9/30 - 6:30pm - NAM Sniffing Out a Hurricane

I looked at the GFS and it had some sort of tropical system on the map for late next week. Yeah, we all know how accurate the GFS is. But then I peered at the NAM for Thursday. This is what it looked like:



Yes that is a hurricane on the bottom portion of the map near Louisiana. I would say that this is a terrible scenario, but luckily this is just a very preliminary landfall estimate for this potential system. This will change many times as we go throughout the week. This system will supposedly come from a disorganized blotch of thunderstorms just east of Florida right now. Now this is a similar route to a depression we had last week that made landfall in Fort Walton Beach, FL (great place to vacation by the way) that didn't cause too much of a problem. Hopefully we'll be able to say the same for this system by the end of this week.

I wanted to also point out that I made a mistake in my forecast video yesterday. I said that we would have time to make up our monthly rain total so that it would be near normal. I forgot that it was September 29th, there is no time to make up that rain total! So yes we'll be at a deficit for this month, but at least we'll be less than an inch behind on our monthly total. The deficit of over 5 inches for the year still stands.

We may get some rain tomorrow, but I'm getting signals from both the GFS and NAM that are against that. Oh well, looks like we're settling back in to our "normal" pattern for this year, high and dry. We'll get close to 90 by late in the week, but I don't think we'll hit it.

9/29 - 2pm - Forecast Video

Had some video problems today. Sorry it took so long to put up here...

9/26 - 9pm - Not that much rain...

The rain gauge at my house reads .06" for today, severely down from the .5" the HPC had for us from yesterday's outlook. Areas north of here got way more than we did (some areas over 2 inches). Just the luck of the storm though!

Tropics are fairly active with Karen spinning out in the middle of the Atlantic and a few waves in the Caribbean that could be something to look out for. A wave just off of the SE of Florida is interesting, but I think its too close to land to get to hurricane strength.

Around these parts we could see just a few showers tomorrow just before the cold front moves through. After that we're in the low 80's for the next week or so. I've been looking at the long range GFS data just for fun and I'm seeing a consistent cool down pattern in multiple runs of the model. Seems like we'll be getting way cooler by the second week of October. It's interesting that we're transitioning so quickly from Summer to Fall here. It was well over 90 for a good part of the week and in just more than two weeks we could be dipping into the 60's for highs (if I'm looking at this correctly). Again, this is way far out. Remember how the GFS promised cool downs in August that never came? Just a reminder to take this model with a grain of salt.

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.

9/25 - 5pm - Some Storms Around...

Right now there is a line of thunderstorms just west of Louisville. No watches or warnings are being issued at this time, with the exception of Jennings County Indiana, and video coverage will not be needed. We have the possibility of seeing a couple heavy downpours in Louisville this evening. Come on rain!

9/24 - 4:30pm - Mid 90's in September!?

Sorry about the gap in between posts here... It's been a busy weekend.

Wow, its 92 right now! This is supposed to be a month of transition between Summer and Fall, but apparently the atmosphere didn't receive the memo. I don't think I've ever seen 90's in the fall (which started yesterday). 90's look to be sticking with us at least until Wednesday.

Another note is the rain situation, which is looking questionable. Will we get some moisture out of this front on Wednesday? I think we may get some short steady rains, but nothing to speak highly of.

Finally, the tropics are still busy. The officially named Jerry is a depression spinning itself out in the Atlantic, which won't affect us here. There are two other areas in the Atlantic worth watching, but nothing all that great right now...

9/22 - 8:30am - No Jerry or Forecast Video!

Sorry everyone, I'll be out of town this weekend and I won't be able to do a 7-day or video forecast. Here's something funny... Jerry never did become "Jerry". Tropical Depression 10 made a quick landfall on Fort Walton Beach this morning and never did reach tropical storm status, hence never receiving a real name. So I guess we'll have to see when another storm takes on the name Jerry!