, the president vowed to "conquer the vast frontiers of science." But with scores of scientists being fired or muzzled and with funding frozen, one must ask:
How do we do that?
Sadly, at the moment, the state of our science is not strong, but the resolve of our community in Earth and space sciences to restore and renew it is.

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Reposted by Alaina Ross

Matt Lanza @mattlanza.bsky.social · Mar 2

This is exactly what many of us that are not NOAA employees are worried about why this impacts more than NOAA.

Dustin Mulvaney @dustinmulvaney.bsky.social · Mar 2

How it started / How it’s going.

Anthony Edwards
@edwardsanthonyb.bsky.social

NEW: Thursday's massive National Weather Service layoffs included three employees at the Monterey office, which provides weather forecasts for nearly all of the Bay Area. One meteorologist, an administrative support assistant and a facilities technician were all fired with less than a day notice.

NOAA
NATIONAL WEATHER
SERVICE FORECAST OFFICE
Bay Area National Weather Service office hit by
DOGE layoffs
The Monterey office, which provides weather forecasts for nearly all of the Bay Area, including San Francisco..

WEATHER
NWS Bay Area Bot

Our radar is currently offline & we need your help! Are you seeing rain/hail/snow/flooding today? If so, be a citizen scientist.

Send us your weather reports
NWS Bay Area
Be a "citizen scientist" and send us your weather reports us the mPING app.

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Reposted by Alaina Ross

Daniel Swain @weatherwest.bsky.social · Feb 28

The mass firing of both new hires and recently promoted senior staff within #NOAA, including mission-critical and life-saving roles at the National Weather Service (#NWS), is profoundly alarming.
1/11

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Alaina Ross @circle-and-square.bsky.social · Mar 2

By the way, the irony is not lost on me in the timing of the KMUX service interruption. It would be incredibly convenient to attribute this interruption as a direct result of yesterday’s events. So I won’t.

Alaina Ross @circle-and-square.bsky.social · Mar 2

Imagine how much distrust this must build with the user. This is the seed of the kind of distrust that leads people to ignore hazard warnings from officials. The kind of distrust that potentially puts people in harms way.

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Alaina Ross @circle-and-square.bsky.social · Mar 2

What a neat taste of the future of our weather reporting infrastructure: KMUX radar is down, and there’s weather kicking up in the Bay right now.

AccuWeather has no way of informing the user that their “radar view” is only showing the bits of what KDAX can see over the hills.

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Alaina Ross @circle-and-square.bsky.social · Mar 1

Dejectedly chucks some in progress summer internship applications in the trash 😔

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Reposted by Alaina Ross

The Onion @theonion.com · Feb 28

NOAA Cuts Leave Wind Chimes As Sole Predictor Of Approaching Hurricanes

SILVER SPRING, MD—As mass firings of career experts and scientists continued to roil the federal government, officials confirmed Friday that cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration...

theonion.com

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Alaina Ross @circle-and-square.bsky.social · Mar 1

Me: over here just trying to have a peaceful moment with a pair of hawks

Nature: bet

[you’ll want the sound 🔈 on 😂]

Reposted by Alaina Ross

Kelton Halbert @stormscale.io · Feb 28

There might be a lot to be upset about, and things may seem dark… but the kindness and generosity of people will never cease to humble and astound me.

Thank you.

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Reposted by Alaina Ross

Jared Dahl Aldern @jdaldern.bsky.social · Feb 27

“For the Karuk Tribe, Cal Fire will no longer hold regulatory or oversight authority over the burns and will instead act as a partner and consultant. The previous arrangement essentially amounted to one nation telling another nation what to do on its land — a violation of sovereignty.”

California tribe enters first-of-its-kind agreement with the state to practice cultural burns

After suppression of Indigenous cultural burning, the state agrees Northern California's Karuk Tribe may practice the burns more freely than it has in over 175 years.

www.aol.com

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Reposted by Alaina Ross

Daniel Swain @weatherwest.bsky.social · Feb 27

I have written a short statement responding to mass firings today of #NOAA / National Weather Service (#NWS) staff (which were concentrated among recent hires as well as highly experienced staff who had recently been promoted). Please see below screenshot & below for full text.

Statement begins:
The mass firing of both new hires and recently promoted senior staff within NOAA, including mission-critical and life-saving roles at the National Weather Service (NWS), is profoundly alarming. It appears that NOAA staff fired today include meteorologists, data and computer scientists responsible for maintaining and upgrading weather predictive models, and technicians responsible for maintaining the nation’s weather instrumentation network (among many others).

Housed within NOAA, the U.S. NWS is a truly world-class meteorological predictive service, perhaps singularly so. Its cost of operation is only ~$3-4/yr per taxpayer—equivalent to a single cup of coffee—and yields a truly remarkable return on investment (at least 10 to 1, and perhaps 100 to 1, depending on methods of estimation). NOAA and the NWS collectively offer tens to hundreds of billions of dollars each year in net economic benefit through a combination of averted losses and efficiencies gained....

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