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Live weather data: storms from the Isle of Wight, and the sotonmet
Posted to Geek stuff by Dominic Winsor on 23 Jun 2007 Updated [Link]
I recently discovered the isleofwightweather.co.uk website which offers a realtime storm tracker. This is a pretty cool service showing live strike types and locations.
The sotonmet, offers the current weather of interest to mariners with data from Southampton dockhead (close to the centre of Southampton). There is a related site just outside of Southampton water, on Bramble Bank: bramblemet. (note: at the time of posting these sites are down, probably due to unprecedented load from the Round the Island race this weekend)
Check out my previous posts on weather
Close-call for lightning photographer!
Posted to Geek stuff by Dominic Winsor on 06 Sep 2005 Updated [Link]
I think I may be getting too interested in lightning and extreme weather phenomena, perhaps it is the physics degree. This picture shows a relatively uncommon 'positive cloud-ground' (+CG) lightning bolt taken by a photographer who was incredibly close to where it hit! Amazing!
Teslamania has the details (scroll down to 'huge positive..')
So what is Positive lightning? An image like that is sure to spark interest 
- here is an accessible article explaining more:
www.srh.weather.gov/srh/jetstream/lightning/positive.htm
If you've ever wondered about how lightning actually connects to the ground, then this page offers a nice introduction:
www.srh.weather.gov/srh/jetstream/lightning/lightning_max.htm
Lightning can actually change polarity too, this is called bipolar lightning, and this review paper (PDF) explains a bit about it:
plaza.ufl.edu/rakov/ICLP2000/positive1.16.pdf
Of course, no explanation would be complete without the wikipedia:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning
Interesting weather data (including lightning charts)
Posted to Geek stuff by Dominic Winsor on 24 Jun 2005 Updated [Link]
Just found this rather nice site which presents a good detailed view of the weather through a series of clear images. They have an interesting lightning activity chart too. Great for 'visual thinkers'
» www.meteorologica.info/