A tad chilly

Yeah, its gonna be cold in New England this weekend  but what I wanted to post was from CNN who said today that NASA had to move a satellite around Mars because it was in the orbit of one of Mars's moons. Thank god people smarter than me are doing that because I would of lost a satellite     Find the next exit-ramp and back it up!

At least once they're in orbit they've got some time to think about things like avoidance maneuvers, unlike the landings which have to be all programmed ahead of time and hope you didn't forget anything!

 CP, seeing as how you have a lake in your backyard, have you ever considered getting a Lakester?

 ↑ That would be fun to drive on the ice.

A Lakester is a car with a streamlined body but with four exposed wheels. It is most often made out of a modified aircraft drop tank.

 I don't remember hearing of those cars before.... wouldn't want to think I was loosing it. 

 Looks like Syracuse has it in the bag for this winter.

 (goldensnowglobe.com)

That list is only cities with populations over 100,000, and hardly any of those cities are in a lake effect location. There aren't any cities on the (typical) downwind shores of either Lake Superior or Lake Michigan that meet the population minimum, and no U.S. cities at all lie on the downwind side of Lake Huron. So really this is a lake effect competition to which 3 of the 5 Great Lakes aren't invited, and it happens to be the northernmost (snowiest) three lakes that are excluded. That leaves just the Lake Erie and Lake Ontario city candidates, and Rochester and Syracuse have good physical positions relative to Lake Ontario.

Syracuse manages an average of 115 inches of snow a year, which is decent, but they should be sort of embarrassed to call themselves the snowfall capital. Towns along the south shore of Lake Superior that are far enough east to get lake effect snow all have annual averages exceeding that of Syracuse:

Houghton - 208"
Ontonagon - 188"
Grand Marais - 152"
Marquette - 149"
Sault Ste. Marie - 120"

The more comprehensive snowfall database weatherdb.com lists Syracuse as the 417th snowiest city in the U.S., so that 100,000 population cutoff is a real game changer.

You'd think Cleveland should be perfectly positioned, but I guess by that point it's just too far south (Cleveland averages 36"). Erie does better, averaging 101", and they're sitting in the #4 spot this year on the restricted list with only 86" to date.

  Can a bird get vertigo in the clouds?

What morons. Two storm chasers contracted to the Weather Channel were killed in Texas yesterday while live-streaming a storm they were chasing. They ran a stop sign and smashed into a car being driven by another guy chasing the storm. He was killed too.

There were lots of tweets mourning the loss of the two known chasers (from the show Storm Wranglers). I didn't see any tweets that pointed out they killed someone because of their irresponsibility.

 Against the law for a farmer to fix his own tractor?   

http://modernfarmer.com/2016/07/right-to-repair/

  I wanted to see what it would look like if they got vacuumed up into one of their beloved tornadoes.

 .

allow me to revive this topic, joe. 

i live in an area known for warm temps, but this "winter" was very mild here. we have had forest fires for many weeks. the lake in my backyard has receded to where i haven't seen it previously.

i'm aware the term "climate change" has been stricken from the mouths of babes working for the current administration in the u.s.

but, i feel as if i'm seeing it. almost daily. record high temps are a regular part of most forecasts. 

  Now if they can just make a passenger airliner out of that technology!

it's hot in texas-southern

  Haha, Cystem_Phailure doesn't like the heat.  Luckily for him, he still has snow in the forecast!

  .

This past week NASA put a new section on their worldview website that has recent interactive night views of Earth. Here's a shot of Lake Superior from this past December 08. City ID is easy around the lake. The three brightest cities are Sault Ste. Marie (east), Duluth (west), and Thunder Bay (north side of lake), which have pretty similar populations (Soo = 87,000 [combined U.S. and Canada]; Duluth = 86,000; Thunder Bay = 108,000). Ashland, Houghton, Marquette, and Munising are also easy to pick out along the south shore, and even Ontonagon, Baraga, and L'Anse (none with population over 2000) can be located right away from the shore shape.

  It's like looking into space with a black hole in the center.  

I wouldn't like to fall there from that point...

the interactive views might be cool. an asteroid will pass us within a few weeks. no danger (i'm told), but it could be worth viewing depending on where on our marble one lives. 

 Just what you need, CP, when it gets too hot for you in the summer.