NASA’s TRMM Satellite is providing meteorologist with a lot of unique opportunities to study tropical rainfall rates, and tropical cyclones. TRMM (Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission) has an on-board radar that can scan storms with incredible accuracy from space.

I recently read Storm Chaser and respected tornado scientist Dr. Chuck Doswell’s latest essay titled – “An Incident Leading to an Implication of Unfullfilled Promises,” which as Chuck’s essays usually do made me do a lot of thinking. The gist of the essay refers to the fact that on June 12th, 2009 at 10:23 PM CDT a tornado formed in the “heart of meteorology” (Norman, Oklahoma) and it ended about 10:38 PM.

The GOES-14 (GOES-O) satellite was launched on 27 June 2009, and is undergoing its Post Launch Test. The first calibrated full disk visible image (above) was received by the SSEC Data Center beginning at 17:30 UTC on 27 July 2009.

Over the past decade a lot of technological innovations has changed the way we chase storms. While I still consider ham radio communications to be an extremely important part of my chase rig for emergency communications, I no longer depend on my ICOM dual-band radio as much as I did just five storm seasons ago.

Oklahoma University and the National Weather Center cut the ceremonial ribbon on the first NWS quality Dual-Polarization radar this week.

The map widget is an overwhelming success. In the past month it has averaged 4 new users per day. That may not sound like a huge number, but considering the number of chasers/spotters out there and those who are using SN – we’re thrilled with those results. We obviously don’t want to create projects that people don’t like and a lot of people have written in with their appreciation for the widget as well as their recommendations for improvement.

Whether your a seasoned storm chaser, or someone who just wants to keep tabs on the latest surface observations, chances are that you’ll find the new stormchase.mobi a useful tool for your hand held mobile platform.

Sirius|XM posted the company’s fourth quarter and full year results today with a pro forma adjusted income of $32 million (compared to a $224M loss of a year ago), making it the first time in the company’s history that it has reported a gain instead of a loss.

We’re excited tonight – and tired! The first flash map widgets specifically for The Spotter Network (www.spotternetwork.org) are finally ready for our first release!

Baron Services has released an update to the Mobile Threat Net system. The new version includes these updates/fixes:

Before you go and update your XM Weather subscription, you might want to keep on eye on the techie news today concerning Sirius/XM and their possibly bankruptcy filing.

If satellite radio died in the woods would anyone be around to hear it? The answer is going to have to wait!

Google just released a new service called Google Latitude that allows people to keep track of one another using their mobile phone, or PC. The service appears to be a play upon popular microblogging services such as Twitter, but with more functionality.