Central Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia continue to be hit by flash flooding. Once again, you can click on ABC Birmingham for the very latest in radar reports, warnings and the current weather forecast from the local television affiliate. I also have a link to the NBC Atlanta Forecast where heavy rain continues this Monday.

Oklahoma today is under a slight risk of severe thunderstorms. Watch FOX Oklahoma City later this afternoon for the latest watches and warnings.

The National Hurricane Center continues to predict no tropical development in the next 48 hours. The one tropical wave I was watching, Invest 98L, is showing a little bit more organization this morning. Currently, it’s just an area of showers and thunderstorms out in the middle of the Atlantic. Dry air over the past couple of days has been getting mixed into the area of disturbed weather, and kept it from developing into a tropical system. No matter what, it won’t affect the US. My previous blog has more details on the dry air that’s been affecting Invest 98L.

-Dawn Brown

Invest 98L looks like it will develop into Tropical Storm Grace this weekend. Click below to read more!

Invest 98L (courtesy NOAA) Click Image to Enlarge

The area of showers and thunderstorms called Invest 98L looked impressive last night on satellite imagery, and right now it’s in an area of warm water and low wind shear.  Here’s the thing. Strong upper level troughs have been developing across the United States this year. It’s led to a cool summer across portions of the midsection of the country and the Eastern United States. These same troughs have been steering hurricanes away from the United States this year.

Upper Level Trough (courtesy Unisys Weather)

This is what an upper level trough looks like. I’ve drawn a couple of lines in red to make them stand out. On an upper level weather chart, they look like valleys in a mountain range. I think that’s the way they describe them in weather class. There are ridges (mountains) and troughs (valleys). See how the one trough is located over the Northeastern United States.  (Ignore the yellows and reds on the map. ) Well, that’s bringing cooler weather to New York, Philadelphia and all the states north of there. The high temperature in New York today is expected to be 70 degrees. These same troughs steer tropical systems once the get close to the United States. This year, because the troughs are so strong, they’ve been steering these tropical systems away from the United States, and into the middle or even far eastern Atlantic. Usually during the summertime, these troughs are very weak, and if they do form, it creates a weakness in the ridge (or mountain) that’s been protecting us from a tropical system. Basically, hurricanes follow the path of least resistance between these ridges and troughs. See how there’s another trough forming across the Pacific Coast? This one will continue its eastward trek toward the middle of the country, and by next week, if Grace becomes a tropical system, it will steer it away from the US coast. This is what TV Weathercasters are talking about when they say the storm is being steered “toward” you or “away” from you.

Dawn Brown

Texas Rainfall (courtesy NWS)

Texas and Louisiana will begin to dry out after a weeks worth of storms dumped more than 10″ of rain in portions of Central Texas and Southern Louisiana. The area of low pressure generating those storms is slowly moving to the Northeast, and the Dallas-Fort Worth area is still getting hit this Monday. Coastal areas are beginning to see a break, but northern Mississippi and Alabama will be the latest victims of this slow moving system before it finally loses steam.

Grey skies across Southern California as a cold front sweeps through. Although beachgoers may not like it, the cooler temperatures are a welcome weather treat this time of year, at a time when wildfires, driven by Santa Ana winds are fed by the hot temperatures in September and October.

It is a quiet Monday across the country, and silent in the tropics as well. We can ease into the workweek.

For a couple of days now, I’ve been meaning to show you an article I saw on Smart Money magazine online. It’s about the fallacy of the 7-day forecast. The author of the article seems to be “revealing” to people that extended forecasts aren’t very good, but I don’t think any forecaster, including the ones he interviews, argues that they are! Television weathercasters give you the 7-day forecast because the computer models go out 10 days. After about three days, the forecast tends toward climatology. But, sometimes, climatology is correct. What I like about this article is the meteorologists give you the limitations of todays forecasting. What I don’t like about the article is the innuendo that weather forecasters “won’t tell you” the limitations of their forecasting, when he has several meteorologists in the interview giving him the “inside information”. Oh, and the Doppler radar does do a good job during a storm of helping the on-air meteorologist forecast the immediate weather event for the next couple of hours. It also helps the forecaster determine whether a storm is severe, and if the public needs to be warned. Here’s the link to the article:

Smart Money on TV Weather

-Dawn Brown

Latest Gulf South Radar Imagery

The showers and thunderstorms aren’t likely to develop into a tropical system, but flash flood watchings and other weather warnings have been posted because of the large batch of rain that continues to make it’s way onshore. For the latest forecast from your local TV affiliate, click on this link: Get Your Local TV Weather!

