Heat,humidity stick around for a few days.

Thursday afternoon

Well, yesterday’s update didn’t fare well for the afternoon, but it was better for last night.  Left unanswered were the “whys” for my thinking.  They are equally important for the next few days, and today they’ve been working much better.  Yesterday, the models were showing significant warming in the upper atmosphere – something we refer to as “building heights”.  That process makes the atmosphere more stable and reduces the chances for thunderstorms to form.  Secondly, when the upper air “builds” it forces the weak impulses farther north and east – essentially forcing them to go around the Ohio Valley rather than over it.  So, instead of the almost daily upper impulses coming along a line from Iowa to Indiana to Kentucky (we’ve seen our share of these over the past two weeks), the building heights will push the primary path to NE Indiana to Ohio to West Virginia/east KY.

Obviously, it took longer than yesterday for this process to evolve, but it is firmly in place today and should build a little more for next few days.  So, the result is more heat and less chance of rain, probably through the weekend and beyond.  Current thinking from the GFS is for this to end by next Thursday.

So, for tomorrow and the weekend…

Friday:  Partly cloudy, hot and humid…high…93.  Rain chance: 10%                                     Saturday:  Partly cloudy, hot and humid…high…94.  Rain chance: 10%                                 Sunday: Partly cloudy, hot and humid…high…95.     Rain chance:  10%                                Daily heat index near 100 each day.  Nighttime lows in the mid 70’s.

Beautiful Aurora

Solar activity has been weak lately, but still strong enough for some displays of the Aurora Borealis.       This example is from Lithuania, where auroras are pretty rare.  It’s from www.spaceweather.com .afterglow_strip

Wednesday update

Wednesday Noon

Quick update.  Seems to me the official forecasts for the area are off base today.  The 50% chance for t-storms this afternoon and 50% again tonight, I feel, are way too high.  There are several reasons for this, which I’ll explain later.  For now:

Afternoon:  Partly cloudy, hot and humid…high near 90 (heat index- mid 90’s.  Chance for a thunderstorm: 20%

Tonight: Partly cloudy, warm and humid…20% chance for showers/t-storm…low…mid 70’s.

More later.

Storm chances dropping rapidly

9 P.M. update

You can pretty much drop any thoughts for heavy, strong, or even severe storms for tonight.  Activity has just not developed and although a few showers/ light thunderstorms could still pop up around the area between now and 3 A.M.  However, the way things look now, the rain chance overnight should be dropped to about 30%.

T-storms possible tonight

Tuesday Afternoon

Another weak upper air disturbance will pass through the lower Ohio Valley tonight.  Most of the dynamic energy is moving across the southern Great Lakes, but the heat and humidity over us has grown into a large concern for its thermodynamic  energy contributions.  As a result, an outbreak of  thunderstorms looks likely for this evening and tonight.  The Storm Prediction Center has us in a “slight risk” area for tonight; I’d prefer to use their soon-to-come Marginal Risk category.  Gusty winds and some brief heavy downpours should move across the area roughly between 8 P.M. and 1 A.M.  Chance for an isolated severe storm will be diminishing as the evening wears on.

Looks like the same story again tomorrow.

Wet Sunday

Live by the models; die by the models.

In today’s case it’s death by the models.  For the past couple of days I’ve mentioned a little upper air system that was supposed to stall over Missouri for about 12 hours, then drift ESE toward Kentucky.  But, nature doesn’t really care what the models predict.  Nature has a mind of its own.

Everything was moving along as expected – lots of rain/storms over eastern MO last night as the upper system was expected to pause south of St. Louis for about 12 hours then start moving toward us by late morning with our round of showers/storms to arrive by tonight and continue into Monday.  Sounded pretty reasonable EXCEPT the upper disturbance never stopped!  So push everything up 12 hours and we have a rainy Sunday with the showers/storms moving away tonight.  That leaves much better weather prospects for Monday, but , of course, poorer prospects today.

We’ll see a break from the rain for a few hours this afternoon, but then a renewal (probably between 5-9 P.M. ) of heavier rain, then decreasing lighter showers ending after midnight.

The week ahead looks like we’ll be slowly evolving into a heat wave (highs of 90+) by mid to late week.  Unlike past  heat waves this summer that have built for a few days then quickly ended, this one should last longer – at least into next week.

Now it’s back to the drawing board for this embarrassed forecaster.

Weekend update

Saturday 5 P.M.

There’s an area of (mostly) light rain coming eastward from western Indiana.  It is weakening, and expected to continue that trend, but it should hold together long enough to bring some light rain to the Louisville area between roughly 7-9 P.M. this evening.

