Sunday, March 22, 2020 6 P.M.
A weak upper air system will pass over the area tonight. However, it’s not likely to bring much rain. Low level moisture is very low, so it’s going to take a long time for the rain/snow above us to saturate the air to bring us some rain. A few sprinkles or patches of light rain are possible this evening. However, our best chance for some light rain will be for rush hour tomorrow morning. Overall, total rainfall from this system will most likely be a trace to a couple hundredths of an inch.
If you’ve been watching radar this afternoon, you’ve been seeing in action what I described above. If you have watched Louisville radar, you’ve seen rain all around us, but none close to us. However, if you’ve seen so-called “composite” radar, it looks like we’ve had rain for the past few hours. In fact, it has been raining aloft, but not reaching the ground. It’s evaporating before it hits the ground. You may see gray vertical streaks coming from the clouds. That’s called virga – falling precipitation evaporating before it reaches the surface
Note: Composite radar, which most media outlets show, integrates data from all NWS radars in the area. Locally, what we are seeing is a merging of radar data from our radar (at Ft. Knox) with data from Nashville, Cincinnati, Indy and Evansville. While our radar sees no rain, the others all show rain aloft over Louisville. Compositing also creates problems for accurately locating thunderstorms.
Stuff
Being of a certain age, I’ve been closely following the spread of the coronavirus. I’m also a scientist and have been closely watching the numbers. As a result, I’m convinced we’ve reached the point of no return. Within the next day or two, I expect the U.S. healthcare system to become completely overrun. Our Prevaricator In Chief (PIC) constantly tells us we have all the medical supplies we need. But where are they? (Perhaps he sent them to our friends in North Korea?) It’s obvious PIC has no sense of science. Many of his serious science statements have been just harmlessly funny. But, this time, his failure to even consider his science/medical advisers has allowed a great plague to take hold of our citizens. He was advised of the possible consequences of coronavirus as early as January. Instead, we got “It’s just the flu” , “Don’t worry about it” and it’s a “Democrat Hoax!”
It looks to me as though the next two weeks (at least) are going to be very bad. PIC and Congress will throw trillions of dollars at the problem, but it’s not going to do much good. That’s a lot of money to spend on a “Democrat Hoax”.