While some areas will see a bit of a break for a few hours during the day, expect the chance of rain to continue for the next 5 days. Most computer models show the persistence of disturbed weather off the Texas/Louisiana coastline through the middle of next week.

-Dawn Brown

Every National Weather Service Office across the country lists the high temperature, low temperature and rain/precipitation totals for the day after about 5pm. The high temperature of the day is usually reached between 12 and 5pm unless you had a weather event come through that day. I’m going to go through it step-by-step. And, then, I will have an example search to show you how I found the high/low and rain near Houma, Louisiana. FYI… the National Weather Service only has a certain number of weather observation stations across the United States, so you will be finding the climate data of a station near you, most likely not the town where you live.

The first thing you want to do is go to the National Weather Service main site. Here is the link: www.nws.noaa.gov.

Then follow these steps:

1. Type the name of your town and the state in the small box near the upper left hand corner of your screen. (It says Local Forecast by “City,St” above the box. To show you an example, I’m typing in Houma, Louisiana.)
2. Hit the Go tab to the right of the box after entering the name of your town and state.
3. You will be taken to a forecast screen where it will list the current conditions in your town as well as any weather hazards, and the forecast. (This is the page I was linked to for Houma.)
4. This step is very important! You need to find the link that will take you to the local NWS Office near your town.  On the left hand side, just below the NOAA emblem or sign, it will say NWS and the name of the local National Weather Service office. The writing should be in blue. Click on that link.  (If you look at my example page, it says NWS for New Orleans/Baton Rouge, LA.)
5. That will take you to the MAIN PAGE of the National Weather Service office in your region.  (Again, here’s the link to the page in my example: NWS for New Orleans/Baton Rouge, LA)
6. On the left hand column, scroll down to the word Climate, below the word climate, it will say local. Click on the word Local. (Example: It should look like this. )
7. In the middle of the page, you will see a blue bar, with the words Observed Weather Reports.
8. Below this, you find a series of selections.
9. First, select Daily Climate Report.
10. Move over to the next column.
11. Select the National Weather Service Office closest to you.
12. Go to the next or third column. If it’s 7 o’clock at night, and your trying to find the data for today, then you just need to leave “Most Recent” selected and hit Go.
13. If you are trying to find the highs/lows and rain for a previous day, you need to select Archived Data, and select the date you need. Then hit Go.

A new window will open. It should look like the page below:  (The information you want is underlined and in red.)

-Dawn Brown

____________________________________________________________________

These data are preliminary and have not undergone final quality control by the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). Therefore, these data are subject to revision. Final and certified climate data can be accessed at the NCDC – http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov.

Climatological Report (Daily)

000
CDUS44 KLIX 112119
CLINEW

CLIMATE REPORT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NEW ORLEANS
418 PM CDT FRI SEP 11 2009

...................................

...THE NEW ORLEANS CLIMATE SUMMARY FOR SEPTEMBER 11 2009...
VALID TODAY AS OF 0400 PM LOCAL TIME.

CLIMATE NORMAL PERIOD 1971 TO 2000
CLIMATE RECORD PERIOD 1946 TO 2009

WEATHER ITEM   OBSERVED TIME   RECORD YEAR NORMAL DEPARTURE LAST
                VALUE   (LST)  VALUE       VALUE  FROM      YEAR
                                                  NORMAL
..................................................................
TEMPERATURE (F)
 TODAY
  MAXIMUM         80   1106 AM  98    1980  88     -8       90
  MINIMUM         73    127 PM  57    1969  72      1       75
  AVERAGE         77                        80     -3       83

PRECIPITATION (IN)
  TODAY            2.28          5.64 1998   0.20   2.08     0.32
  MONTH TO DATE    4.30                      2.28   2.02     6.32
  SINCE SEP 1      4.30                      2.28   2.02     6.32
  SINCE JAN 1     41.48                     47.68  -6.20    43.40

SNOWFALL (IN)
  TODAY            0.0
  MONTH TO DATE    0.0
  SINCE SEP 1      0.0
  SINCE JUL 1      0.0
  SNOW DEPTH       0

DEGREE DAYS
 HEATING
  TODAY            0                         0      0        0
  MONTH TO DATE    0                         0      0        0
  SINCE SEP 1      0                         0      0        0
  SINCE JUL 1      0                         0      0        0

 COOLING
  TODAY           12                        15     -3       18
  MONTH TO DATE  176                       172      4      184
  SINCE SEP 1    176                       172      4      184
  SINCE JAN 1   2620                      2259    361     2508
..................................................................

