NASA: Stripe that disappeared on Jupiter coming back

A three-color composite image shows a belt that had previously vanished in Jupiter's atmosphere is now getting a bit darker and seems to be reappearing.

One of Jupiter's stripes that "disappeared" last spring is reappearing – and the disappearance was apparently an illusion created by Jupiter's atmosphere,NASA scientists said.

Scientists noticed earlier this year that the longstanding dark-brown stripe, called the South Equatorial Belt, had turned white, essentially disappearing. Researchers with NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility, the W.M. Keck Observatory and the Gemini Observatory telescope began studying the phenomenon and found the answer likely lies in a cloud deck made up of white ammonia ice that basically obscured the ring.

"The reason Jupiter seemed to 'lose' this band – camouflaging itself among the surrounding white bands – is that the usual downwelling winds that are dry and keep the region clear of clouds died down," said Glenn Orton, a scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "One of the things we were looking for in the infrared was evidence that the darker material emerging to the west of the bright spot was actually the start of clearing in the cloud deck, and that is precisely what we saw."

Rare November tornadoes cause damage in Wis., Ill.

MILWAUKEE (AP) — Cleanup from a rare November tornado begins Tuesday in southeastern Wisconsin.

A confirmed tornado touched down in Walworth County, where four homes and four farm buildings were damaged. The National Weather Service says the tornado was an EF-1 and traveled about four miles.

An apparent twister also moved through Union Grove in Racine County, where semis were blown over and debris was spread over parts of Interstate 94. The weather service planned to send a crew to Racine County Tuesday to confirm whether the storm was a tornado.

Utility outages were widespread late Monday afternoon, with some 42,200 customers without power from northern Winnebago County east to Belvidere, ComEd spokesman Paul Callighan said. The utility said the storms hit 10 transmission towers in Boone County.

The fast-moving storm system also produced two apparent tornado touchdowns in southeastern Wisconsin.

By Monday night, the storm front had moved eastward into Indiana and Michigan, but much of northeastern Illinois remained under flash flood watches and warnings from the heavy rain that accompanied the storms.

Strong winds blast East Coast, flip over planes

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Powerful winds knocked out power to nearly 12,500 customers and damaged some small airplanes in New Jersey early Wednesday.

Accuweather also warned of damage throughout Pennsylvania from the winds, which were expected to gust up to 45 miles per hour through tonight.

Thousands of customers are without power across Pennsylvania after a series of overnight rain storms accompanied by strong winds.

Peco said it has 17,000 customers without power Wednesday morning. Peco spokeswoman Karen Muldoon Geus says wind gusts forecast to reach 45 mph during the day has the utility on guard for more outages.

WA drought boosts snow in Antarctica

THE SIGNIFICANT DROUGHT IN southwest Australia may be linked to increased snowfall in the Antarctic over the past 30 years, researchers say. Understanding the connection could help farmers in Western Australia plan for years to come.

Analysis of ice cores, drilled at Law Dome just inland from Australia's Casey Station in the Antarctic, shows snowfall may be linked to climate in the Australian sector of the Southern Ocean and southwest WA.

Dr Tas van Ommen, principal research scientist with the Australian Antarctic Division in Hobart, presented his research results at Curtin University in Perth on Monday. He said the ice cores from the Law Dome site provided a record of annual snowfall variations stretching back over 750 years. And and over the past 30 years, the cores indicated there had been a significant increase in snowfall in that area, he said.

This was associated with significantly lower rainfall and subsequent drought in the southwest of Western Australia. "So when there's extra moisture at Law Dome, the same circulation pattern is starving Western Australia of moisture," Tas said.

Further work is underway to explore these connections and understand the reasons behind them, he added.

Electric Clouds

In a recent press release, scientists from the Weizmann Institute and the Goddard Space Flight Center announced that a mysterious zone of previously undiscovered particles fills the airspace around clouds.

Ilan Koren of the Weizmann Institute wrote: “The effects of this zone are not included in most computer models that estimate the impact of aerosols on climate. This could be one of the reasons why current measurements of this effect don’t match our model estimates.”

What appears to be clear blue sky around clouds, such as in the image above, is actually a region of particles that do not correspond to water vapor or the pollution-induced gasses that investigators expected to see. Since clouds have a high albedo and scatter polarized light from their outer margins, it is challenging for the MODIS research team to detect anything near them. So that glare from specular distortion does not obscure their results they avoid scanning an area about one kilometer distant from cloud boundaries.

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Mystery Contrail Mania

Snow totals 11" in some parts of Mpls.-St. Paul area | Minneapolis and St. Paul | kare11.com

Snow totals 11" in some parts of Mpls.-St. Paul area | Minneapolis and St. Paul | kare11.com