Active July?

Just this past week, we had another tropical storm. Tropical Storm Bret blew up in the Gulf of Mexico, but then almost immediately hit southern Mexico. I did not think much of this; after all, there isn't much room in the Gulf, but then I found this "radio" announcer on the Internet:

http://radio.nhcwx.com/flghchp/displayimage.php?album=2&pos=7

The announcer, Mike Naso, said on June 29 that Bret was actually more dangerous than it looked, and that it was still producing a hurricane-like swirl in inland Mexico. If it had gone farther north, he said, then it would have strengthened to at least Category 3 and hit Texas or Louisiana.

That may be a harbinger of things to come. There still seems to be a storm in mid-July. Now the GFS says there will be one on July 7 that will turn away and fade out, and a more menacing one on July 16 that will hit Southern Florida. That was on the 12Z run. The 18Z run shows it approaching the Carolinas. Either of these would make a mess out of SUUSI.

Hopefully these will vanish by the time SUUSI comes, and it could, since the GFS is notoriously inaccurate out 16 days. But with it predicting two named storms in two weeks in July, this could be a really big hurricane year.

Drought?

Our local weatherman pointed out to us tonight that Richmond has not had rain for 13 days. It looks like the drought of recent years may be coming back. Already a nearby county is rationing water, according to the odd-even schedule. The drought was around in 2002, when at one time all watering was banned. Is climate change somehow affecting this?

Maybe. But that would not explain what happened in 2003 and 2004. In those two years, we had storm after storm after storm, the lawns stayed green all summer long, and it never really got hot. To me, whether we get rain all the time or a drought depends on random factors.

It is interesting that SUUSI goes contrary to the rest of Virginia. In 2002, we had a prolonged drought, but it poured 5 inches of rain in Giles county one night, causing massive flooding and canceling a nature trip. In 2003 and 2004, it poured rain all over the place, except at SUUSI. At SUUSI in both those years we had good weather, with rain on only one day. I remember that last year when we left SUUSI, it was a bright and sunny cheerful day. As we drove away from Virginia Tech towards Richmond, it clouded up and started to rain, and rained harder and harder as we got closer to Richmond. To me that says that SUUSI is a magic place - you escape the bad weather of the world to go for the good weather of SUUSI, both actually and metaphorically.

In any case, we may have to start watering our lawn soon. But that gets us into the Sprinkler Paradox, like a Catch 22. If you are allowed to water your lawn, your lawn does not need watering. If your lawn needs watering, they restrict or forbid you from doing it. We'll start watering, but I am aware that either rain or the Sprinker Paradox may put an end soon to watering.

As far as the current drought is concerned, a recent run of GFS shows that a storm is going to come north from Puerto Rico and give us rain next Monday, and that more storms will follow. Hope they stop before SUUSI.

Beyond the Wind - a Weather Blog

Beyond the wind, beyond the rain and snow, the storms, tornadoes and hurricanes, lies the anticipation and prediction of these phenomena. I will use this blog to report weather-related events and tell what my favorite weather-related sites are.

We are coming up on hurricane season, and recent model runs of the Global Forecasting System (GFS) are showing a lot of activity. They seem to show a series of little storms coming out of the Caribbean, crossing Florida and into the Atlantic, followed by two Cape Verde storms one after the other in the Atlantic. These have not materialized as yet, and the two areas that the Atlantic Outlook speaks about don't seem to be capable of developing into tropical storms.

Nevertheless, I will keep a watch. I remember last year's SUUSI hurricane, a storm that appeared on the GFS in early July that suggested that on 2004 July 18, a major hurricane would strike Charleston, South Carolina, causing people from that area to run back home from SUUSI. Then it would strike SUUSI itself two days later with 60-70 mph winds, torrential rains, tree smashes all over the place, and power outages. That would, of course, have wrecked SUUSI. However, a later run showed it missing the coast instead, and runs after that did not show it at all. It was gone. And, rather than hurricane, we had the sunniest and best weather all summer long at SUUSI. So to me GFS that far out suggests possibilities rather than predicts actual events.

So far this summer, after a cool spring, the weather seems much nicer, with warmer temperatures and far less rain, and as of late, crystal blue skies. Hope it continues to SUUSI time. A cool spell should come the next few days, but it will be short lived.