WIND (MPH)
  HIGHEST WIND SPEED    30   HIGHEST WIND DIRECTION    SE (130)
  HIGHEST GUST SPEED    43   HIGHEST GUST DIRECTION    SE (120)
  AVERAGE WIND SPEED     6.9

SKY COVER
  POSSIBLE SUNSHINE  MM
  AVERAGE SKY COVER 0.9

WEATHER CONDITIONS
 THE FOLLOWING WEATHER WAS RECORDED TODAY.
  THUNDERSTORM
  HEAVY RAIN
  RAIN
  LIGHT RAIN
  FOG
  HAZE

RELATIVE HUMIDITY (PERCENT)
 HIGHEST    88           100 AM
 LOWEST     79          1000 AM
 AVERAGE    84

..........................................................

THE NEW ORLEANS CLIMATE NORMALS FOR TOMORROW
                         NORMAL    RECORD    YEAR
 MAXIMUM TEMPERATURE (F)   88        94      1991
 MINIMUM TEMPERATURE (F)   72        57      1969

SUNRISE AND SUNSET
SEPTEMBER 11 2009.....SUNRISE   644 AM CDT   SUNSET   711 PM CDT
SEPTEMBER 12 2009.....SUNRISE   644 AM CDT   SUNSET   710 PM CDT

-  INDICATES NEGATIVE NUMBERS.
R  INDICATES RECORD WAS SET OR TIED.
MM INDICATES DATA IS MISSING.
T  INDICATES TRACE AMOUNT.

Gulf of Mexico Satellite Image (courtesy NOAA)

I’m not updating on Hurricane Fred anymore… if you want more information, go to my links under tracking hurricanes, or to the forum pages.

Both the Gulf Coast States and portions of the East Coast are getting pummeled by showers and thunderstorms that will dump heavy rain for the next couple of days. And, the National Hurricane Center is marking both with a low (less than 30%) chance for tropical development. As far as the Gulf Coast rain, it’s mainly being driven along by a mid level storm over Texas. What that means to you is, right now, it’s not tropical. However, it’s a slow moving storm that will dump HEAVY rain over Texas and Louisiana the next couple of days. Most of central Texas is already under Flash Flood Watches. Click on the following link to watch San Antonio’s rainy forecast. (Click on video forecast above the 7-day.)

Those flash flood watches will probably move to the Texas/Louisiana border and then portions of Southeastern Louisiana by the weekend.

In New York and Philadelphia, heavy rain is expected over the next couple of days due to a low pressure system hanging out just off the coast. Here’s a look at the video forecast in Philadelphia. (To see video, scroll down, it will be on the right hand side of the page.) The area of low pressure affecting the East Coast is expected to slowly lift off to the east starting Sunday. They are under flash flood watches as well.

Stay tuned to your local TV station if you live in areas along the Gulf Coast or East Coast for the latest updates. Of course, you can ALWAYS access the latest weather information from my website links here. On the right hand column, scroll down the to the green banner with the headline, “Get Your Local TV Forecast!”. Click on that link below, and you will have access to TV weather forecasts from across the 50 states.

It’s Friday!… I’ll talk to you later… -Dawn

Heavy Rain Moving to Texas/Louisiana

The National Hurricane Center has now noted that area in the western Gulf of Mexico with the potential for development. Currently it has a less than 30% chance of development in the next two days. The NHC gives tropical waves and disturbed weather either a low, medium or high chance for development.  Over the next few days it’s going to encounter some high wind shear as it remains stationary in the western Gulf. Both Texas and Louisiana are expected to see some high rainfall numbers even if the showers and thunderstorms remain unorganized.

