I'm going to start updating on Fay now. She kind of came out of nowhere and seems to be taking a quick path to the west coast of Florida. I also want to say that the National Hurricane Center messed up the spelling of Fay. Just ask my good friend Faye from college. She'll tell you the right way to spell it (Hurricane names are always fun).

8/22/08 7:30 am CDT: Quick update from the NHC

Storm is just west of Gainsville and still dropping a bunch or rain. I'm looking for specific rainfall amounts that are inpressive, but nothing seems to be up on the chat rooms just yet.

Here's the latest on the storm statistics:
Max Winds: 45 mph
Tropical Storm Force Winds Extend up to 140 miles from the center.
Current Pressure: 996 mb
Moving Direction: West
Speed: 6 mph.

8/22/08 6:30 am CDT: Fay has begun to move.

The storm now appears to be right around Gainsville, FL which should make any Ohio State fan happy (yes, that's me taking a shot at the university that can't win a championship). The storm is expected to remain mostly over land, but its going to be a close call tomorrow afternoon. That is my question at this point. If it does move over land it could easily become much stronger and make its fourth landfall somewhere else.

Someplaces have seen up to two feet or more of rain. There have been unconfirmed reports of three feet of rain too. That's unbelievable! Flooding has been the biggest concern for a few days now. I haven't seen many reports for damage other than trees down.

Here's the latest on the storm statistics:
Max Winds: 50 mph
Tropical Storm Force Winds Extend up to 140 miles from the center.
Current Pressure: 995 mb
Moving Direction: West
Speed: 6 mph.




8/21/08 8:00 am CDT: More Proof about Fay's Strength.

This is not an update from the NHC, rather I did some research into what is happening.

Just logged into a chat room with the National Weather Service in Melbourne, Fl and found a few reports. First of all, the storm is being reported as stationary and just off the coast of Volusta County, which is in Northeast Florida of course. The rainfall reports are very impressive as well. Just got one of 13.47 inches in Cocoa Beach from the entire storm. WOW! There are scattered but unconfirmed reports of 17 inches of rain from Cocoa Beach to Cape Canaveral. Any way you cut it, its impressive.

8/21/08 7:00 am CDT: Fay starting to move.

The National Hurricane Center has started to notice some movement in Fay but it seems to have stopped again. The speed will slowly pick up to the northwest later today. Because it is stuck the rain will just continue to fall and not let up. I looked for a few reports, but found nothing interesting that has happened in the past few hours.

Here's the question I have at the moment: What if Fay takes a bigger right turn than expected and ends up over the Gulf of Mexico. That could cause it to get stronger. Then where will it go? Any time it is in the gulf and near the shore it may be effecting the oil production or many big cities along the coast. Just something to watch over the next few days.

Here's the latest on the storm statistics:
Max Winds: 60 mph
Tropical Storm Force Winds Extend up to 150 miles from the center.
Current Pressure: 994 mb
Moving Direction: Stationary
Speed: 0 mph.

8/21/08 4:00 am CDT: Fay: The Little Storm That Could

Really, Fay has never been that impressive from the stand point of wind, pressure or even from a satellite, but this storm continues to impress. Rainfall is amazing as there have been reports of over 20 inches of rain reported. It has once again stalled and we're still waiting for it to make the big left turn into the Northeast Florida Coast.

Here's the latest on the storm statistics:
Max Winds: 60 mph
Tropical Storm Force Winds Extend up to 150 miles from the center.
Current Pressure: 994 mb
Moving Direction: Stationary
Speed: 0 mph.

8/20/08 10:00 am CDT: Fay gets stronger, now over open waters.

Just a small update here. There are two significant changes. One, the storm is over open waters for the moment and is expected to start to make that turn back towards the coast within 24 hours. Current direction has it moving north at nearly 3 mph (whoa, watch it Mario!). The second development is that all HURRICANE watches have been dropped. There are multiple tropical storm warnings along the Georgia and Florida coasts, but it appears that the National Hurricane Center is forecasting the storm to not be a hurricane at any point. Rain still appears to be the biggest threat. There have already been reports of 16 inches of rain near Melbourne, Florida.

Here's a few statistics on the storm:
Max Winds: 50 mph
Current Pressure: 995 mb
Moving Direction: North
Speed: 3 mph


8/20/08 7:00 am CDT: Fay baffles everyone, won't go away.