The rest of the weekend outlook looks pretty much on course (see yesterday’s post, below).  Slightly better chance –  about 30-40% – . for showers/t-storms tomorrow  until late afternoon.  The primary rain/storm chance remains tomorrow night and Monday.  There could be some pockets of heavy rain, but the GFS and NAM have reduced their rain total forecast from yesterday (especially the NAM) AND the HPC has dropped their forecast from 2″+ yesterday to 1 – 1.50″ today.

 

Good weather most of the weekend

Friday Afternoon

As usual with summertime weather patterns, conditions change very slowly.  But, that can make a large change in rainfall patterns and production.  That goes for this weekend.  Several upper air systems will make a run at us, so we’ll see plenty of clouds and higher humidity, but any significant rain may hold off until Sunday night into Monday.  Here’s how it is shaping up…

A weak upper air system will pass over us late tonight.  It’ll bring us plenty of mid and high level clouds so temperatures should be quite a bit warmer tonight (mid 60’s).  A mix of clouds and sunshine tomorrow as we wait for the next disturbance to arrive.  Highs should be in the mid 80’s.  The next system is somewhat better organized, but is expected to stall by late tomorrow over Missouri.  That may be close enough to push some showers/thunderstorms into our area tomorrow night.  However, it probably won’t  – just about a 20-30% for rain Saturday night.  The Missouri system will probably begin to drift eastward by late Sunday, thus we’ll see our highest rain chances Sunday night into Monday.  (Also, possibly late Sunday afternoon.

The Weather Service’s rain amount prediction group is really big on this system – they are forecasting 2″+ for all of our area from Saturday night through Monday night.  The fact that everything will be so slow moving can certainly add to higher rain totals, but the whole area getting 2″+ inches would certainly be a big surprise to me.

Brief showers

Thursday afternoon

A line of light showers moving through the afternoon won’t last very long.  We seem to find ourselves in the wrong spot at the wrong time situation.  A look at the satellite image belowvissatshows two lines of clouds with light showers being produced by a weak cold front pushing southward.  These showers will fade before sundown, but the cooler air will reinforce the pleasant, dry air mass we’ve been enjoying.  (By the way, good call by the National Weather Service to add in that chance for showers this afternoon.

If you look to the upper-center( Iowa, Minnesota and South Dakota) of the image you will see the classic satellite view of an upper level disturbance.  This one will drop slowly southeast and bring us increasing cloudiness by late tomorrow.  As the system crosses north of us on Saturday, we’ll see a lot of clouds (with a small chance for some light showers) early in the day, The primary effect this system will have on us will be to bring in much higher humidity.  Then, as skies clear Saturday afternoon, We’ll really know that summer’s definitely not finished.  Once the humidity  is in place all we have to do is wait.  A few more of those upper air disturbances are expected to follow the one on the satellite image above.  Some periods of showers/thunderstorms should become more likely, perhaps early Sunday, but a better chance late Sunday and Monday.

 

Changes coming from the Storm Prediction Center

For years we’ve been receiving “Severe Storm Outlooks” from the Storm Prediction Center with three familiar categories – Slight Risk, Moderate Risk and High Risk.  These Convective Outlooks, as they are officially known, appear as maps showing locations where the forecasters expected the possibility for thunderstorms that day and pinpoint areas where they believe severe storms are possible.  The slight, moderate and high risk delineate areas based on the expectations where the most widespread and intense severe storms will be located.

That system will end October 22.  The types of outlooks will grow to five with the addition of “marginal” and “enhanced”.  It is very hard for a forecaster to just draw a line separating expected non-severe and severe regions.  It’s my belief that most of the time, SPC forecasters use the “better safe than sorry” philosophy.  As a result, I believe that in general practice the daily “Slight Risk” category is considerably larger than it should be.  So, I’m happy to see the addition of the Marginal Risk category.  This should eliminate the problems with the lower end of the storm spectrum and ease the worry many people have when they hear “Slight Risk” in the morning.

The “Enhanced Risk”  category covers the border between Slight and Moderate, also a   confusing boundary.  The jump from slight to moderate currently means higher areal coverage AND more numerous and intense storms (over a 10,000 square mile area, say).  Nature doesn’t always cooperate, however, especially when you have two specific criteria to satisfy.  For instance, suppose the area to be hit exceeds the “slight” criteria, but the storms aren’t expected to exceed low-level severe?  Or, vice-versa?   Enter “Enhanced Risk” for that “fuzzy”  zone.  Here’s an example of what it will look like.spcoutlooks

 

 

Here we go again

Tuesday Afternoon

It’s back!  The pleasant, mild, dry days of August.  Now there’s a statement you don’t here too often.  But, this summer has produced an abundance of them with at least two more to go in this current sequence.  Clear, cool nights should produce nighttime lows in the lower 60’s (upper 50’s rural areas) while daytime highs return to the upper 70’s tomorrow then slowly warm into the 80’s Thu/Fri.  A situation somewhat similar to the one we had this past weekend appears to be shaping up in the longer range guidance – we’ll just have to wait and see.