Just because I’ve tracked down all the links to all the TV stations across the US, let’s take a sneak peek at what folks in Corpus Christiare saying about this area of showers and storms! By the way, the link takes you to the weather page, then look for the box that says video forecast. On this website, scroll down past the 7-day forecast.

If you want to see what the global computer models have to say, follow my link for Tracking Hurricanes.

Talk to you tomorrow… Dawn Brown

P.S… I’m not really following Fred anymore. He’s losing steam, and will decay in the next couple of days. Plus, he’s way the heck out in the Eastern Atlantic!

Fred Satellite Image ( Courtesy NOAA)

Hurricane Fred has now weakened to a category 2 hurricane, and will further weaken in the next few days.  Yesterday, I was talking about the wind shear the storm was headed into, and it has already weakened the southern portion of the storm. The storm was never a threat to the US mainland, but now it looks like it will decay faster than expected.

There is a lot of curiosity about some showers and thunderstorms in the western Gulf of Mexico. In the next couple of days, watchful eyes across the Gulf will be on this area of rain and thunderstorms to see if a low level circulation develops.  Watch this forecaster from Houston on the developing low.

No matter if it becomes tropical or not, Texas and Louisiana will get soaked Saturday into Sunday. Ever since Humberto and Claudette’s rapid development in the Gulf, forecasters keep a close eye on these persistent areas of showers and thunderstorms so we’re not caught off guard if it develops into a tropical system, especially since it’s so close to land. In the Gulf of Mexico there’s plenty of warm water, so if a low does develop, it can rapidly. At the same time, the computer models don’t have a great handle on this system.

If you really want a techy explanation of the different computer model solutions, check out Crown Weather’s blog today.

Also, both Max Mayfield, former NHC director, and Jeff Masters from Weather Underground have some interesting statistics on this year’s hurricane season if you want to check out their blogs.

I’ll talk to you later!

-Dawn Brown

Looking at the national weather map, Houston, Texas is getting a good soaking today. Click here for the latest video forecast in Houston.

The TV weather guy there also has an analysis of an area of showers and thunderstorms in the Western Gulf that has the possibility of developing. Something to watch, but there’s nothing there yet!

-Dawn Brown

Tropical Storm Fred is currently in a healthy environment for growth, and may end up being the next major hurricane of the 2009 season in the next couple of days. Upper air steering currents are expected to keep the storm in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean Basin well away from the United States. This year, upper level troughs traveling across the continental United States have dominated the tropical weather pattern on the East Coast, forcing these storms on a more northerly path once the storm comes close to the US mainland. Most of the models agree on this track for Fred. Click here to track Fred.

While we like to see these upper level troughs send these storms to the middle of the Atlantic, there is another variable that these troughs and associate cold fronts produce. Once the tail end of the cold front moves into the Gulf of Mexico or off the East Coast, often the front stalls and a circulation can develop along the decaying front. This circulation can allow a tropical system to develop. At this time of year, when a cold front stalls over the Gulf or Atlantic near the coastline, meteorologists watch it closely for possible development. At least one model suggests this may happen in the Western Gulf of Mexico in the next 10 days. We will be watching for that. If you are interested in discussing Fred, check out the MYL Forums.

Also, I have Jeff Masters Weather Undergound blog in my left hand menu bar under HURRICANE BLOGS.  In the next few weeks, he’s introducing a series of blogs on storm surge.  Storm surge has been one of the least understood components of a hurricane’s landfall, but it can be the most destructive component along the Gulf of Mexico. More and more researchers are trying to introduce computer models to give viewers an idea of how storm surge will effect their community during a landfalling hurricane. Storm surge is very localized, meaning the impact is different depending on the terrain where you live. Last year, during Hurricane Gustav, meteorologist Mike Koziara at the National Weather Service in New Orleans briefed me on the storm surge model they run. Koziara explained that terrain factors such as railroads, levees, canals, and the  coastline underwater were all included in the storm surge model. If the storm moves 100 miles to the east or west, this model won’t work, because the terrain is completely different. So, it is an exciting prospect that researchers are tackling this aspect of forecasting a landfalling hurricane.

I just got back from a dive trip on San Clemente island in California. What a great experience! Since Fred is alive and well in the Atlantic, I’ll have another update later tonight.

-Dawn Brown