Contributions – open-weather

2025-01-12 10:44:13

Diepoldpark, Wien, Austria

I stood in a flurry of snowflakes that would not settle. Large, restless and white-grey, they took on the appearance of ashes. From Vienna to LA, with solidarity and love. This is my first satellite image capture of the year.

2025-01-12 07:44:00

Filip Shatlan and Diana Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

2025-01-11 10:56:21

Steve Engelmann

Santa Monica Pier, United States

This is day 4 since the Palisades Fire began and it has been quite the rollercoaster. Regardless, NOAA 18 decided to fly over with an elevation of 89°. You don't get much better than that. I decided to visit the Santa Monica Pier as it has great exposure to the sky, and is about as close as I can get to the fire zone. One of the top destinations for tourists, there was much activity. A bodyboarder screams as he catches a wave. The rollercoaster operator ask his riders if they want to go for a second spin. A neon sign above a cafe reads, "Salty air, and not a care". On a small island of homes, my house defied all odds - standing strong. My classroom of 25 years went up in smoke. About 6 1/2 minutes into the satellite pass you can see a thin strip of clouds headed out to the ocean. The winds have died down, but the fire continues. At just 11% containment, it is now threatening Brentwood and Encino. 8 months of no rain and some strong winds. It doesn't take much to change your course.

2025-01-11 10:08:00

Filip Shatlan and Diana Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

2025-01-10 10:21:00

Filip Shatlan and Diana Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

2025-01-09 18:37:29

Pauline Woolley

The Urban Garden, Nottingham, UK

Another cold frosty night. An 80% Moon illuminates the frost on the grass. Tiny ice crystals shimmer and glimmer in brightness of the reflected moon light. I try and spot the satellite overhead but lots of fainter objects are fighting for recognition in the blinding lunar light. There the pin sharp brilliance of Venus to the west, Jupiter to the south east and Mars rising in the east. On packing away I walk across the grass leaving footprints that remind me of the moon landings or the fossilised prints left millions of years ago by the dinosaurs. As I type this I can hear the news from the next room reporting on the fires in California. What kind of footprints are being left there today and what about the footprints of the generations to come? 0.1 degrees Celsius 90% humidity 1005 mb

2025-01-09 10:33:00

Filip Shatlan and Diana Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

2025-01-08 20:25:10

Sasha Engelmann

Hackney Downs, London, United Kingdom

For the Los Angeles fires: Blame it on the wind: blame it on the ‘devil’s wind’ that gusts over Los Angeles at 60+ mph, ‘fanning the flame’ of five ongoing, devastating wildfires, as yet ‘uncontained’. Blame it on the wind, an unpredictable, invisible, seemingly chaotic, uncontrollable force: the easiest scapegoat. Whose wind is this? Who remembers its names or its cultures? Who is willing to counter the ‘blame’ with the knowledge that a wind like the ‘Santa Ana’ has a cultural history more than 5,000 years old in the lifeways of the Tongva, Tataviam, Serrano, Kizh, and Chumash Peoples, on whose land Los Angeles was settled and built? The Santa Ana winds may be arid and dry, originating from the desert of the Great Basin. These winds may increase static electricity, topple trees, and produce ‘strange luminosities’ in the sky. Yet being affected by a dry, desert wind is not the same thing as codifying it with sensationalist and ‘demonic’ fears. In demonising the wind, whose demonic actions go unnoticed? Which demons are free to roam? As we blame the wind, how can we have a conversation about the extractive legacies of water stealing, draining and rerouting? Or fire suppression tactics that make the world more flammable? Or centuries of encroachment on more and more arid land? How do we talk about the fact that the logic that pumps money into LAPD and enlists hundreds of incarcerated peoples to fight an uncontainable fire for $4 per day is the very same logic that sends arms to Israel as it burns entire cities and perpetuates another prison? How do we resist sensationalist narratives of neighbourhoods where “millionaires are getting a taste of the apocalyptic movies they have produced and acted in” to be able to see the marginalised, differently abled, and elderly existing side by side, whose narratives of ‘escape’, or simply survival, are far less appealing to a media elite? I pray for the sake of my family home (if it still exists) that the wind relents. But this disaster is not about the wind. (images are screenshots from videos by Steve Engelmann, maps by CalFire, words by me)

2025-01-08 07:48:00

Filip Shatlan and Diana Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

2025-01-07 20:36:34

Pauline Woolley

The Urban Garden, Nottingham,

A clear cold night. The winter constellations hang overhead in all their beautiful glory. Orion, Pleiades, Auriga and Taurus drawing out the maps of ancient skies. The lawn is crispy underfoot. The UK is clear on the map except for some small parallel clouds across the counties of Cheshire and the cities of Liverpool and Chester. 1 degree Celsius 90% humidity 1001 mb

2025-01-07 11:25:00

Filip Shatlan and Diana Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

2025-01-07 09:39:57

Steve Engelmann

Pacific Palisades, California, United States

Today is a blustery day in Los Angeles. The National Weather Service predicts a "life-threatening and destructive" windstorm, with gusts of wind up to 160 kph. Over the last 8 months, southern California hasn't received a rainfall event with more than a few millimeters of precipitation. The landscape is dry and the humidity is expected to drop (currently 20%). A spark from a power line can ignite the extremely flammable brush and then carry embers great distances. "Fire season" used to refer to late August, September and October. In recent years, some of the worst fires in California history happened in November, December and January. With a changing climate there is a need to update our terminology. While some people might think this is an excuse to hunker down and ride out the storm, I thought this is a reason to break out the antenna. I went up into the hills of the Santa Monica Mountains and captured a pass. While writing this weather note, I started hearing sirens. A neighbor sent me a text. I hopped on my roof and watched flames come over a ridge (see image 3). Ended up evacuating due to air quality.

2025-01-06 20:50:07

Pauline Woolley

The Urban Garden, Nottingham, UK

It's cold. It's been cold all day. I am stood watching Mars and Jupiter fade in out of the clouds along with a quarter Moon. There are layers of cloud tonight. Lower ones are moving fast and in small wispy shapes. The higher clouds glow an orange colour from the light pollution and as I pad around on the lawn during the pass I hear the splashing of water against my boots and I notice that the lawn is water logged in places. There was so much rain last night and another down pouring of sleet and snow today. Airports were shut, roads and rail lines flooded. More to come. 3.1 degrees Celsius 99% humidity 990mb

2025-01-06 11:39:00

Filip Shatlan and Diana Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

2025-01-05 11:52:00

Filip Shatlan and Diana Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

Another cool, crisp day. Turkey vultures soar on invisible updrafts in the sky. The dry grass is filled with tiny capped nuts, acorn-like but smaller. Surprisingly, dogs search them out and crunch their shells- an unlikely snack. Spanish moss hangs serenely from oak branches, sometimes reaching the ground.

2025-01-04 10:47:21

Steve Engelmann

Bel Air, California, United States

Today I thought I would visit LA's Getty Center. They are coordinating a project called PST:ART which includes over 70 exhibitions throughout southern California with a focus on how art and science collide. The Getty Center also has an amazing outdoor area with spectacular views of Los Angeles. What a great place to also grab a satellite pass - I thought. When security took a look at the disassembled antenna I was bringing along, they had second thoughts. I wasn't able to convince security, or her supervisor, that my intentions were harmless. But I've learned to be flexible. On the spot I hatched a plan B. With 20 minutes to go, I used my speed-walking skills to relocate on an overpass where Sunset Blvd crosses the 405 freeway. On the first image you can see the Getty Center in the background perched on a hillside. The view was a step down from the Getty, but also, not bad. I'm sure there were many suspicious looks from the busy street with a strange man pointing an antenna at the sky. Then again, this is a stone's throw away from Hollywood. At a little over 8 minutes in, a commuter bus blocked by reception for two seconds. A line of static documents the interference. Life throws us many curveballs. The next four years should be no different.