I decided not to blog on Fay yesterday thinking that it wouldn't make hurricane status or even be significant much pass yesterday afternoon. However, after making landfall as a tropical storm it actually got stronger and looked healthier than ever before. Typically landfall will kill a tropical storm but this time it didn't. My theory is that the everglades were moist enough to help the storm. Regardless the track of this storm is about to become even more amazing.

The system is going to move back over the waters of the Atlantic where some strengthening is expected. However, it is not expected to become a hurricane. It will start pushing the envelop as winds are expected to reach 70 mph. Right now the storm is near Cape Canaveral, FL and the winds are at 45 mph. It is still taking its sweet time moving with a speed of only 5 mph and to the north.

What will happen here is a big question. If she sticks over the waters long enough, she could become a hurricane. However, that is not what is forecasted. Once she makes landfall she cold got back over the gulf and restrengthen there. Regardless, after what she's already done, we'll just keep watching.

8/18/08 7:00 am CDT: Fay strengthens, still a tropical storm.

The storm has now crossed Cuba and is continuing its track to the North at a snails pace. Current speed is 12 mph. Pressure is down to 1002mb and current winds are at 60mph. Tracks continue to take the storm into the west coast of Florida somewhere near Fort Myers early tomorrow afternoon. Tropical storm force winds extent out to 105 miles from the center of the storm.

Florida will already start to feel Fay's wrath with some storms already coming on shore that could bring tornadoes. Also, in the Keys there will be storm surges of 2 to 4 feet. Once the storm has passed, current projections have the storm dropping local amount of 12 inches of rain, but most will be in the 4 to 8 inch rain.

Well we were thinking that yesterday would be calm. Guess I was wrong about that one. Things weren't too bad though. There were multiple tornadoes reported across the area. One was in Hyde county were the report actually says "no damage, just kicked up some dirt." There was also a tornado reported at the Brown County Fair. That's pretty scary given the amount of people that were probably there. However, the tornado was fairly weak and only turned over some tents.

As far as other reports, there were a handful of severe hail reports. The largest was in Norbeck which is in Faulk County at 1.75" which is golf ball size. There are multiple other reports at or below one inch. An interesting report from Hecla where hail fell off and on for about an hour. The largest was one inch. Some heavy rain was also reported in the same area as a flash flood was reported. Huron actually broke the rainfall record for August 14th at 1.88 inches, which broke the old record of 1 inch.

This was an interesting situation, given that the severe threat looked to be nearly zero and we had a few tornadoes touchdown. It wasn't the typical situation where we see supercell thunderstorms develop very large damaging tornadoes. These tornadoes seemed to be landspout tornadoes which get their rotation from the updraft rather. Larger damaging tornadoes form from the rotation of the storm they are associated with. Sometimes these landspouts are even hard to detect with the eye. Many don't even cause damage. Thankfully yesterdays situation didn't cause much damage either.

Last night (8/13/08) parts of the area saw severe weather. Depending on where you were, you may have not even known it happened as many of us were enjoying mostly sunny skies. I noticed when I was driving a friend to the airport the massive storm off to the north and east. It was still growing at this point and i could actually see the storm hit the top of the lowest layer of the atmosphere and shoot into the upper levels. I found it exciting, my friend wasn't as impressed.

Reports focus mainly on hail, which isn't surprising given the strong updrafts I was seeing. One report of 3 inch hail was received from Edgerton in Pipestone county in Minnesota. There are lost of reports of 3/4 inch hail and a few that are in the one to two inch range. There was also a lot of rotation reported. This doesn't surprise me given the radar images.

There was only one specific report of damage. A hog barn in Lake Park Iowa was reported to be partially destroyed. There was a hook echo in that area when the damage was reported. Winds were estimated at 60 mph. Also, there was some strong rotation noted by doppler radar at the same time.

Football is by far my favorite sport. My family has had season tickets to Colts' games since 1992 when the team was just awful. So I grew up going to games and becoming a very devoted fan. When I got to college, I went to a football school when the program was actually good. Purdue was even ranked 5th in the nation at one point during my sophomore year and college game day actually came to campus. To say the least I've always been around football. It seems that everywhere I turn I've had football to look forward too.

This year I feel like the season has come up on me really quick. there's a few reasons for this most likely. I'm not going back to school, so I'm not worried about getting the season tickets. Also, I'm not reading the Indianapolis Star every morning like I do when I'm in Indianapolis. Therefore, I'm not hearing the daily talking heads and sports columnist that focus on the Colts. These are pretty big reasons, but I don't think its the biggest. I'm also a big Cubs fan and they're in a race for the division and could win the World Series. Typically I've given up on the season by July and start wanting football.

