One of the main U.S. weather satellites fails

Doyle Rice | USA TODAY

One of the primary weather satellites meteorologists use to forecast weather over the eastern USA and the tropical Atlantic Ocean failed late Tuesday, according to AccuWeather meteorologist Alex Sosnowski.

A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) geostationary satellite, known as "GOES-13," experienced trouble with its imaging equipment, he reports. "GOES" stands for Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite.

This is "not good on the verge of hurricane season," says J. Marshall Shepherd, a research meteorologist at the University of Georgia. Hurricane season starts on June 1.

NOAA is reactivating another satellite, GOES-14, just as the agency did last year when GOES-13 experienced a problem, Sosnowski says. Officials expect the new satellite to be ready early Thursday. If the backup fails, however, options are greatly reduced.

Geostationary satellites are in orbit 22,238 miles above the equator, which means they orbit at the same speed as the Earth's rotation, keeping them above the same spot on Earth.

NOAA reports that GOES satellites constantly monitor severe thunderstorms, flooding rainfall and hurricanes. They "are key instruments for meteorologists to provide watches and warnings for these dangerous weather phenomena," Sosnowski notes.

The "geostationary" satellites are different from the "polar-orbiting" satellites that provide much of the data for the computer models forecasters use to predict weather. Some of the polar-orbiting satellites could deteriorate or fail in the coming years, before new ones are able to be launched. This could leave a gap in the weather data that forecasters use.