2025-01-04 09:56:00

Filip Shatlan and Diana Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

The ‘Cheshire Cat’ moon hung ponderously over the old golf course at West End in Newberry. The sky was a spectrum starting at the palest yellow to blue and violet. In the tract housing that surrounds a good part of the field, I noticed paper taped to windows with the writing facing out, like a label of completeness, while in other windows Christmas tree lights shone out. On this last of many walks in this park, I felt an eerie sense of quiet.

2025-01-03 16:14:00

Cosmos Astronomy Club

2025-01-03 10:58:05

Steve Engelmann

Pacific Palisades, California, United States

It is hard to pass up an opportunity when a satellite is passing by with an elevation of 87°. Back in Los Angeles I thought I would try out roof-top parking for an unobstructed view. The skies were mostly cloudy with a cool marine layer bringing in a little fog. There was also a light scattering of stratocumulus and high cirrus clouds, but no precipitation. The Air Quality Management District initiated an Air Quality Alert. An inversion layer, which is common in LA, traps air pollutants low to the ground. For this reason there is a ban on wood burning. The fine particulates get deep into lungs and can trigger a range of health issues. Could use some rain, but nothing in the forecast for the next 10 days.

2025-01-03 10:07:00

Filip Shatlan and Diana Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

Hurricane Idalia has haunted several conversations with locals on the west coast of Florida. In Crystal River, a sleepy seaside town known for its warm springs and manatees, the severity of Idalia was attributed to “a trifecta: king tide, full moon, west wind”. This phrase stayed with me as the New Year passed and the holidays drew to a close. Before spending time in Florida, I had little knowledge of the diversity of hurricanes and which local conditions affected their impact. Hurricane Helene apparently was a “muddy one” as it dragged up tons of mud into houses, streets and dry surfaces, and so repair was even more laborious. I heard the same person from Crystal River say that “because hurricanes tend to hit at night, you never know what’s around you”. They were pointing to Christmas Island, a small patch of land in the middle of the mouth of the river that had been the site of a single house before Idalia- after the storm hit, locals could only make out the Christmas lights strung up around the darkened house, hence its name. It was bought and rebuilt in 2024, right before Helene hit, and now stands crumbling and empty. We also passed a line up of sail boats in the rivermouth, two of which had sunk during Helene, their sailing masts pointing out of the water crookedly. “They didn’t tie up properly for the hurricane” we learned. Yet dozens of other boats were peacefully anchored adjacent and around the sunken ones. Their owners had stayed on their boats during the storm.

2025-01-02 21:39:00

Filip Shatlan and Diana Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

2025-01-02 18:37:00

Cosmos Astronomy Club

2025-01-02 10:20:00

Filip Shatlan and Diana Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

Migrating sandhill cranes, common apple snails and wild Spanish horses emerged from the tall grass and reeds of Paynes Prairie on a hike yesterday afternoon. The air was much cooler and crisper than previous days, and the humidity dropped from 90% to 50%. We came across an impression in the mud, the outline and texture of which looked strikingly like the sideways body of a pig. There were even tiny lines that looked like fur, and hoof prints where it got up after rolling around. The Paynes Prairie visitor centre had boasted a large poster of a wild boar with very black fur and gleaming eyes, and the title on top of the image said, in bold letters, 'Alien invaders'. Another section of the educational exhibit had information on the history of the prairie, and featured a wall sized display about Seminole and Potano Indigenous communities. Amidst information on Seminole pottery, hunting tools and agriculture, one sentence acknowledged that: "Seminole populations declined in the 18th and 19th centuries due to war, disease and land dispossession". But which wars? Which diseases? Land dispossession by who? These questions and answers were absent.

2025-01-02 10:19:52

Steve Engelmann

Newberry, Florida, United States

Went out to capture a satellite pass with a super high elevation (87°). Found an abandoned golf course in the process of being repurposed with a relatively clear skyline. The skies were mostly clear with some cirrus clouds toning down the sunlight. It was a crisp 10°C at 10AM, which seems a bit unexpected for someone not from Florida. Just at the satellite was at it's highest point, an airplane left a contrail, as if to mark the spot.

2025-01-02 10:06:55

Pauline Woolley

The Urban Garden, Nottingham, UK

A bright and crisp morning. Blue skies and frost underfoot. There is a stillness to the day and though it's already the 2nd January the new year feels like it's still slowly unfurling. Blue Tits and Robins interject with pips and chirps that are bumped off the musical score by the prehistoric caws and croaks of the corvids. The British Isles are clear. A rare sight indeed. 2 degrees celsius 82% humidity air pressure 1011 hPa/mb

2025-01-01 10:33:00

Sasha Engelmann Steve Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

Today marks the official permanent installation of the Gainesville Automatic Satellite Ground Station on the roof! We did one more test of two AGS's (15 and 12) running in parallel and receiving the same satellite shortly after 10:30am from the roof. Both received stunningly clear images, even though the pass was only around 65 degrees at max elevation. One V-dipole was mounted on the permanent installation site, and Steve held the second. The former received an image with less interference, which made sense, given it had nothing around it to possibly affect the antenna's radiation pattern. After drilling a pilot hole through the PVC that holds the antenna to the (now waterproof) wooden mast, we used a wood screw to solidly connect the two. We stretched out the RG8X coaxial cable throughout the backyard to make sure there were no kinks, and screwed one end into the base of the antenna on the roof, using zip ties to hold the cable against the mast. Following one edge of the roof, we bolted the cable down with small cable brackets, and looped it under the garage door overhang, following the edge of the moulding around the door to the floor, where we hooked it under a piece of wood. Steve drilled away some of the wood on the inside part of the garage door corner, where we passed the cable through to the inside, testing the garage door could open and close without causing any friction. We then bracketed the cable to the moulding along the bottom of the garage wall to the corner where there is a work desk and a power plug. We had a good metre and a half of cable left, and gently looped this around twice. After the cable was stretched out and secured, we returned to the roof, where we oriented the V-dipole to 'true north' using a professional compass, which meant we had to apply a 6 degree West declination (based on the difference between magnetic North and true North from our position in Florida). One of us oriented the antenna with the compass while the other screwed the wooden mast tightly into the steel mount with two screws. We also wrapped the UHF connector at the end of the coaxial cable with some vinyl electrical tape to protect it from UV radiation and water damage. Back inside, we cleaned up the wood shavings, glue, and spare screws. As we didn't have any extra 3D print casings for the Florida AGS, we DIY-ed a small cardboard box, and hooked up AGS 15 in its corner. It lit up, and let us know that it was going to collect a NOAA-15 pass shortly before 7pm this evening!

2025-01-01 05:54:00

Cosmos Astronomy Club

2024-12-31 14:02:00

Cosmos Astronomy Club

2024-12-31 11:14:24

Steve Engelmann

Newberry, Florida, United States

Got up on a roof in central Florida with my nephew to do a little training and compare two different antennas on a satellite pass. The sun came in and out of the clouds often. Combining the warm December temperatures, humidity and the dark roof surface I came down a little sweaty. On the last day of 2024 it is always interesting to assess the year that just passed and contemplate what lies ahead. 2023 was the warmest year on record regarding global temperatures. The consensus is that 2024 will end up being warmer still. At this moment there is a polar vortex sending frigid temperatures to the midwest and northeast. Ironically, climate change makes these events more likely. Searching for opportunities to dial down carbon emissions would be a great new year's resolution.

