Adrian Lauf

Indeed, but that was also a yearly test, lol!

Yes, yes they do! I know it seems silly, but it's a quick reality check on what you're seeing. FWIW, every morning after 8:00 EST when it's not cold winter weather, I hit up www.spc.noaa.gov/products/out... to check the updated convective map. Those labels would help!

3/2 I know that many get a distilled version of this from their weather apps or news outlets, but getting this fresh from the factory, along with HREF ensemble viewer is such an incredible service to all of us. Our lives literally count on it, I have to say thanks again!

2/2 As an academic and engineer, I get why they are the way they are. But when you're stressed about upcoming weather, sometimes a quick "3/4/2026 8A- 3/5/2026 7:59A EST" might be so helpful. We've all learned to work with it for now, but it might be helpful! Thanks again for all you do!

Dear SPC, we love your weather products! These have given us so much valuable information! One tiny request: While I entirely understand why forecasts are given as Day 1, etc., due to timezones and technical factors, any chance we could have a real date, timeframe, and timezone for each map? 1/2

Does anyone have the rate per kWh? All the new stories post an "average increase", but power consumption varies greatly. It would benefit everyone to have the rate in $/kWh.

An image of the Orion nebula, recorded with a Seestar S50 telescope, stacked for 39 minutes. Image captured in my front yard, depicting the Orion nebula in shades of reds, yellows, pinks, and blues.

Tonight's front-yard view of the Orion nebula. 39 minute stacked exposure.

Update to my post, these can be seen in Google Maps, so the images appear to be real, or at least the farm is. The land mass isn't actually that large though. It does appear that these areas were already pre-cultivated, so it may be reuse of resources. Hard to tell.

Interesting. A lot of the land appears to have been pre-cultivated. Maybe they're reusing the land? I'll update my post to reflect that it's viewable in Maps. The actual land mass isn't very large though, I guess the video images make it look much worse than it is.

Yeah, I mean, it looks pretty hideous, and I'm a big PV proponent. But, I'm still not convinced it's real. The layouts just don't make physical or economic sense. And all of the power aggregation from such a farm would be a nightmare, at least the way that's shown. Wonder if there's a sat image?

I agree that they have local effects on ecosystems. On the other hand, it doesn't appear that humanity will scale back energy demands. So it, alongside wind + storage and nuclear, will be needed to prevent CO2-based species eradications, until humans become more efficient and rediscover nature.

These are very likely AI-generated. The layouts, panel configurations, and panel compositions are all off and don't make sense. I've seen photos of some of the layouts, they're much neater and better configured to fit their environment. PV is much needed right now if we want any species to preserve.

A certain car company has made decisions today that (sarcasm) *surely* won't come back to bite them big time in the arse. The #EV transition is happening, and fast. Companies can either be on the front end or the losing end of this. There are no other outcomes here.

Indeed, regenerative braking only recovers 40-60% of kinetic energy back to electrical. That said, there are of course sweet spots. (e.g., high air resistance at higher speeds vs low speed and drivetrain friction, etc.) It would be interesting to model this and see the efficiency points!

Images from last night's Auroras, taken from suburbs in KY.

Coasting (if available in your vehicle) with regen inputs from a blended brake pedal, for the win. Maximum use of kinetic energy for going far, then regen when you finally need to slow down. Works impressively well.

A view of the Triangulum Galaxy.

Last night's view of the Triangulum Galaxy. Only had time for 34 minutes, but it's pretty bright as is.

And now a major YouTube outage. What's going on, Internet?

A stacked photo of the Andromeda Galaxy, taken with a Seestar S50 using 62 minutes of 10-second stacked exposures.

Last night's backyard pic of M31, the Andromeda galaxy, our closest galaxy neighbor. Probably needed a couple more hours, but it's so bright, one hour already shows much detail.

Looks like a total Microsoft cloud services outage. Can't use Teams or anything else.

On World EV Day, it's time to consider the future of cars and our shared environment. If you can charge at home or work, there is a great and growing list of available models that can fit all of your needs, both locally and on long trips. Great EVs are here NOW. It's beyond time to make this happen!

My fellow nerd colleagues, does this imply we are storing 6 bytes or 12?

A time-stacked, de-noised image of the crescent nebula with reddish-brown colors and many stars.

A backyard shot of the Crescent Nebula last night.

Was this from the aircraft that was missing after the flight? What a mess it is inside such a strong storm. In earlier flights it was easy to see inside the structure of the storm, but with such high wind speeds, it's so much harder to get a clear picture. Simply amazing work!

Best of luck recovering it! Hoping you find the incredible data it must have from that monster storm. Sending best wishes to the team for your amazing work.

A backyard photo of the Pelican Nebula - a 75-minute exposure on a SeeStar S50

Last night's 75-minute exposure image of the Pelican Nebula from my back yard.

Beautiful red strawberry moon tonight! Not a fan of the wildfire smoke during the day, but at night it adds extra color.

Thanks for all your efforts, we stay glued to the outlooks and data products from SPC during these events!

I hear you. It definitely happens pretty frequently. I have to rotate every 3 months or so. I have a QuickJack lift in the garage, so I tend to do most of the rotations myself on a free Saturday or Sunday afternoon (if they happen to exist), but I bring in every 10k miles or so for balancing.

Highly recommend it! Makes a big difference in how quiet your tires are between rotations, and allows you to use your tire's tread life warranty, if you keep receipts or logs of it. Other extreme is to not rotate at all, but your tires will wear out much faster and generally not evenly.