Super Moon among the missing.

Thanks to the clouds and showers most of the lower Ohio Valley didn’t get a chance to view this year’s “Super Moon.”  Super moon is the name given to the full moon that occurs when the Earth-Moon distance is the least of the year.  The distance between Earth and Moon varies because the Moon revolves around us in a slightly elliptical orbit.  The super moon can be as much as 14% larger and normal full moons and up to 30% brighter.  The photos below are from www.spaceweather.com.   The comparison was made by Vese Vauhkonen of Finland.supermoon_strip

The super moon was roughly 50,000 km (about 30,000 mi) closer to Earth than the picture on the left.

Here are some otherssupermoon 2 supermoon 3 supermoon 4

Another showery day

Monday Afternoon

Good support for additional showers mid to late afternoon and possibly into the evening.  But we are finally seeing a change in the upper air wind pattern.  As has happened on a regular basis this summer, an upper level trough – not as strong as several we’ve seen this summer – is digging southward from the Great Lakes and will push away the persistent humid and shower-laden weather we’ve had since Friday.  Another cool, dry air mass will be moving in tonight and tomorrow.  With more sunshine, daytime highs should be just a little below the highs of the past four days, BUT with much lower humidity, it will feel much better at least through Thursday.

What’s in a name?

After World War II our Earth settled into a gradual cooling trend.  So much so, that by the late 1960’s into the 70’s, climate specialists (I use the term loosely) were proclaiming the arrival of a new Ice Age.  Then, a funny thing happened.  Earth started warming. The fervor started slowly but really picked up in 1988 when that world-famous scientist Al Gore (he has one college-level science class to his credit – got a D) and astronomer James Hansen really got the ball rolling on the global warming scare.  At the time, I was very curious about the fuss being made.  After all, our Earth has been slowly warming since the last ice age ended roughly 12,000 years ago.  Yes, there have been long periods of ups and downs over those years, but the long term trend has always been up.

Oh, but this time was different!  Now, it was OUR fault.  Anthropogenic Global Warming!  This was something new and we’re going to save the world.  I’d been in the weather business over 20 years at that time and I’m thinking…”hmm, human produced changes in our weather/climate.  Didn’t we study about that for quite awhile back in college in, of all places, Climatology class?”  Of course we did.  Mankind has been altering, changing, manipulating, and doing numerous other things to Earth for thousands of years.  The surface of the Earth today  wouldn’t even recognize itself from a picture of the earth 1000 years ago.  Has our weather/climate changed because of our activities?

YES!  But, we don’t know in what ways.  You can’t make as many changes as we’ve made and not have an effect on our atmosphere.  So, what have we done about it?  We’ve adapted.  And, if we want to continue as the dominant animal on the Earth, we’re going to have to continue adapting.  The “newly discovered” AGW was laughable.  The talk about reversing AGW was even more laughable, even to the point of being hilarious (to me).

As we head through the 1990’s, the fever keeps growing.  More and more “studies” come out proclaiming the horrible future that awaits.  I’m thinking how difficult weather forecasting is with a 1-2 day window.  Things usually get very iffy by days 5-7.  And, these climate studies are ALL based on computer “climate models” which have never been proven to work.  Somewhere during my trip through the 90’s I had one of those “Duh” moments.  This is NOT science.  This IS political!

Crossing over into the 2000’s, two additional important things have happened.  On the political front a new administration whose science advisers actually believe this climate mysticism and are pushed it on us.  So far we’ve spent 100’s of millions, perhaps billions, of our tax dollars on studies based on models that do not work (phony science) AND projects that produce high priced  energy to replace the lower priced energy  we should be getting.  Think of all the truly useful things that could have done with that money if it had been placed into rebuilding our nation’s infrastructure.  ADAPTATION

The second important event so far this century has been that global warming has stopped. No warming at all this century!  When it became obvious that the warming had stopped, the climate alarmists were pretty nimble – have you heard “global warming” much in the past 6-10 years?  Certainly not, suddenly our greatest fear became Climate Change.  This is pretty stupid, of course, since our climate is always changing” but the perpetrators  have been very skillful proclaiming that this is the next big threat to our existence.

But, now that Earth has not warmed for well over a decade, that climate change thing just doesn’t sound right either.  So, I’ve picked up on a few government releases in the past week or so now referring to Climate Pause.  Don’t they know that our climate never stops or pauses?  Our tax dollars are working hard!

Stuff

Valhalla must have the world’s best drainage system for their greens.  And the drainage on the fairways seemed very good as well.  Nice job.