2024-12-31 11:00:29

Pauline Woolley

The Urban Garden, Nottingham, UK

A low winter sun brushed over the bare trees and though it tried to break through it was beaten by the cloud. While the pass happened I moved the outside furniture and bins around in preparation for the windy weather that was forecast for the afternoon. 10 degrees Celsius

2024-12-31 09:15:30

GREECE, Northern Greece

Northern Greece

NOAA 19 from Greece at 09:15AM local time ( 07:15 utc time)

2024-12-30 11:28:00

Sasha Engelmann Steve Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

We were late in plugging-in the semi-permanently mounted V-dipole antenna to the 'recording' AGS, but happy to see it standing on the peak of the garage roof, glinting orange-pink in the sunlight, without anyone attempting to hold it in place, as it received an image from NOAA-18. After several antenna radiation pattern calculations, we decided to try a test antenna height of 0.8 metres off the pinnacle of the roof. While some radio forums suggest putting the antenna as high as possible, others suggest this is not necessary, especially if one is already mounting on a semi-conductive wooden roof (as opposed to concrete or steel). Depending on what surface the v-dipole antenna takes as 'ground', the antenna height can create different patterns of reception, and can even lead to 'null' points where no signal data can be received. However, as Gainesville can get very strong, hurricane force winds, and we couldn't see many examples of tall antennas or rooftop weathervanes in the neighbourhood, we opted to keep the antenna height under one metre, and 0.8 seemed to work great today, despite our lateness. To secure the antenna mast to the roof, we used a steel 'weathervane' mount with special wood screws with deep ribbons that we had gotten at the local ACE hardware store, and a good coating of a transparent sealant gel called, somewhat counter-intuitively, 'Through the Roof!' We managed to hit a stud with one side of the steel mount, which was a good sign for the sturdiness of the antenna, but also meant that the drill pushed further into the roof on the stud side of the mount, and slightly unbalanced the mount. We unscrewed, knocked some wooden 'shims' under the metal pad at the stud side, and checked its straightness by hanging a roll of tape on a golden ribbon next to the mast. Tomorrow, hopefully, we will be able to tie the RF cable onto the mast, and bracket / secure the cable to the roof, wrapping it around the edge of the garage door and entering the garage where the AGS will stay plugged in.

2024-12-29 20:52:41

Pauline Woolley

The Urban Garden, Nottingham, UK

A night time pass. It's 8 degrees Celsius. Cloud whispers across the sky. Jupiter is a small smoky dot that battles for attention. There is a slight breeze and it feels much colder than the temperature states. 90% humidity 1018 air pressure

2024-12-29 17:45:00

Cosmos Astronomy Club

2024-12-29 11:41:00

Sasha Engelmann Steve Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

A huge amount of progress was made today with AGS reception! It is hard to contain the excitement while writing this weather note. After several months exploring ‘herringbone’ distortion patterns and deep diving into NOAA APT + Raspberry Pi tutorials, the team found an ‘instructable’ tutorial via which several people seemed to be receiving relatively long and clear NOAA images. In this tutorial, Grayson noticed a filter option for rtl_fm called -F 9 that we hadn’t tried to implement in the AGS code yet, and he added it in an update yesterday. Last night, the roof mounted turnstile in Florida had to be taken down due to a lightning storm and ‘extreme’ tornado warning. Yet even though it was up against a garage wall and under an overhang, the last evening pass of the day yesterday showed telemetry data at the top and bottom of the image, where previous captures only recorded static. This morning, despite an ongoing storm and tornado warning, the Turnstile was positioned out on the front lawn for a 70 degree max elevation pass shortly after 11:40. In stark contrast to previous ‘letterbox’ type images in which satellite data only appeared in the central strip of the recording, today the image is significantly longer and clearer, with telemetry data clearly showing through static at the beginning and end of the pass. Also, the typical ‘herringbone’ type distortion seen in all previous images appears to be gone! More testing will verify this but at present this is something to celebrate.

2024-12-28 11:53:14

Sasha Engelmann Steve Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

To continue our antenna comparison, we sat on the roof shortly before noon with a weatherised V-Dipole and the tripod- mounted Turnstile, looking north. The V-dipole was hooked up to AGS 15, while the Turnstile received via an android phone running SDR++. The image attached to this post is from the latter. After the pass, Steve did a soil texturing test which revealed the local soil to be ‘loamy sand’.

2024-12-28 04:35:00

Cosmos Astronomy Club

2024-12-27 14:06:00

Cosmos Astronomy Club

2024-12-27 09:56:00

Sasha Engelmann Steve Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

We joked that Orlando kept getting farther away as we drove south on 75, east through Ocala National Forest, over the waters of Lake Monroe, and alongside cattle pastures and skeleton scarecrows. Rain splattered intermittently on the windshield. Billboards declared that ‘at 18 days since conception, a baby’s heart is already beating’, or ‘man up: your child needs you.’ An entire single story house rolled down the highway taking up two lanes, flanked by pickup trucks. A corner ‘yard art’ shop burst with bronze eagles, brown bears, American flags and an original Bob’s Big Boy sculpture, complete with a checkered red and white outfit and a sculptural hamburger on a plate.

2024-12-26 16:13:00

Cosmos Astronomy Club

2024-12-26 10:09:05

Gainesville, FL, United States of America

United States of America

This was my first time picking up a satellite signal! Very intriguing process. It was chilly (compared to typical Florida weather) and very cloudy, but not windy. There's a bit of South America in the lower part of the image, such as the Panama Canal, as well as most of the East Coast. We can see some tougher, perhaps stormy clouds moving in from the bottom.

2024-12-26 10:08:00

Sasha Engelmann Steve Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

Florida balances over one big aquifer: a hidden cavernous water system fed by rainfall that stretches beneath the everglades, wetlands and an ecological system known as 'moist sandy pine / hardwood woodlands'. Walking through the Sweetwater Wetlands south of Gainesville yesterday, we met some of the water on its way into the depths. Today, at Rainbow Springs, an hour further south, we saw some of it come out, bubbling up through pale white-gray sand, so abundantly that it creates the Rainbow River, a wide, flat river sustaining alligators, turtles, catfish, frogs, coral snakes and other wildlife. Rainbow Springs exists because of the thinner karst rock separating the aquifer from the surface, while elsewhere in the state, the rock-shield is much thicker. The upwelling makes the water below feel very close, even reachable, but we learned that the water in the Floridan Aquifer is between 17,000 and 26,000 years old. The springs seemed otherworldly in their crystal clear shallows, ferns and mossy trees, and two impressive waterfalls cascaded over towering rocks. One of the waterfalls was named 'Seminole Falls', after local Indigenous peoples who never ceded their land. We speculated that the two tall waterfalls might have been built up as the upwelling spring water deposited minerals over thousands of years. Later a park ranger informed us that the waterfalls were entirely man-made in the 1930s, created with sediment dredged from the bottom of the springs, and that water has been power-pumped to the top of the rocks for decades, just so visitors can watch it fall.

2024-12-25 16:26:00

Cosmos Astronomy Club

2024-12-25 10:22:00

Sasha Engelmann Steve Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

"What is this obsession with 'manned' or 'unmanned'?!" jokes Bowen Yang, playing 'A Drone' on Saturday Night Live. "For the record" Bowen continues "I can get a man whenever I want!". The skit plays on political divisions haunting thousands if not millions of American Christmas Eve dinners this year. I had not heard about the reported drone sightings prior to arriving in Florida, but they have been raised by local family members at every opportunity. "What is the government really doing?" "Remember the media explosion about that one Chinese balloon?! Now there are hundreds of drones and no one is talking about it!" Or, "I just worry about what could happen in New York on New Years Eve". Earlier in the week, when Steve and I set up the turnstile antenna on the roof of my Mom's house, a family member walked over and asked if we could listen to the drones. I decided to preserve a bit of mystery: "this is for satellites, but both satellites and drones communicate via radio waves".