In September I've got a big weekend planned that I'm sure will push me into full football mode. I've got a Saturday game at Purdue. We're playing some team that I'm sure we'll beat since its early in the season and that's the way college football is. Sunday I get to go to the season opener for the Colts as they're taking on the Bears. Not only that, but they're going to opening a new stadium that day. To say I can't wait might be an understatement.

Obviously, I make a lot of predictions when I'm creating a forecast. I try to make them reasonable and do the best job possible. However, there are some people who seem to make a living on ridiculous predictions. Here are three examples that I can think of right now.

Last week after the earthquake in California there were all these "experts" saying that this is just a preshow for the big show that will eventually happen causing California to slip off into the ocean. Don't we already know this. Most earthquakes are along a fault and chances are there will be a bigger one in the future. As far as California moving into the ocean, that's obvious if you know anything about tectonics. Actually, I think I learned this in basic earth science in Middle School.

The other takes me back to the active hurricane season of 2005. Not long after Katrina and Rita hit the Gulf of Mexico coast another "expert" made a great prediction. He said; someday, somewhere another major hurricane will hit the United States coast that will be as devastating, if not more devastating than Katrina. Wow, that was bold (note the sarcasm). If he had put a time restriction on that I might have listened a bit more, but he didn't. Eventually I'm going to get hungry too if I don't eat.

Recently, my least favorite have been these wonderful Oil Speculators. These guys come out and say that oil will hit $150, $200, or even $300 and then oil just skyrockets. Their claims are usually baseless or very far fetched. I remember one that said If Iraq decides to turn against us, Iran cuts off their supply and China grows at some huge rate that we'll see oil at a higher price. Well yes, you're right but you're on page 2000 of a book that hasn't even had page one written yet. I could also be a millionaire if I get chosen to go on Deal or no Deal, rub Howie's head the right way for luck,choose the right box and then take huge risks. Thankfully these people have seemed to disappear as oil has fallen the past few days.

I think what makes me the most upset about these people is that they don't have to worry about their claims. Also, they get so much coverage for saying this stuff if it is said at the right time. When I forecast, I stress over if it comes true. Maybe I should start saying stuff like, the sun will come up, then set and there will be weather of some form in between. I'm doubting I'd have a job for long if I did.

I'm going to try this a bit different this time so that I don't have a million posts with just one update about the tropical storms. All the information for Tropical Storm Edouard will be in this post. Unfortunately, I won't be talking much about how ridiculously hard to pronounce the names of hurricanes seems to be in recent years.

4:00PM 8/5/08

Well just as it started, Edouard is falling apart. It made landfall around noon today right around the Louisiana and Texas border. It was still a tropical storm at that point and became more of a big rain maker than anything else.

Currently, winds have calmed to 35 mph and probably will continue to weaken. Pressure has risen to 1003mb, which is another sign of weakening. Total rainfall looks to be at 3 to 5 inches, with a few areas of 10 inches possible.

Because Edouard formed right along the shore and never really got over open and warm waters it wasn't able to really get going. It made a quick landfall too. Had it held off another 6 hours or so it may have made it to hurricane strength. Thankfully it didn't.

4:00PM 8/4/08:

The current winds for the storm is at 45mph, which is still far below hurricane power. Pressure is at 1000mb which is not overly impressive. The storm did come out of nowhere and looks to be more of a rain maker than anything just yet.

Current forecasts have the storm making landfall right at Galveston, TX. Tropical Storm warnings are already up from the mouth of the Mississippi river to Port O'Connor, Texas. There is also a hurricane watch from Intercoastal City, LA to Port O'Connor. That is a large area for watches and warnings but it is mostly because the storm is moving along the coast to the west at a very slow 7 mph. Therefore a very slight turn could make landfall predictions very wrong.

We've established the fact that I like racing and I think I found a way to make it better. Race in the rain. Better yet let's wait until the weather gets really bad and then race in that. As a meteorologist and a race fan I think that might be the perfect setup. NASCAR got to do so on Saturday in its Nationwide Series and I liked it for the most part, but not sure if its right for the big bulky cars of NASCAR.

Because NASCAR uses cars that are large and not very close to the ground I'm not sure that it would be too great, but I think it should be explored. Since only about 5% of NASCAR races are on road courses I doubt that we'll see much of this type of racing. Doing this on a high speed oval is just too dangerous. Even though NASCAR said that it won't put the rain tires on for this weekends race at the road course Watkins Glen, I'm still holding out hope.

