Watch the animated version of the historic winter storm moving Across the U.S.

From NASA:

In a winter marked by several crippling storms, the storm of February 1–2, 2011, stands out. Heavy snow, ice, freezing rain, and frigid wind battered about two thirds of the United States, making it “a winter storm of historic proportions,” said the National Weather Service. This animation—made with images from the NOAA-NASA GOES 13 satellite—shows the giant storm developing and moving across the country between January 31 and February 2.

This image, a still taken from the animation, shows the storm at 4:31 p.m. Eastern Time on February 1. In the image, the storm measures about 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) from west to east. The storm formed when cold Arctic air pushed south from Canada while moist air streamed north from the Gulf of the Mexico. The animation shows clouds building over New Mexico and Texas early in the day. As the system develops and moves northeast, the storm grows and becomes more organized. By the end of February 1, the storm was a sprawling comma that extended from the Midwest to New England.

By 9:00 a.m. Eastern Time on February 2, the National Weather Service reported that 21 states from New Mexico to New Hampshire had received at least 5 inches (13 centimeters) of snow. Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, and Oklahoma declared states of emergency. According to news reports, one in three Americans were affected by the storm.

The monster storm brought record snowfall to many areas, including Chicago, perhaps the hardest hit population center. The city received 20.2 inches of snow, a record for February and the third biggest snowstorm for any date in Chicago. The record was set at 23 inches (58.4 cm) on January 26–27, 1967.

The storm left a solid swath of snow from New Mexico to New England. Images of previous 2010-11 winter storms in December and January can be viewed in the severe storms section of the Earth Observatory.

References

1. NASA Earth Observatory Historic Winter Storm Moves Across the U.S.
2. Animated version of the historic winter storm moving Across the U.S.
3. CNN. (2011, February 2). Powerful storm brings record snowfall across the country. Accessed February 2, 2011.
4. Masters, J. (2011, January 31). Potentially historic winter storm poised to impact 100 million Americans. Weather Underground. Accessed February 2, 2011.
5. National Weather Service. (2011, February 2). Historic winter storm. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Accessed February 2, 2011.
6. National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office Chicago, IL. (2011, February 2). History of 10 inch or greater snow storms in Chicago. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Accessed February 2, 2011.
7. The Hydrometeorological Prediction Center. (2011, February 2). Storm summary message. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Accessed February 2, 2011.
8. Wisniewski, M. (2011, February 1). Winter storm engulfs huge swath of U.S. Washington Post. Accessed February 2, 2011.

Here are some of my recent stories published to GeekDad:

• The New Hess Truck is Coming — And We’re Giving One Away!
• Violent Video Games and the Supreme Court
• The Halloween Hangover
• Move Along and Watch Great Migrations

From Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

and dealing with the drunk cats…..

Today, the 97th edition of the Tour de France starts in Rotterdam, kicking off three weeks of bicycle racing. Twenty-one teams of nine riders each will have to endure 3,600 kilometers of racing and 25 mountain passes to reach the finish line on the Champs-Élysées in Paris.

I spruced up my Top Ten Reasons That Geeks Should Love the Tour de France for GeekDad.

Here are some of my recent posts on GeekDad:

1. Find an ER With findER for the iPhone
2. Whales Tohor? Comes to Boston’s Museum of Science
3. We’ve Got Worms in Our Basement: Composting With the Kids
4. 100 Geeky Places to Take Your Kids This Summer (GeekDad Wayback Machine)
5. Lego Bricks and Felt Tip Pen Become a Printer

Computer-generated map of Pluto from Hubble images, synthesized true color

When picking up The Daughter, I was horrified to see a montage of the solar system on the wall of an adjacent classroom with nine planets.

NINE PLANETS?!?! That’s so 2005.

It’s not that I have anything against Pluto. The problem is that it was mislabeled as a planet when it was discovered because of some bad observations of Neptune. I read Planets X and Pluto a few weeks ago so I had still had a bunch of history and science in my head.

By coincidence, March 13 is the day that the discovery of Pluto was announced. So I put together a post on GeekDad: Happy Pluto Discovery Day.

If still think there are nine planets, you definitely need to read Happy Pluto Discovery Day.

Some of my recent GeekDad posts:

1. Assembling LEGO Creator Super Speedster
2. Assembling the LEGO Atlantis Neptune Carrier
3. 20 Geeky Images from Space
4. Assembling the LEGO Atlantis Turbo Typhoon Sub
5. Own Your World With Location-Based Mobile Games
6. Catalog Your Books Online

GeekDad

Will the world of book publishing be subject to the same revolution as the music industry because of digital content? With the Kindle (or iPad or Nook) do to books what the iPod did to record albums?