2024-12-24 10:34:00

Automatic Ground Station 12 Florida

Gainesville, Florida , United States

We ran two AGS at the same time to test the difference between a weatherised V-dipole and a static mounted Turnstile on the top of the roof. The pass was around 68 degrees in maximum elevation- so not ideal, but good enough for a comparison. Steve reclined on the roof and used a spare curtain rod to hold the V-dipole in a static position for eleven minutes. We ran a spare radio cable from the V-dipole through the garage door to AGS 12, while AGS 3 stayed connected to the turnstile. Comparing the images is interesting: AGS 12 / V-dipole picked up the satellite signal a little earlier, but more bands of interference run through the start of the image. In contrast, AGS 3 / Turnstile pick up the signal later, but the middle part of the image is generally clearer. The antennas lose the signal at about the same time to the South.

2024-12-24 10:34:00

Sasha Engelmann Steve Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

After a few hours at Florida's coast, one begins to see beyond the obvious signs of damage from Hurricane Helene to houses and infrastructure, and other more subtle signals become visible. At the edge of the marshes in Suwannee, a town at the mouth of the Suwanneee river, the land had subsided significantly. We spotted a red life jacket caught in top of a stand of high reeds near the waterline. Near the Cedar Keys museum, a bleached log had been lifted into the upper branches of a Cedar or Juniper. "Have a good time on the island- or what's left of it" said a Cedar Keys resident named Tom as we left the community garden he had set up and repaired from storm damage. We noticed how local mud clams grow in clumps, clustering on each other, rather than on rocks, like the clams and mussels of California and the UK. In the mud, the footsteps of boots traced a path to a dense outcrop of clams, presumably for a local clam harvest. Raccoon feet looked like tiny hands sunk deep in the mud. "When I was young we all used to go clam stomping" said a woman we spoke to in Cedar Keys. "You would stand in the mud and stomp your feet down over the clam. They were huge" she made a sign with her hands, fingers arranged in a large diamond shape, "nothing like what we eat today", she added.

2024-12-24 05:55:00

Cosmos Astronomy Club

2024-12-23 22:32:51

Tiny amounts of rain at receiving spot. Image shows some rain clouds over France and Bay of Biscay and just off the coast of Ireland in the Atlantic Ocean.

2024-12-23 17:22:00

Cosmos Astronomy Club

2024-12-23 11:17:00

Sasha Engelmann Steve Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

"How high did the water get?" asked Steve. Our waitress silently walked to the door of 'Steamers' cafe and pointed to a green line drawn on the wall above chest height. "The previous high water level was all the way down here" she added, bending all the way down to a wave pattern drawn with Sharpie about a foot off the ground. "Then Idalia was here" she said, referencing the 2023 Hurricane, and pointing to a black mark around two feet off the ground, not far from the lower mark. "We prepared for it to be somewhere in between" she said. In the midst of the bustling cafe at lunchtime, we all took a moment to look at the marks on the wall in silence. The distance between the water level that the town of Cedar Keys had prepared for, and how high the water rose during Hurricane Helene, was almost unbelievable. Later, driving through Suwaneee, another Gulf-side town north of Cedar Keys, we saw tree branches hoisted into upper tree branches, boats that appeared to have been lifted and dropped in driveways, broken windows, boarded-up holes, and debris still clinging to the upper branches of palms, cedars and other bushes. The newer houses were built on stilts 16 feet high or more - the new 'code' for building, we had learned from the waitress.

2024-12-23 10:47:00

Sasha Engelmann Steve Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

2024-12-22 11:29:00

Sasha Engelmann Steve Engelmann

Patio Homes, Newberry , United States

Day 1 of the Florida Automatic Ground Station testing phase. A turnstile antenna is taped to a tripod sitting on the angle of the roof. An RF cable runs through a crack in the garage window to the AGS on a worktable inside.

2024-12-21 11:40:57

Sasha Engelmann Steve Engelmann

Old golf course next to W Newberry Road, Gainesville, United States

A clear, cool, breezy day here in Florida. We stand on separate hills in the former golf course, one of us with a turnstile antenna, another with a v-dipole. Later, comparing images, we notice how there is a clear line at the midpoint of the turnstile's image that doesn't appear in the image made with the dipole. This line is appearing at almost the same spot in previous images collected with the same laptop and antenna - a signature of the laptop? or a glitch in antenna reception, at the peak of the satellite pass? Later in the day, we test the same antenna from the roof, shaded by southern live oaks. As there is no wind or rain predicted, we tape it to an old camera tripod found in the garage, simply stand it up on the roof's apex, and run a cable through a crack in a window.

2024-12-21 11:29:00

Arbroath, Scotland

Yellow weather warning just starting here. Bright but very very windy from 2 floors up, leaves swirling everywhere, bins falling about

2024-12-20 11:54:51

Sasha Engelmann

Southern live oak tree, former golf course, Newberry, United States

After a few warm, humid days, the air today felt lighter, cooler and clearer. I took a long walk around the neighbourhood, and it wasn't long before I came across the edge. A grid had been carved into the land near a local forest, sandy flats exposed, and the sounds of hammers and staple-guns echoed back and forth. I walked to the very limit of the housing development and found a gap in the trees, but as soon as I entered the forest I could see someone was living there, or at least squatting for a while, in a shelter made of tree branches. Being alone around sunset, I turned away and found the empty pavement again. As I returned home, the orange sunset light was glowing through the palms, matching in intensity the light-up candy canes on a nearby lawn.

2024-12-18 10:07:46

Sasha Engelmann

Patio Homes, Newberry , United States

Cumulus clouds tower to the east of "Patio Homes" in Newberry, so sharp and iridescent, they look like they have crystalline facets. It is muggy today, but I stubbornly wear my Mom's flannel-lined denim jacket on my walk to the local golf-course-turned-park - I am needing protection. The political 'climate' of Florida has been on my mind today. An organisation called Safehome ranks Florida the second most unsafe state in the USA for LGBTQIA+ people based on current legislation and records of hate crimes. Governor Ron De Santis' GOP-led 'Don't Say Gay' law, passed in 2022, barred instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through the third grade on its inception, and was later expanded to all grades. It had a chilling effect across the state, caused queer teachers to hide photos of partners and take down rainbow flags, queer festivals to be cancelled, and books featuring queer characters to be removed from curriculums. It also inspired a series of other similar laws in states like Arkansas, Alabama, Indiana and North Carolina. A 2024 'settlement' clarified that LGBTQIA+ discussion can happen in classrooms "as long as it is not part of official instruction", and that the law doesn't apply to books with incidental references to LGBTQ+ characters or same-sex couples, "as they are not instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity any more than a math problem asking students to add bushels of apples is instruction on apple farming". Though it is a relief to know that some books are being allowed back 'in', it is frightening to think they were removed from teaching in the first place, and the comparison between queer characters and 'bushels of apples' feels particularly wrong. Ron De Santis called the 'settlement' a 'huge win'. In August 2024, all of the webpages on the Florida state tourism website related to LGBTQIA+ resources and travel advice were quietly removed. On my walk back to 7th street, I notice two American flags raised high on a dedicated pole in the front yard of an olive green house.

