Our military pilots have been busy this weekend, with two more shooting down objects flying into US airspace from the west.
The first shootdown occurred near the northern coast of Alaska on Friday night (06:45 UTC 11 February), with the object (a smaller balloon) at about 40,000 ft (12,000 m) above the ground. sea level.
As described in my previous blog, I ran NOAA’s Hysplit orbital model, to calculate the retrograde orbit over the past few days of air ending at 40,000 ft (12,000 m), as well as 8000 and 16,000 m (shown below).
Looking at these orbits, people worry that this could be a Russian hot air balloon!
The orbit ends at 40,000 ft starting in western Russia, and the orbit above it also originates in Russia. The lower orbit may have passed over far north China, but that would assume the balloon could move up and down on command.
There may be a reason our military is relatively quiet about this.
I know that many of you are worried about snowfall in the lowlands and mountains on Monday and Tuesday, so let me give you the latest.
The new model’s operations are consistent with heavy snowfall on the Cascades, but only dust cover over parts of the lowlands west of Washington.
Below is the total snowfall forecast (snow depth is LESS) from the UW WRF model for the period ending at 4 a.m. Tuesday, after which there will be little rain.
Up to a foot in the Cascades and dusty east of Puget Sound. But few inches around Portland.
The larger view (again total snowfall ending at 4 a.m. Tuesday) shows noticeable snow over the southern Willamette Valley.
I’ll update the forecast in my podcast tomorrow. And don’t forget the chilly temperatures coming….with sub-freezing temperatures on Tuesday morning