It’s not my question to answer. But Jason Epstein from the The New York Review of Books has an excellent view on this in his article: Publishing: The Revolutionary Future

Digitization makes possible a world in which anyone can claim to be a publisher and anyone can call him- or herself an author. In this world the traditional filters will have melted into air and only the ultimate filter—the human inability to read what is unreadable—will remain to winnow what is worth keeping in a virtual marketplace where Keats’s nightingale shares electronic space with Aunt Mary’s haikus. That the contents of the world’s libraries will eventually be accessed practically anywhere at the click of a mouse is not an unmixed blessing. Another click might obliterate these same contents and bring civilization to an end: an overwhelming argument, if one is needed, for physical books in the digital age.

The schedule for Pax East has been released. What is PAX East?

PAX East is a three-day game festival for tabletop, videogame, and PC gamers. We call it a festival because in addition to dedicated tournaments and freeplay areas we’ve got nerdcore concerts, panel discussions, and an exhibitor hall filled with booths displaying the latest from top game publishers and developers.

It’s happening March 26th to 28th at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston.

I will be on a panel with several of the GeekDad writers on Friday night at 7:00. The panel, titled “Bringing Up the Next Generation of Geeks,” will include Dave Banks, Natania Barron, Matt Blum, John Booth, Doug Cornelius (that’s me), Michael Harrison, and Corrina Lawson. We described the session as:

How young is too young for The Hobbit? What should my kids’ first LEGO set be? How can I control my disgust if my child tells me he likes Jar Jar and the Ewoks? When should I buy my kids their first non-six-sided dice? These questions and many more will be discussed by writers for Wired.com’s GeekDad blog and other geek parents. Come share your stories and advice for how to make sure our kids grow up to be geeks like us! Don’t have kids? Show up and find out what may be in store for you if you ever do!

If you are coming to Pax East, please stop by the Wyvern Theatre on Friday night and say hello.

There is also a story in the latest edition of the Boston Business Journal: Geeks and gamers to descend on Hub. Rodney Brown notes that Pax East will be the third largest recurring event in the first quarter, after the Yankee Dental conference and the International Seafood Show.

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Compliance Bits and Pieces for February 19

February 19, 2010
Here are some interesting compliance related stories from the past two weeks. (I reserved last week for my blogoversary.) Details Emerge on SEC Office of Market Intelligence by Bruce Carton in Compliance Week One of the first tools that the Securities Exchange Commission launched after it ushered itself into the Internet era in the mid-1990s…
Read more »

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New York City Enacts New Rules for Its Pension Fund Investments

February 18, 2010
New York City Comptroller John C. Liu announced sweeping changes in the way New York City pension funds make investment decisions. Following the lead of New York state and several other states, New York City is changing how it deals with gifts, campaign contributions and placement agents. Ban on Campaign Contributions Comptroller Liu declines any campaign…Read more »

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Securities Class Actions in Canada

February 18, 2010
With the winter Olympics going full swing in Canada, I thought I would look to how that country is dealing with securities class actions. NERA Economic Consulting just released their 2009 Update on Trends in Canadian Securities Class Actions. Some tidbits: Eight securities class actions were filed in 2009, compared with the 10 filings in 2008. There…Read more »

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Media Leak is not Protected as a SOX Whistleblower

February 17, 2010
Leaking information to the media about bad financial controls is not protected by SOX whistleblower retaliation clause. Nicholas P. Tides and Matthew C. Neumann were working as “Audit IT SOX auditors” at The Boeing Company. They made several complaints about auditing deficiencies to their supervisors. They claimed “that Boeing’s auditing culture was unethical and that…Read more »

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The Economist: Special Report on Financial Risk

February 16, 2010
This week’s The Economist has an excellent special report: The Gods Strike Back. The title comes from Peter Bernstein’s Against the Gods: “The revolutionary idea that defines the boundary between modern times and the past is the mastery of risk: the notion that the future is more than a whim of the gods and that men…Read more »

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President’s Day

February 15, 2010
Washington’s Birthday, the federal holiday was originally implemented by the United States Congress in 1880 for government offices in the District of Columbia (20 Stat. 277) and expanded in 1885 to include all federal offices (23 Stat. 516). As the first federal holiday to honor an American citizen, the holiday was celebrated on Washington’s…Read more »

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Weekend Book Review: In Fed We Trust

February 14, 2010
It is only fitting that I am writing this book review on a Sunday. In Fed We Trust: Ben Bernanke’s War on the Great Panic starts off by telling about the importance of a few Sundays in 2008. In March, there was the Sunday when the Federal Reserve announced an unprecedented action to lend…Read more »

Location-based games and location-based social networking sites have exploded along with the proliferation of GPS enabled phones.

I’ve tried my hand at BrightKite, FourSquare, and Gowalla.

When I heard the developer of Own This World describe his game as a combination of Risk and FourSquare I jumped at the chance to try it out.

You can read more on my latest GeekDad post: Own Your World With Location-Based Mobile Games.

Some of my other recent GeekDad posts:

1. Catalog Your Books Online
2. 10 Things Parents Should Know About The Princess and the Frog
3. Data Privacy Day is January 28
4. A Visit to the Patee House Museum