2024-12-17 10:20:29

Sasha Engelmann

Old golf course next to W Newberry Road, Gainesville, USA

The unusual humidity and warmth woke me up from a dream in a shadowy landscape, and it took me more than a few seconds to realise I was in Florida. Peaking out the window I saw a suburban street framed by massive palm trees, southern live oak, bald cyprus and lots of ferns. Spanish moss trailed down from the southern live oaks, sometimes so thick it seemed to cover the entire tree. On a morning walk I discovered what seems to be an old golf course turned into a neighbourhood park, and I climbed the only hill (a very small mound) to see further across. As the landscape is so flat, I could see further than expected. On the other side of the cul-de-sac where I slept, there appeared to be a quarry full of excavation machinery and a bright turquoise pond, a bit too turquoise to be non-toxic. As I listened to NOAA-19, a group of men in high viz outfits drove up and down the golf course in small open door vehicles that appeared to be cutting the dry, light brown grass. I watched them run over and over the same spots, and wondered what the purpose of this was- a seemingly futile looking attempt at edge-maintenance, kicking up small clouds of dust.

2024-12-15 11:03:50

Sasha Engelmann

Hackney Downs, London, United Kingdom

Today is my last satellite pass in London during the year-long attempt at capturing satellite images and weather observations that began on the solstice in December 2023 and will come to an end in a few days. Hackney Downs was the best version of itself for the occasion, a low-lying sun shining across the grass, and reflections from apartment block windows adding a kind of sparkle or glimmer. Tomorrow I travel to Florida to visit my Mom who moved there a few months ago. As I traced the typical arc of the satellite orbit, I realised I would need to invent a somatic ritual for this year's solstice- both as a way to recognise the culmination of this near-daily practice of satellite image capture and weather sensing, but also as a means to start a new cycle, a new set of practices that I can't quite foresee yet. On a call with two very good friends later in the afternoon, this sentiment was confirmed. Speaking a set of rituals they have carried out during a time of transition, a time that is joyous but not without difficulty, one of them said "everything is meaningful, everything is magical - it has to be".

2024-12-15 09:26:13

Steve Engelmann

Pacific Palisades, California, United States

The view from the bluffs was a sunny and calm Pacific Ocean with only a distant layer of low clouds hugging the horizon. A fifteen minute drive north along the coast would take you to Malibu where roads are closed due to the Franklin fire. A week earlier a fire erupted late at night. 8 homes were burned as Santa Ana winds gusted to 100 kph and humidity levels dropped to 5%. Pepperdine University was completely surrounded. The fire stands at 43% containment, but dry winds are expected to return in a few days. In November of 2018, the Woolsey fire burned 97,000 acres in just a few days. The term "fire season" has little meaning at this point. Insurance companies have been refusing to write new policies due to the increased risk of loss due to the changing climate. This last week California agreed to allow insurance companies to increase their premiums in response to the new climate reality.

2024-12-13 17:53:00

Los Angeles AGS

Los Angeles, United States

2024-12-12 11:42:49

Sasha Engelmann

Hackney Downs, London, United Kingdom

London is all glare and reflection today as a very low cloud-mist settles over the city. The sheen of street signs, asphalt, vans, and buses makes everything more obviously aggressive and frantic. As I cycle to south London after dark, a white Prius pulls out in front of my bike, so close I have to skid to a halt. When the driver looks over his shoulder, and sees me braking and motioning my fright, he hardly blinks as he merges into the centre of the road. The tops of tall buildings are drowned in cloud so it feels like we are living in a reduced space, the ceiling coming down. I am reminded of the fictional city Ravicka in Renee Gladman's novel Event Factory. Ravicka is a city of smoggy, ‘yellow air’ that, “vibrates around the foreigner in the street” (Gladman, 2010: 41). Edges and borders shape-shift as the city appears to rearrange itself, or, as the main character observes, “the singing structure eludes me” (Gladman, 2010: 93). Today, in Gaza, a house was flattened in the packed Nuseirat refugee camp, while two separate strikes targeted local workers securing aid convoys. US officials claim they have a 'jurisdictional dispute' with the ICJ and reject its call for arrest of Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant; another 'structure' that continues to elude.

2024-12-11 11:55:04

Sasha Engelmann

Hackney Downs, London, United Kingdom

Whether by icy air or circulation of blood, the act of going out for a satellite pass at lunchtime managed to break a mild migraine - my first ever, I think - that had been ongoing for the last twenty four hours despite many painkillers, salves, and hours lying down. By the time my brain and vision had relaxed from the pain enough for my senses to be alert to detail in the world, the sun had fallen. I haunted the park at night, peering into blue-lit windows and noticing the ways streetlights highlighted the elegant curves of plane tree branches from below. A faint oval-shaped pink cloud hovered over one hill of the park like an omen. Two dogs tossed and tumbled in the dark, their paws vying for dominance and their teeth glowing. They were eerily quiet except for their panting breaths. A person pushing a baby stroller walked briskly along a lit path with a tied up Christmas tree slung across their back.

2024-12-10 11:35:24

Sasha Engelmann

Hackney Downs, London, United Kingdom

to / desire / the world / as it is / not as / it was / falling / feather / attaches / to new life The third poem in CA Conrad's book 'Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return' makes me forget to breathe while I read it over coffee. for a moment / when the hammer / approached we thought / is that thing coming this way I think of the many 'hammers' still falling on Gaza, on Syria and Lebanon, and of the metaphor of a meteor strike as world ending event, when we already have so many- we are the fractal / drop to hear / our own / harmonics / in the muffled / underground / hum of seeds

2024-12-09 10:07:04

Sasha Engelmann

Hackney Downs, London, United Kingdom

The sky was a thin, eggshell blue when T and I woke up this morning. Two cats, a ginger and a spotted black one, were playing hide and seek in the overgrown grass of the back garden. For a few hours, perhaps three or four, the sun shone in London, but the night came so quickly that every flat on the street had lamps turned on by three. I spent most of the day writing and thinking about projects sent to me by a network of friends and collaborators from whom I had solicited 'new and exciting work in the geohumanities beyond the US / UK'. My friend Cecilie sent me a link to a project called The Conference of the Birds, a transdisciplinary, socially engaged arts collaboration named after the 12th century epic poem by Persian poet Farid ud-Din Attar. Focused on the loss of birds in the High North, the project involves community based exhibitions and events in Norway, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Iceland and North-Russia. Reading the conference programme, I learned that one of the participants is a twenty five year old person who left home at 17 to learn birdsong and learn to survive alone in the forest. Apparently they can now sing the songs of 130 different species of birds, and they continue to live outside of human dwellings. In their profile photo, they are pictured shoulder up, with bright blond hair in dredlocks, and a small black bird on their shoulder, to which their face is turned in affection. News came over the weekend that the Assad regime has fallen in Syria. We see scenes of thousands of people celebrating in the streets, crying and cheering. On Democracy Now, an interviewee refuses to 'analyse' the political moment, saying that analysis needs to be suspended while the feeling of this moment resonates.

2024-12-08 21:12:27

A hotel, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

The Netherlands

I lean out of the hotel window to catch a noisy signal. The signal and noise come in waves: signal rising, noise rising, signal rising, rising, rising, rising. "Assad’s gone." "I told you," my closest Syrian friend writes from Hong Kong. "How are you celebrating?" I ask. He sends a photo of him looking sharp, wearing a Mercedes cap, with a keffiyeh draped over his shoulders, holding a slice of red velvet cake. "U have no idea how ecstatic I am," he writes. No one I know believed that this day would come. And, at what cost? "I'd written off a future without Assad," WhatApps a former human rights colleague who, in 2016 interviewed survivors of Saydnaya Prison. I recall her saying that the investigation had almost folded as they could not find enough interviewees because so few people left the prison alive. I watch on Al Jazeera as a stream of men and women walk up a dirt path between mine fields, into the open gates of Saydnaya.

