Mason-Dixon, Lorton meteors in TV cameo Weds.
Amateur astronomer and astrophotographer Mike Hankey, of Freeland, reminds the WeatherBlog that this week's edition of Meteorite Men will include a "short segment" on two recent meteor events in the mid-Atlantic states.
UPDATE: Apparently, the Mason-Dixon meteor has been edited out of the final version of the show. Lorton survives. Earlier post resumes:
The show, on Discovery's Science Channel at 9 p.m. Wednesday, will focus on last year's meteorite fall in Ash Creek, Texas. But Mike says there will be some attention paid to the Mason-Dixon meteor last July 6, and the Lorton meteorite fall in suburban Washington, D.C. on Jan. 18, 2010.
The Mason-Dixon meteor startled residents of north-central Maryland and nearby Pennsylvania with sonic booms and a fiery pass through the atmosphere. A security camera at a York Water Company pumping station caught it on tape. And Hankey captured the space rock's entry by accident on a digital camera hitched to his telescope. Despite a search by meteorite hunters, no trace of the meteor was ever found.
The Lorton meteorite was found quite easily. The fist-sized rock crashed through the roof of a Lorton doctor's office. No one was hurt, and the meteorite was turned over to the Smithsonian Institution.
near the Incan ruins at Machu Picchu, in the Peruvian highlands northwest of Cuzco.
Earth, or elsewhere in the solar system.
As the autumn migration season continues, another bird has flown into the glass windows of The Sun's footbridge over Centre Street. It appears to be the fourth of the season so far. 
the WeatherDeck. They're the annual, or
These are 
"An intense supercell formed yesterday afternoon (19 Aug 2009) just 
It's a tough, expensive job, but someone's got to do it. And, of course, someone's also got to pay for it. So when the city asks for a (another) water rate increase (9 percent) later this year, at least you'll know where the money goes. The proposed hike amounts to $74 a year for a typical family of four using 39 units of water each quarter. 
of the clouds. 
erases the stars. It is costing us billions in wasted energy, contributing to climate change and divorcing us from our heritage in the night sky (right).
For example, light from a streetlight that beams into your upstairs bedroom window is not helping anyone see the street (left). That light is
wasted and intrusive. Such lights should be aimed and shielded (right) so that the light goes only where it's needed. That would not only prevent light intrusion into your bedroom; the proper engineering of the light fixture would also require less energy, since less light would be needed to do the job. 
I spent part of the night listening to the wind howling, and wondering whether the three bags of paper recycling I put on the curb last night would have blown off and papered the neighborhood by daybreak. No one else had put anything out for pickup this morning, and I began worrying that they had seen the windy forecast and decided, prudently, to wait until morning to take out the recycling. I could see the headline in the community newsletter: "Weather guy ignores own forecast, plasters neighborhood with newspapers." I imagined myself spending the morning collecting my own windblown trash.
A small 
President Barack Obama, steeled by many snowy Chicago winters, expressed disbelief Wednesday when his daughters woke up to find that their classes had been canceled for the day.
My daughter used to be addicted to The Weather Channel. She switched it on as she was getting dressed, and fell under the spell of the goofy background music they play during the "Local on the 8's" segment. (An odd child... Me, I'm partial to the 
(for sheer destructive power and lasting impact, here and elsewhere).
As the coastal "nor’easter" heads 
swept rain and snow.
The 
Relatives, say no information can pass into or out of the event horizon. 
Anyway, the idea that summer BEGINS around June 20 or 21 is a recent notion. Many of our ancestors did indeed see this as MID-summer. They used "cross-quarter days" - the midway points between the equinoxes and the solstices - to mark the beginning and end of the seasons. For example, by the Celts' reckoning, our summer began somewhere between the 4th and 10th of May, on a day they called Beltane. And it will end between the 3rd and 10th of August, on Lughnasadh.
First it was Iraq, then Iran. Now Athens, Greece is grappling with unfamiliar depths of snow in this very odd winter in the Old World. Up to three feet have fallen on communities woefully ill-equipped to deal with the stuff. Yet there it is. Here's 
A 
Owned by Landmark Communications, Inc., in Norfolk, the WC Web site alone had 32 million unique visitors in November, the story says. It's the 19th biggest media site on the Web. One estimate puts the value of the whole WC caboodle - Atlanta-based cable TV channel and Web site - at $5 billion. Who says you can't make money in weather?
The US Geological Survey is reporting a powerful earthquake today off Martinique in the Eastern Caribbean that was initially measured at 7.3 on the 
The thunderstorms that swept the Baltimore region last evening dropped widely variable amounts of water. The downpour was torrential, but brief in downtown Baltimore, and the fireworks went off despite a lingering drizzle. Other stations recorded little or no precipitation. Here's The Sun's story on the 