If you're interested in watching cars race in rain then check out the other major racing series. Indy will race in the rain on road courses and F-1 starts the race on time pretty much no matter what is falling from the sky. I have watched F-1 races in the rain and it is quite amazing how the cars can handle in the rain. I also think its good to do research to possibly make a better tire for our cars in the rain. Research for cars is one of the reasons racing grew so much in the past.

I learned another weather phenomenon this week. Believe it or not, I'm not talking about the Derecho that hit northeast South Dakota. While that was impressive, this was in a different way. If you live in Mitchell or were in the city on Wednesday, did you notice anything a bit different. There was a thunderstorm that moved through that was a bit strong, but something happened right after the storm that caught me off guard.

I did notice that the high on that day was a bit higher than I expected. When I looked on the National Weather Service site yesterday, I noticed a story about a heat burst. It caught my attention and I began reading. In just the span of about 15 minutes, right after a thunderstorm, the temperature jumped from 68 to 96. That's nearly two degrees a minute. After the peak temperature of 96 it dropped to 77 in about another 15 minutes. I wish I would have been there to experience this. One minute you're comfortable, the next you're sweating and then you're cold because you're wet and its in the 70s.

This temperature rise was accompanied with a big drop in dew points and relatively big drop in pressure. They both recovered quick as the temperatures returned to normal. From these three points the National Weather Service was able to conclude that this was in-fact a Heat Burst, something I had never heard of. So I'll tell you what I learned from this article.

Air from 10,000 to 20,000 feet rushed to the surface behind the storm. While typically air that comes to the surface in this fashion, overnight and early morning thunderstorms can create these heat bursts which rise the temperatures and drop the dew points. Because the air is so dry, no rain is associated with the phenomena, but it could create very damaging wind.

A few days ago I said "Mother Nature is trying to throw everything at us this week. With severe weather, tornadic storms, a heat burst, a derecho, and a bit of a heat wave for the weekend we've seen it all. If we get a blizzard and a wind chill warning then things would be complete. Thankfully, winter is still far away.

While watching coverage of the earthquake yesterday, I got to thinking, which would I rather deal with, earthquakes or tornadoes? We do have somewhat of a decision since most of the earthquake activity seems to be on the west coast of the United States. However, the Midwest did have an earthquake, but its rather rare for that to happen. After thinking about both the downside of each I came up with a decision in my own mind. However, I think I might be biased.

Earthquakes are scary. There's really no where to run. Just get under your desk and start praying. We really don't know when they're going to strike and only have a general region. Also, the damage is never focused, its typically widespread. However, they don't hap pend that much and they also are weak when they do happen. Yesterday was a moderate earthquake and from what I can tell things weren't that bad.

We all know about tornadoes because we live in the Midwest. They can be very separated and happen relatively often (when compared to earthquakes). However, we typically have gotten better with warnings. We have outlooks up to 8 days in advance of where severe weather might occur. Once the severe weather happens, warnings come out over ten minutes on average. That in my opinion is plenty of time to get to a shelter.

So with those arguments I can't say I'd rather live in a earthquake area. However, I've never really lived in one so I might be biased toward the tornado areas. Of course, after the earthquake that happened earlier this year in the Midwest may just be the first of many as there is some seismic activity in that area now. I guess I'll just move to Caribbean. Oh wait, Hurricanes! Great.

I've noticed a trend this year. I'm getting burned by saying "sun driven storms" many times this year. I'm also keeping an eye on warnings well into the early morning hours and even have come into work early because storms are still roaring when I get here. It seems that all bets are off when storms will come to an end. It's just not here either. I got a call from my mother last week asking about buying weather radios because they have had severe overnight storms many times.

Is there an overall cause? I'm not sure. I'm haven't done any research or heard of any supporting climate change with this, so let's ignore that. I've learned a lot about lower level jets this summer, which is part of the problem. I always knew they existed, but never realized their power. Basically, a strong low level wind can bring in heat and moisture, the two things needed for storms. This method can actually be more effective than the normal surface heating we see everyday because it has both the heat and moisture. Patrick showed me a few examples of this and it immediately made sense to me.

This phenomena seems to be at a max this year. Maybe its something to do with a five year cycle that I've heard Patrick talk about many times. Either way I'm glad I have at least a small explanation to this so that I know what to watch for. No forecast is more important to me than severe weather. As we're watching for severe weather tonight we're going to watch those low level winds. Hopefully we'll be seeing weak ones for tonight.