2024-12-08 10:19:14

Sasha Engelmann

Hackney Downs, London, United Kingdom

"You look like the old man from Back to the Future" T says to me as I head out to capture a satellite image in still-raging Storm Darragh. "You mean Christopher Lloyd?!" I ask and she smiles a yes. I wonder about the resemblance as I walk to the middle of the park and set up a makeshift shelter for my laptop with one of the umbrellas borrowed from the communal umbrella area near the entrance of our building. No matter which umbrella I chance to grasp, I always end up with a wire poking through torn Rayon, like a featherless wing. To keep the umbrella firmly over my laptop, and thus to protect it from random sprays of rain seeming to come from all directions and nowhere, I stood on the handle with one foot while shakily steering the antenna. When sharp unexpected gusts threatened to carry the umbrella away from my exposed keyboard I had to lean my entire weight on top. There were a surprising number of people in the park with their dogs, so these antics were in full view. A chocolate Labrador came bouncing over. Normally I am happy to play with dogs while holding my antenna, but this one threatened to collapse my entire delicate balance in the wind. "You nosey dog!"" I heard a woman's voice say before the wind drowned her out. When I finally got to the end of the pass and started packing up, my fingers were so icy cold they fumbled, and somehow I managed to get a slab of mud on my trackpad. Later at Cafe Oto I saw the great poet, ritualist, mystic and queer icon CA Conrad read their poems. For almost fifty years, CA has travelled by car across the US, writing poems and inventing somatic rituals. One of their rituals involved leaving tear off paper notes on notice boards across Philadelphia inviting people to call a number and leave a message for Elvis. Several people would call each day, some multiple times. Another ritual involved them bathing their body in the sounds of extinct species. Later they started working with the sounds of coyotes, crows and foxes: "We've got to learn to love the world we have, not the one we lost" they said. I was moved by all of their poems, but one in a new pamphlet (created in collaboration with Jacken Elswyth, a queer banjo player) resonated especially well today. It ends: "I've got the wind I say / with both hands".

2024-12-07 20:23:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station 10

I woke at around 6am to winds buffeting the flat and a car alarm going off on the street. Can winds cause car alarms? I wondered as I drifted back to a light sleep. This morning, the needle of the barometer teetered far below 1000 hPa and pointed at the diagram of a storm. Indeed Storm Darragh was already swirling across the U.K., a storm so violent that the Met Office issued a red wind warning, alerting people of the threat to life – only the 19th since 2011.

2024-12-07 05:01:00

Los Angeles AGS

Los Angeles, United States

2024-12-06 11:19:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station 10

The needle on the barometer crept up from its place around 1,009 hPa yesterday afternoon to 1019 today around noon. True to the barometer, the sky opened up into a clear, crisp blue. I was reminded of Gaston Bachelard's writing on the aerial imagination, and his writing of air as 'thin matter' that is especially sensible to poets.

2024-12-06 11:18:06

Sasha Engelmann

Hackney Downs, London, United Kingdom

As I look ahead to the final sprint of a writing project, for which I will be submerged in books and my laptop the whole weekend, I am inspired by the collections of geographical thinking and arts practice that I pull out of the towering pile of books on my desk's side-table. I read of 'volcanic polyphonies', 'magmatic languages', 'fluvial hydropoetics', 'sand saltations', 'geo-mimicry' and 'reclaiming energy flows'. I think about the ways in which, across scholarship and creative practice, artists and writers are amplifying the animacies and memories of the elements, from Sotaventine rivers in Mexico, to tidal islands in Scotland, to the humid 'warm fronts' of Southeast Asia. In the satellite image that I capture today from Hackney Downs, I wonder about the repeated patterns and rehearsals of clouds in the North Atlantic, and consider these patterns as another form of air's 'working memory... a memory of energy' (Szerszynski, 2019).

2024-12-05 17:52:00

Los Angeles AGS

Los Angeles, United States

2024-12-05 11:32:21

Sasha Engelmann

Hackney Downs, London, United Kingdom

The satellite image starts in darkness. Absent of any rays of light from our nearest star, the top left hand corner of the image is almost pure black. I think of NOAA-18 and its near-infrared sensors trying to capture any stray photons as the satellite crosses the Arctic circle and the Nordic countries. The darkness feels vast, like what I imagine the deep space around Earth must feel like. While planting a willow tree named Hildegard at the Stave Hill ecological park in South London on my lunch break yesterday, I dug into deep, black layers of topsoil. Rebeka, keeper of Stave Hill, had inherited a mountain of rubble deposited from war-ruined buildings, as well as imported trash, on which the eco park was established in the 1980s. She asked all of the schoolchildren from nearby schools to bring worms to the hill, and over the decades, the worms got to work. The deep, dark mulch that I dug into yesterday is the intergenerational inheritance and gift of these worms, and the soil that my almost seven year old willow tree will grow into. Hildegard joins around ten other willows of ‘diverse varieties’ planted in a new willow coppice near Russia Dock Woodland and the Globe Pond. As Rebeka explained to me, over the decades, these small twig-like willow trees will sprout from their bases, and their bendy branches will be sustainably harvested to build fences and other infrastructure around Stave Hill, another gift for the future.

2024-12-04 07:50:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station 10

2024-12-04 06:13:00

Los Angeles AGS

Los Angeles, United States

2024-12-03 21:48:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station 10

London's air is a crisp, cold air today, but the movement of the city keeps me warm. The pressure on my barometer reads over 120 hPa, and the arrow of change points to 'clear' weather. I spend the day in rooms full of students in colleagues, on multiple tube and overground trains, and on busy high streets. Walking from my university campus in Bloomsbury to Tottenham Court Road at sunset, I can almost feel the warm glow of each body as it passes by me in the crowd.

2024-12-03 18:51:00

Los Angeles AGS

Los Angeles, United States

2024-12-02 15:32:00

Los Angeles AGS

Los Angeles, United States

2024-12-02 10:31:29

Weitao Wang and Sasha Engelmann

Fire escape at the back of Queens Building, Department of Geography, Royal Holloway University of London, United Kingdom

This weather note was written by Weitao Wang, PhD student in the Geography department at Royal Holloway University, currently doing a fantastic project on the 'The geopower of air and fire: a cultural geography of fiery rituals in China'. “It’s a typical day in the UK, partly cloudy day, a bit windy, and not too cold. As it’s the first time for me to participate, I feel a sort of transit in terms of the ‘body-(satellite)-weather’ relation. At the beginning, I found myself disconnect with the weather (and satellite) because I had no idea of where it would come from and where it would go. However, as time moved on, I felt my body gradually coordinate with the satellite movement in the sky as I listened to the noises in the signal. At the end, the signal slowly faded with noise, which made me wonder whether my direction was still correct and thus feel out of sync again with the satellite". "The weather images produced on the screen reminded me of the previous remote sensing course I had took before, where the date collection process was more detached, abstract and rational because we were just sitting in front of the computer, clicking, and typing. However, today’s outdoor data acquiring seems to invite me to be closer to the real-time weather dynamics.”

