nasa video

An early morning thunderstorm (0915 UTC) moved across portions of Montana, North Dakota and Canada bringing heavy rain and small hail to the areas. CloudSat overpassed the western section of the storm providing a unique vertical view of the storm. The cirrus canopy extends well beyond the core of the storm from the overshooting clouds tops hitting the tropopause and spreading out. Heavy rain is contained in the red and orange reflectivity's with some of the heavier precipitation attenuating in the lower 5 km of the storm. A cold trough moved through the area, moist air ahead of the system helped fuel the thunderstorms.

Click here to listen to the Cloudsat Podcast

Langley Air Force Base (IATA: LFI, ICAO: KLFI, FAA LID: LFI) is located three nautical miles (6 km) north of the central business district of the city of Hampton, Virginia, United States.[2] In January 2010, Langley realigned with Fort Eustis in Newport News, Virginia to become Joint Base Langley-Eustis.[3]

Langley is the home of the United States Air Force's 633d Air Base Wing (633 ABW), 1st Fighter Wing (1 FW) and the 480th Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance Wing (480 ISRW). It also hosts the Global Cyberspace Integration Center field operating agency, the 192D Fighter Wing of the Virginia Air National Guard and Headquarters Air Combat Command (ACC).

The base is one of the oldest facilities of the Air Force, being established on Dec. 30, 1916, prior to World War I by the Army Air Service, named for aviation pioneer Samuel Pierpont Langley. It was used during World War I as a flying field; balloon station; observers’school; photography school; experimental engineering department, and for aerial coast defense

The Air Power Park is a roadside museum in Hampton, Virginia and offers a glimpse of Hampton's role in America's early space exploration and aircraft testing. The park is on a 15 acre plot and includes a children's playground and visitor's center operated by the City Department of Parks and Recreation. Several vintage aircraft and experimental space launch vehicles from the 1950s and 1960's are displayed out of doors.

The Virginia Air and Space Center

Take flight to the Virginia Air & Space Center, the visitor center for NASA Langley Research Center and Langley Air Force Base. Your imagination will soar as you launch a rocket, pilot a space shuttle, come face-to-face with the Apollo 12 Command Module, and a DC-9 passenger jet. Experience a 3D IMAX film in the Riverside IMAX Theater...you have to see it to believe it! There is always something new landing at the Virginia Air & Space Center!

2010 Hurricane Season Begins

Atlantic hurricane season begins on June 1 and lasts for six months. On May 27, 2010, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) forecast an “active to extremely active” hurricane season for 2010. NOAA projected a 70 percent probability for 14 to 23 named storms, 8 to 14 hurricanes, and 3 to 7 major hurricanes.

Among the necessary ingredients for hurricanes is sufficiently warm ocean temperatures, typically above approximately 28 degrees Celsius (about 82 degrees Fahrenheit). This color-coded image from Japan’s Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E) flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite shows sea surface temperatures across the equatorial Atlantic Ocean and part of the Pacific Ocean at the beginning of the 2010 season. Waters that are warm enough to promote hurricane formation appear in shades of yellow to orange-red. Waters too cool to foster hurricane formation appear in shades of blue.

A band of warm water extends from the west coast of Africa across the Atlantic Ocean and Central America, and over the eastern Pacific Ocean. Sea surface temperatures are especially warm near the coasts of southern Senegal, Guinea, and Sierra Leone. In the west, pockets of very warm water also appear off Cuba, Honduras, and Nicaragua.

Amid the warm waters surrounding Central America, however, meandering trails of cool water appear. Just as hurricanes feed on warm sea surface waters, the storms also churn up cooler waters from depth as they pass over the ocean surface. The cool waters around Central America may be the wake left by Tropical Storm Agatha, which caused deadly floods and landslides in late May 2010.

The Earth Observatory has received questions about how the Gulf of Mexico oil slick might affect hurricanes and vice versa. For more information on this topic, please read the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s factsheet, Hurricanes and the Oil Spill (PDF format)