9/25 - 9pm - Tropics Winding Down, WAVE's New Set

Tropical Storm Karen formed waaaay out in the Atlantic today. This one won't pose any threat to land period! A couple other waves are out in the Caribbean but nothing really of note, save a low near Mexico that could affect that area. Most of the reports associated with these waves and lows are citing increased upper level winds (or shear) as the cause of non-development. This makes sense because we are in a period right now where a large ridge is sitting in the Atlantic (partly causing our misery here) and curbing storms NE and impeding any development that passes to the south of it. We have just a few more weeks of hurricane season left and luckily we haven't had any major problems this year in the US.

As for around here we were HOT again today! Did you know that we broke a 107-year-old record today? We reached 95 and shattered the old record of 92 set in 1900. I'm sick of breaking records; I want my (light) jacket back! This is the fourth and final time I will say this hopefully: there will be no more 90's for the rest of 2007.

Rain-wise, some areas were graced by the presence of a downpour or two this afternoon. My rain gauge in SE Louisville showed not even .01" even though we had a quick drizzle (and I mean quick). Tomorrow will bring more rain to a greater coverage area than today luckily. The GFS favors rain for us and I think we'll get around half an inch tomorrow according to the HPC's QPF:


Finally, I wanted to discuss some recent developments in Louisville's media sector. WAVE 3 TV just unveiled an awesome new set with all the bells and whistles you could think of. More importantly, the weather department looks like Captain Kirk's bridge on the Enterprise (or Captain Picard if you prefer). I've made some interesting observations about the set:

1. All displays on the set are in 16:9 widescreen, meaning a possible move to HD is in the near or fairly near future. Also, the set is very large with a good amount of space between the anchors at the desk, which is needed for the wider aspect ratio of HD.
   
2. The actual WAVE 3 logo that appears on the back board of the main anchor desk and on the LCD monitors in the weather department is different than the current version, meaning a possible graphics and logo change is possible soon (could be with the possible HD sometime soon). Kevin Harned's blog also alluded to some more changes coming soon, which could support this theory.
   

Remember that these are just observations and theories; I'm not spilling the beans on anything. The first station in Louisville to broadcast in HD will get a lot more viewers. I'm seeing more and more people buying HDTV's and they want something to watch in HD on it. Fox 41 (WDRB) broadcast Thunder Over Louisville this year completely in HD with rented equipment and it looked nothing short of phenomenal. If this were applied to everyday news (more importantly weather) it would be quite a revolutionary move. Sorry if that was a little technical but my secondary hobby is video production, hence the video forecasts every weekend.