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Eric Thomas Weather

After 33 years at WBTV I retired in 2021 to continue my love of weather, science and filmmaking.

25/11/2025

We took our grandkids out to the Charlotte Airport Overlook on Saturday evening. I wanted to play with my new Sigma F4 300 - 600mm super telephoto lens. It was actually darker than the picture looks (notice some skyscraper signs already lit) which is why I had to use a slower shutter speed and you see the motion blur in the airplane. Some might prefer to see the motion, others would want to see the plane completely frozen.

As we got ready to leave I turned around and said, WHOA!!! I saw the beautiful waxing crescent moon setting in the west. So I swung around the camera and I also captured a couple airliners in the 'downwind' leg of the landing pattern.

Notice the "dark" side of the moon... that's right, you can see it. How does that work?

Well, at this moment, 6.6% of the moon is lit up by the sun. Let's call it 6% for round numbers. So while we here on earth are only seeing 6% of the moon lit, if you were standing on the moon, you'd see the opposite - 94% of the earth would be lit. And because it is much bigger than the moon, and brighter, it reflects all of that sun's light onto the moon's entire surface. And it's bright enough that we here on earth can see the dimly lit dark side of the moon thanks to the "earth shine" caused by our planet.

I hope you enjoy!

06/11/2025

Hey! I finally did it! I capped off this five-part series on our Yellowstone/Grand Teton vacation. In this final installment, I walk you through our encounters, both planned and unplanned and the video ends with an invitation.

The highlight for me in this trip was my timelapse I shot at Oxbow Bend... one of my best ever.

The video ends with a truly last minute invitation and offer to join us Friday evening, 6pm - 9pm at the Home Again Foundation gala raising money to build affordable homes for veterans and other public servants. If interested, keep reading, plus I'm giving away some gifts for the first five to sign up.

I will post a flyer to this in the comments below. It's at the Levine Senior Center across the street and behind Costco near Matthews.. Dress is casual, and for the $50 donation, you'll receive a sit-down dinner, you'll be mystified by our magician and ready to dance, laugh, and frolic with the musicians of Uptown Dueling Pianos!

But the first person to message me and we confirm a ticket purchase, you'll receive a free - solar powered - weather radio. The following four people will receive a Totes umbrella with a flashlight in the handle.

I know this is ridiculously last minute, but I didn't want to let this event pass by with at least trying to give my friends here a chance to come, enjoy, and learn a bt more why we are doing this.

Either way, thanks for your support and have a blessed week!

02/10/2025

Well, this sure is taking a long time, apologies! Life happens, right?
So "Part 3" actually covers our 3rd full day in Wyoming. Saturday the 13th, which ranged from Jackson - where we stayed - northward across the Tetons and two hours farther north into Yellowstone.

It was a laid back day after our Bear excitement the day before on Friday. and Emily and I were saving energy for our big hike the following day..

But I did get up to Mormon Row and checked off an important item as I captured the T.A. Moulton Barn in front of the Tetons with the classic morning sunshine and wispy clouds dancing on the slopes!

24/09/2025

YELLOWSTONE SHOCKER! We came face-to-face with a grizzly bear and her cub!!!

Ok, I recorded this yesterday on Tuesday and just now posting after some delays. This was easily our highlight of the week as we were practically shaking hands with a mama grizzly and her cub on this Friday September 12th.

If you don't have much time, jump to the encounter at 2:10 in this video! Thanks to Lisa Culpepper (page: Lisa Culpepper Photography) for being an incredible guide!

Enjoy everyone!!!

22/09/2025

YELLOWSTONE, GRAND TETONS… HERE WE GO!

Ok, I failed miserably at updating you all on our trip to Wyoming last week. I was hoping to provide daily updates on the sights and sounds, but time just didn’t permit, so I decided to wait until we returned.

With that said, I’m going to break this up into a five-part series showcasing a bit of what we did and saw in each part, and believe me, we had some epic moments out there!!!

So let’s get started… part one will cover our arrival on Wednesday September 10th and bridge into Thursday the 11th as we were getting settled.

If you can manage to watch the whole video, I promise, the remaining videos will be shorter.

11/09/2025

WHOA!!! I am completely BLOWN AWAY by the response in my last vacation post.

Ok, you all gave me the green light to post about our trip. My goal is to provide useful, or at least, entertaining information to you especially if you decide to plan a trip in these parts.

10/09/2025

I have an announcement, well sort of!

04/09/2025

Hi Facebook friends,

I hope you are enjoying this beautiful Fall weather! My son was nice enough to take me golfing last week. He filmed me on one hole, and it just so happened I came close to hitting a hole-in-one!

You can probably tell I'm not a very good golfer, my lucky shot not withstanding... and my son, Tyler, who has a low handicap and drives it 300 yards was gracious enough to put up with me.

We played at Tot Hill Farm Golf Club, just a little southwest of Asheboro, and it is both gorgeous and very entertaining. Can't recommend it highly enough.

16/08/2025

Happy Weekend everyone! Your Saturday morning sky has the moon high in the sky passing through its third quarter phase.

12/08/2025

New World Record just established for longest lightning bolt !!!

I'm guessing you don't want to get struck by lightning... neither do I. In your mind, what do you think is a safe distance from a storm to avoid a lightning strike? Five miles? 10 miles? 15 miles? You've probably heard me recently, when talking about positive giant strikes (see posts below), which can land up to 25 miles away from the center of the storm. Well apparently you can throw all that right out the window.

Scientists recently determined from satellite data that a "megaflash" lightning bolt stretched over 515 miles from eastern Texas all the way up to Kansas City!!! It happened in October of 2017.

Here are some other lightning facts and figures for you:

Each year lightning kills 20 - 30 people, but injures hundreds more, often for life with debilitating symptoms. For comparison, tornadoes kill an average of 70 people each year.

You won't believe this one. In the US alone, how many trees are destroyed by lightning each year? Answer: 320 million !!!

What's the longest duration for a lightning flash? Half second? One second? How about over 17 seconds!!! That occured in a storm over Uruguay, Argentina.

In Zimbabwe 1975, 21 people were killed by a single lightning strike.

And here might be the craziest story of all: In Dronka, Egypt 1994, lightning struck some oil tanks which burst and flooded the town with burning oil killing 469 people!!!

Stay safe!!!

09/08/2025

In the big picture the 2025 hurricane season has been ho hum so far, but there is still plenty of time for that to change as September approaches bringing along with it the peak hurricane season.

However, the summer season across the Carolinas has been anything but ho-hum. In fact, this map shows the rainfall we have experienced over the past two weeks. Notice that blue footprint across our two states. This is a rainfall anomaly map which simply shows areas with above or below average rainfall. Many areas have received more than 6 inches over and above the typical rain you would have expected during that period. I've seen rain gauge reports of over 8 inches of rain around Raleigh/Apex just this past week alone. And none of this had a true tropical connection.

Along those lines, I haven't heard any reports, at least yet, that are comparable to the problems we had back after July 4th when tropical storm Chantal rolled up through the middle of North Carolina. Similar amounts of rain fell, but this time a state of emergency from flooding occurred around Orange County which encompassed areas from Chapel Hill northward through Hillsborough.

There were over 50 water rescues in that county alone, but not to be outdone, there were more than 80 water rescues in Durham County! Tragically six people died from this rainfall.

I know you've heard the saying turn around don't drown, well, four people were killed in their automobiles from the flooding. The other two were on a boat on Jordan Lake. Even in the absence of an active hurricane season so far, 2025 has been pretty tough on the Carolinas.

Let's hope Mother Nature takes it easy on us this Fall!

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