2024-12-01 10:07:00

Sasha Engelmann

Hackney Downs, London, United Kingdom

In a recent article on 'Clouding knowledge in the Anthropocene', Kate Lewis Hood proposes a "cumulative reading - where cumulative shares an etymological root with cumulus, a type of cloud (OED, 'cumulate') - that shifts from clear skies to fog, between atmospheric transparency and opacity" (2018: 83). Exploring poetry including The Weather by Lisa Robertson and Drift by Caroline Bergvall, Lewis Hood suggests that "such experimental practices enable a shift from asking whether to read or interpret in a certain way to engaging with the weather system of a text: its unpredictable changes and complex patterns" (2018: 185). If today's weather system in London was a text, it might read like this passage from Robertson's The Weather: Our skies are inventions, durations, discoveries, quotas, forgeries, fine and grand. Fine and grand. Fresh and bright. Heavenly and bright. The day pours out space, a light red roominess, bright and fresh. Bright and oft. Bright and fresh. Sparkling and wet. Clamour and tint. (Robertson, 2001: 10)

2024-11-30 20:10:00

Sasha Engelmann

Hackney Downs, London, United Kingdom

I've been testing open-weather Automatic Ground Stations all week, and as we are still seeing some unusual patterns and distortions in the images, I brave Hackney Downs long after sunset tonight with AGS 12 and my Yagi-Uda antenna. It is wet and cool but not freezing. Today the pressure on my home weather station (given to me by Soph on my birthday last weekend) reads 1024 hPa, and points toward the symbol at one pole of the barometer that says 'clear bright sky'. This feels at odds with the low-hanging cloud that I feel all around Hackney, but it is true that the weather is stable, and it doesn't feel like a storm is brewing, yet.

2024-11-30 18:38:57

Waxeneck, Austria

2024-11-29 11:08:30

Sasha Engelmann

Near Ledbury Building, Friary Estate, Southwark, United Kingdom

I found myself at the Southwark Reuse and Recycling Centre shortly before 11am this morning. I have been fascinated by this place for a while- it is a series of gigantic warehouses where one can bring any kind of object, from clothes to appliances to batteries to cleaning equipment to stones and plates to furniture, in any condition, and after putting each item in the right place, the team at the Centre takes care of sorting, testing and repurposing. Clothes and linens are sent to local charities, appliances are tested and re-used if possible, batteries and old phones are recycled and household items of all kinds are either repurposed or ground down into their raw materials to make new things. As I pulled up in a cab with a bunch of stuff from my old flat in the trunk, an older man with long gray hair was manning the entrance, and assessed me and my things before allowing me entry, like a guardian or gnome giving way to a magical place. I took my time sorting my things into different corners of the warehouse, and was amazed at everything else that was there, from phones that looked like they were last used in the 90s, to very nice bags of clothing. In various corners and levels of the cavernous space, I could see staff moving around. As there was a satellite pass shortly after I left the centre, I found a corner of a nearby housing estate- one with at least three tower blocks of dozens of stories each- and propped my laptop on a mossy wall. Later I noticed how odd the concrete infrastructure of the estate was. There were multiple sharply angled concrete features built into the walkway in between the tower blocks. Their shape and star-like structure, and simultaneous brutalist aesthetic, reminded me of some of the socialist monuments I had seen in Croatia and Bosnia while on fieldwork earlier this month. The crisp blue sky opened above the estate, and magnified the concrete edges.

2024-11-28 09:37:09

Steve Engelmann

Venice, California, United States

Went out to the Venice Pier to capture a satellite pass on Thanksgiving. From the image it looks like blue skies for the entire California coast. The pier was busy with sport fishermen. One approached me and asked me if I was looking for aliens. The aliens he was referring to, however, were not extraterrestrials. He was suggesting that immigrants were coming ashore via boats at night. We I explained that the NOAA-19 satellite was harmlessly taking our photo, he suggested we all give it the finger. Sarah Josepha Hale had been campaigning for decades that the US celebrate Thanksgiving. In 1863 she finally convinced Abraham Lincoln to make the last Thursday in November a national holiday. In the midst of the Civil War, it was intended to find common ground and unify the country. Many Americans express anxiety at sitting down with relatives and navigating the inevitable awkward conversations. Sometimes I wonder if I am the "crazy uncle" at the table.

2024-11-28 08:44:24

Southern Ocean, somewhere in the vicinity of 170°W, 57°S, Antartica

This is an image taken from the porthole next to my desk on the RVIB Nathaniel B. Palmer on the day I imaged the weather. Typically the weather decks on the ship are closed during storms like this, but I was allowed outside to take my satellite reading. It was so windy I had to hold onto the antenna and my computer the entire time.

2024-11-26 10:37:48

Steve Engelmann

Topanga, California, United States

Captured this satellite pass from a helicopter landing site on a ridge of the Santa. Monica mountains with the San Fernando Valley to the north and the Pacific to the south. From the overlook you could see small patches of light precipitation. I was visited by a curious crow and a grizzled hiker. The hiker had more questions.

2024-11-26 07:58:00

Sasha Engelmann

Hackney Downs, London, United Kingdom

After another round of Automatic Ground Station testing late last night, I saw that there would be a NOAA-15 pass around 7:50am today. Carrying the AGS in a tote bag, and my turnstile antenna in another, I found a spot on the largest field in the park, as the sun searched above the horizon toward an array of small cottonball clouds. A man was in the middle of the field before me, pacing up and down with a flip phone in his hand. The grass was damp and water-logged. A few schoolchildren hurrying along the park's main path looked over and pointed in my direction.

2024-11-26 06:15:00

Los Angeles AGS

Los Angeles, United States

2024-11-25 18:09:02

@astro.anderson

South West England, United Kingdom

As storm Bert leaves I take the opportunity to test my mobile rig consisting of electrical wire in a joiner, a short coax, RTL-SDR and a Samsung Galaxy S6. With no rain and a light breeze I was quite happy wandering around and aiming it roughly. I did not expect it to work so well after reading up on the 137MHz antenna variants and the precice calculations, pass filters and leaky coax.

2024-11-25 18:08:48

Sasha Engelmann

Hackney Downs, London, United Kingdom

The air bit my fingers as I held onto the metal handle of my turnstile antenna in the pool of darkness that is Hackney Downs at night. A police siren rang out in the distance and a high-speed chase progressed, two police cars tailing another car around two sides of the park. Suddenly a faint neon light appeared to bounce and leap toward me, revealing itself to be a small bulldog wearing a glow-in-the-dark collar. NOAA-15 circled overhead, scanning the outlines of North Africa, Italy and Croatia until I lost the transmission in the blurriness of the Arctic.

2024-11-25 11:57:44

Sasha Engelmann

Hackney Downs, London, United Kingdom

Overnight, mountains of plane tree leaves have amassed on sidewalks, against walls and fences. Leaves paper walls, cars and bike sheds. While Storm Bert has resulted in mass-rearrangements of leaves in London, elsewhere in the UK roads have been flooded, and thousands of people were without power. Although relatively minor compared to these other events, the leaf-mountains feel oddly dramatic in today's calm, blue sky weather. Photographs don't do them justice- they are space-invaders, yellow-brown fillers of unused corners and parking spaces, where the westerly wind carried and dropped them.

2024-11-25 11:19:06

Diepoldpark, Vienna, Austria

I feel a dangerously numb to news of extreme weather. Yesterday, as I read a long and moving article about drought hit farming communities in South Africa, Storm Bert inundated costal towns in the UK. Is numbness what happens when, to quote deputy first minister of Wales Huw Irranca-Davies, the feeling is “here we go again. These traumatic weather incidents are a pattern of our weather”?

