Best U.S. weather satellite ever launches

[TexasTowelie]

The most advanced weather satellite ever built rocketed into space Saturday night from the Florida coast, part of an $11 billion effort to revolutionize forecasting and save lives.

This new GOES-R spacecraft will track U.S. weather as never before: hurricanes, tornadoes, flooding, volcanic ash clouds, wildfires, lightning storms, even solar flares. Indeed, about 50 TV meteorologists from around the country converged on the launch site — including NBC's Al Roker — along with 8,000 space program workers and guests.

"What's so exciting is that we're going to be getting more data, more often, much more detailed, higher resolution," Roker said. In the case of tornadoes, "if we can give people another 10, 15, 20 minutes, we're talking about lives being saved."

Think superhero speed and accuracy for forecasting. Super high-definition TV, versus black-and-white.

Read more: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/space/os-us-sci-weather-satellite-20161119-story.html

[Ligyron]

1. I wonder if this thing will predict the shitstorm headed our way.

Well, at least we can document our destruction from space.

[TexasTowelie]

2. They are tracking a massive hot-air, high pressure disturbance

migrating south from Manhattan to Washington D.C. From there they are predicting that it will stall and the disturbance will grow bigly.

[Ligyron]

3. Bwahahaha!

[BumRushDaShow]

4. K&R

It'll be going through about 5 months of testing and validation before going operational (assuming everything checks out okay). I expect they want it ready for April and the tornado season.