WEATHER ON SEPTEMBER 11th, 2001

Written By: Brian Neudorff

The above image is an infrared satellite image from the morning of September 11th. With the exception of the HUGE Hurricane Erin out in the Atlantic the weather for most of the United States was quite calm. Here is a visible satellite image of Hurricane Erin and in the upper left hand corner of the image you can see a zoomed in portion of New York and the dust being picked up on Satellite. I also found a quicktime movie of a visible satellite loop from the morning of 9/11 and you can see the debris cloud from the fall of the towers.



(Click for a national view of the surface map)
The reason for the nice weather across the country was all due to a very strong high pressure system located over Indiana and Ohio. It was also a very nice and bright day as far west as the Dakotas. This makes me wonder “What if?” What if the there was a storm system in the northeast and there were flight delays, or just a low cloud deck over the city of Manhattan so the tops of the WTC would have been covered in clouds instead of visible. Could it have changed things entirely? Again these are just what if’s and it doesn’t and can’t change the past.