2024-11-24 11:08:24

Steve Engelmann

Malibu, California, United States

I went to the Lois Ewen Overlook in the Santa Monica Mountains hoping to maximize my capture length, but missed the first few minutes of the satellite pass. At the beginning we were in complete fog-out with a visibility of maybe 20 meters. By the time I took photos there was better visibility. The day before was the first precipitation of the year, though not even 1 cm. Slightly more rain in a few days. Los Angeles is rare in that it has a mountain range that bisects the city. The COP 29 negotiations ended today. Experts assess that $1 trillion/year is needed to assist developing countries as they address climate impacts and build a low-carbon infrastructure. The countries agreeed to $300 million. The Trump presidency vows to withdraw from the Paris agreement - again.

2024-11-24 09:58:41

Sasha Engelmann

Hackney Downs, London, United Kingdom

Storm Bert - the 'named storm' that was brewing on the Atlantic when I last contributed to the Archive on Thursday - is sweeping the UK this weekend. "More than 200 flood alerts put in place and three men die on roads as wild weather crosses country" reports the Guardian this morning. The flood alerts are due to the rapid melting of ice and snow across the north of England and Scotland, as the storm brought milder temperatures. Indeed today in London, it is shockingly warm, around 17 degrees- a huge jump from previous days. The Met Office has issued yellow warnings for rain and wind across large swathes of the country into Sunday, and this is felt in London, with gusts battering houses, trees and infrastructure. As I braved the park with my turnstile antenna, I noticed how a mountain of plane tree leaves had been pushed against the fence near the train tracks, drowning two bikes and the fence itself. In the middle of Hackney Downs, the force of the wind meant that people walked with their heads down, hoods pulled over their faces. My laptop flung wildly left and right as I tried to track the satellite pass. The turbulence reminded me of a day back in 2021 when Soph and I went out to Burgess Park to capture an image of Storm Eunice- against the advice of the Met Office- and I had to kneel on my laptop to keep it from flying away. The blustery conditions affected the satellite image I captured today, as I struggled to keep hold of the antenna. Oddly, although the Guardian headlines its reports with various numbers of injuries and deaths across England and Wales, reading further into the reporting, a phrase consistently repeats: 'It was not clear whether the incident was linked to the storm'.

2024-11-22 08:21:11

Southern Ocean,

Another day, another storm in the Southern Ocean. I thought about removing the tip of my finger from my photo of my station, tucked in with the Zodiac boats and surrounded by coring equipment, but it shows a signal of how difficult it can be to operate anything that isn't tied down. The rolling of the ship and the strength of the mind make any one-handed task just on the edge of impossible. I don't expect to experience weather like this again in my lifetime, but I also don't hold a lot of expectations that anything will remain as expected.

2024-11-21 11:09:00

Sasha Engelmann

Hackney Downs, London, United Kingdom

Today's test of an Automatic Ground Station involves me carrying the AGS in a tote bag to keep it dry and away from dogs, and tracking the satellite with my Yagi-Uda antenna. The results show a diagonal current of squigly lines in channel b - lines we think might have something to do with a recent update to the code in the AGS system that attempted to produce clearer images, but might have introduced other noise signatures. The air is still freezing, and I regret not bringing gloves and a woolly hat.

2024-11-21 07:17:23

Steve Engelmann

Pacific Palisades, California, United States

Took another satellite capture from the bluffs over-looking the Pacific Ocean. Over the last couple of days a "bomb cyclone" formed and is making landfall in the Pacific Northwest. The name comes from how fast the storm developed. Heavy rains and strong winds have hit Washington state already. A few lives were lost to falling trees. From the image you can see a tail of the cyclone that might bring some precipitation to Southern California in the next few days. While recording the pass a construction worker came over for a chat. He asked if I was recording aliens. I later pulled up a hotspot, decoded the wav file and showed him the image. He then asked me if the world is really round or flat. I guess sometimes it is however you want to see it.

2024-11-20 20:39:00

Sasha Engelmann

Hackney Downs, London, United Kingdom

A freezing night in the park, with a clear, faintly star-lit sky. As I return to Hackney Downs long after sunset to test the open-weather Automatic Ground Stations, I am getting better at recognising night-time park activity. Though many people warned me of entering the park at night, I am growing to feel more safe. Perhaps its something about holding a tall pole with a metal object attached at the end. I've also realised that, while daytime park activity happens on the fields, with dogs galloping and racing around each other, night-time park life stays close to pathways and the deeper shadows of trees. I have rarely seen another person walk directly across the largest field, where I stood this evening. As I watch the BBC weather report later in the evening, I learn that the beginnings of a 'possibly named storm' are brewing in the North Atlantic. I wonder and try to anticipate what the name of this storm will be.

2024-11-19 20:49:00

Sasha Engelmann

Hackney Downs, London, United Kingdom

It has rained, it has snowed, and the crevices and corners of London are thoroughly drenched in semi-freezing moisture. This is testing the infrastructures of the city, a city that one might expect could have weathered many cold winters in its time. Yet, one of my best friends, K, who was over for a spontaneous Monday dinner last night, told me and T of her crumbling, disintegrating roof in Dalston. The roof has been leaking for months, and mould has been growing along the walls and in corners. She had stopped paying rent after her umpteenth attempt to ask the landlord for repairs, failed. Within weeks of her stopping payment, the landlord had workers visit the flat, and they claimed to have 'fixed' the issue. But yesterday, when she got home after dinner, she texted me photos and videos of the rain coming straight down onto her floor. A long curving crack in the ceiling gave me shivers- as if the whole roof was going to collapse. Luckily, K left to stay at her girlfriend's place. I couldn't help but think how many people in London are feeling similar exposures to the rain, the cold. How many walls are being eaten from the inside out, by the creep of humidity and the mould that thrives in it? I tested the AGS in the park late at night today. I didn't want to 'expose' the AGS in the park, less because of weather, wind or rain, and more because a number of people have had phones stolen in the park recently. As the AGS is so conspicuous with its glowing light, I hid it in a tote bag. For the antenna, I wrapped the legs of an rtl-sdr v-diple around the top of a PVC pipe. Standing in the middle of the dark field, holding the pole to the sky, I felt a little like a fictional character enacting some magical ritual. The moon rose against the silhouetted plane trees and the outlines of bodies crossed under lamp posts. Most avoided the dark, open grass.

2024-11-18 11:05:52

Kleingarten Schmelz and Waxeneck, Austria

It's cloudy and cold, but no longer freezing. It's also Monday yet, I mistakenly checked the satellite pass times for Sunday. My displaced weekend feeling is because N and I have taken off work. We decided to only last week. The idea is to spend a day outside the heavy weather that has characterised this year. So far, we have gone swimming and eaten omelettes with pickles. Later, we plan to cook a roast and watch an episode of Self-portrait in a Coffee-Pot. In other words, cultivate our own fragile high pressure system. If its strong enough, maybe it'll even persist into the week, this indoor sunshine.

2024-11-18 08:07:00

Sasha Engelmann

Hackney Downs, London, United Kingdom

It was 8am, but the sun hadn't properly risen over Hackney. As stream of uniformed children ran across it diagonally, somehow in an evenly spaced line, sleepily on their way to the primary school on the opposite corner. In five minutes I was smothered by a black terrier, trounced on by a visla, and I had to separate an Australian shepherd from the previous two, while their owners called vainly in the distance. Perhaps my status as a single dog-less human in the middle of the largest field meant I was a good one to mess with! As I was testing an Automatic Ground Station outside for the first time, using a battery pack and my phone as a hotspot, I was anxious that one of the dogs would sit or step on the delicate cables or pee on the station itself, open as it is to the air because of the need for heat vents. Luckily only one dog leg brushed the AGS, and in a few minutes more, they had raced off. The satellite image collected by the station was oddly grainy, and I resolved to try again later tonight, after 9pm.

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