On my way home today, I saw that a creek near my house had completely dried up. That gave me a pretty good perspective on how our weather is right now: DRY. We might get a spot of rain Friday with a storm coming onshore in the Carolinas, but that's a stretch at this point. Expect temperatures to spiral down to 80 degrees by Friday after another hot one tomorrow.
That developing area of low pressure near Puerto Rico I talked about yesterday is not as organized as previously expected. Most models are still bringing it up to New England, but now most have it as a tropical storm now instead of a hurricane. Personally, I think this storm will barely materialize due to the possible tropical depression in the Carolinas throwing clouds over the Atlantic. This could limit solar heating on the water and cause interference with the water temperatures needed for this to form. This might have happened to Hurricane Gustav when Tropical Storm Hanna's cloud cover started intermingling with some of Gustav's, which could have made water temperatures drop in a crucial area of development. In any case, we'll have to watch both of these systems into the weekend.
5 comments:
How do you figure cloud cover hurts tropical systems? They are formed and sustained under warm water and weak shear. Insolation has nothing to do with it (unlike general thunderstorms). Now upwelling of cooler water from a previous storm over a similar track will weaken storms, but I doubt any of the systems you are speaking about will be strong enough to produce much in the way of upwelling of cooler waters. Maybe I'm not misunderstanding your post.
CJ... Here's an excerpt from the LA Times about what I'm getting at:
Josephine wasn't getting much traction in part because Hanna -- which qualified as a Category 1 hurricane earlier this week -- had a broad cloud shield that kept ocean temperatures relatively cool, Matyas said.
Henry Marguisity at AccuWeather also alluded to this as well. I have edited the post to make it more clear that I'm talking about water temperatures and not just cloud cover. Thanks for pointing that out... long day today and I'm a bit "cloudy" in the mind.
On your ryanweather.org forecast, where did you get your weather icons?
Here lies my problems with (un)accuweather. They seriously make up scientific reasoning that is exactly that... Made up!
From over-hyped rhetoric about every storm or storm season, to this.
I highly doubt and would love to see an academic research paper produced on how cloud cover lowers sea surface temperatures. Granted, more clouds equal less sun, but the ocean is huge. Just the Gulf of Mexico is estimated to contain over 600 trillion gallons of water. That's a LOT of heat capacity and I doubt that a tropical feature can produce sea surface temperature cooling from cloud cover alone. Hundreds of trillions of gallons of water at 85 degrees is very tough to cool. Again, upwelling-yes... From a strong enough system.
I know this is a rant, but I hope you see this as being on point. The Weather Channel, Accuweather, etc. are in the weather BUSINESS and they all want to make money. Bottomline, they will tell viewers what they want to hear to make them watch and thus get ad revenue. Why do they send reporters to every little rain storm that hits Florida? Because people like you and me eat it up and watch for hours. Makes sense that they would tell you that it might be a little bit worse that it will actually be before hand. Case in point... "Ike vs. Katrina" on TWC. What a joke!
Just one more thing. I know you are not a degreed meteorologist, so I don't expect you to know it all... YET. So my last post is not directed at you. Just mainly a word of caution on your source. Good luck at MSU and becoming a met.
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