Our red neighbor, one rock out, is as close as it's been to our blue/white planet in 15 years today. If you can see the night sky (unlikely for Va. tonight) it is stunningly bright and a deep red/orange rising up in the east after darkness descends. Yes, Saturn, Jupiter and Venus are out there, too, but Mars is brighter than all but Venus and such an eye catching color.
Just checked out space weather.com and our nearby star continues its quiet, solar minimum phase. No sunspots in over a month and a quiet sun means more high energy radiation from the rest of the universe can zap the Earth, and it is. An active sun shields us from the cosmic radiation bursts making it to the inner solar system. So, a quiet sun increases radiation levels (already higher with less atmosphere between) for aircraft personnel and folks on the space station but really shouldn't effect us low altitude surface dwellers. Just a reminder it's a wild universe out there and it can effect our world (and may have triggered extinction events in the past).
It remains socked-in on the Eastern seaboard with shower chances increasing as the day goes on. The rain chances and cooler, cloudier weather look to continue until about the weekend with long term trends suggesting more of the same well into August. The high pressure ridge over the west will therefore continue offering little help for crews fighting the many fires raging across the west (17 in California alone). Temps out west in many locations will be at or over 100 today while we finish July in the low to mid 80's.
A fairly shaky quake day but no big quakes on today's list and no eruptions yet in Hawaii (it's early) but the island state still has the standard hundreds of small quakes for the ongoing eruption. Get out and enjoy the cool, albeit muggy, weather, Today on Earth.
No comments:
Post a Comment