03.28.10
Posted in Weather News at 3:14 pm by Rebekah
Warm, south winds and mostly sunny skies? Temperatures in the 70s and 80s? What is this strange weather?
It appears as if spring has finally arrived.
Take a look at the map below, from the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory. This is a model forecast of 850mb (low-level atmosphere) temperature anomalies for 00Z on Thursday, or 7pm Central Time on Wednesday. Wednesday is probably going to be the warmest day of the week for central Oklahoma (unfortunately, for those of you on the West Coast, you will be receiving some cooler weather). Note that the 850mb temperatures in central Oklahoma are forecast to be 8-10 degrees CELSIUS above normal!
Why are we expecting such warm weather?
The models are finally showing a nice ridge of high pressure beginning to build over the eastern US early this week, with a trough of low pressure over the western US (the thin gray lines on the plot above). This pattern is great news if you want southerly surface winds advecting warm, moist air up into the Southern Plains.
The map below, also from the Earth System Research Lab, is a model forecast of 500mb (mid-level atmosphere) height anomalies for the same time as above (7pm Central Time on Wednesday). What you should take from this map is that there is higher-than-normal pressure (higher heights; i.e., the ridge)) in the eastern US and lower-than-normal pressure (lower heights; i.e., the trough) in the western US.
A potentially good piece of news for storm chasers is that the southerly winds can give us the warm temperatures and higher dewpoints that we need for strong thunderstorms to form. Moreover, the trough in the West looks like it may be sending a number of shortwave troughs our way, starting late this week. Those troughs provide the needed lift for a thunderstorm. As I’ve mentioned before, we’ve had plenty of lift and wind shear for strong thunderstorms, but an overall lack of moisture and instability–at least until next week, shortly after Easter.
Time to gear up for the storm season and batten down the hatches–it looks as if April could be a busy month.
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03.26.10
Posted in General News, Weather News at 3:55 pm by Rebekah
Come ye, kings, queens, knights, and peasants to the Medieval Faire in Norman this weekend! From jugglers to jousting, from camel rides to Camelot, thou art sure to find much to amuse thee.
Time: March 26 – 28, from 10am – 7 pm
Place: Reaves Park, Norman, Oklahoma
Website: http://www.medievalfair.org
Weather: Fair and warm today, slightly cooler (high near 60 °F) and windy tomorrow with a slight chance of showers, and cooler (high in the upper 50s) on Sunday with mostly sunny skies and a brisk northwest wind
Ye olde nice weather for the coming week:
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03.24.10
Posted in Weather News at 4:36 pm by Rebekah
While Denver digs out from nearly two feet of snow in places and attempts to restore power to thousands of homes and businesses, central Texas is experiencing some strong thunderstorms. There is currently a severe thunderstorm watch box out for north central and central Texas, but instability and vertical, directional wind shear is not great enough for very severe thunderstorms. The thunderstorms are currently forming along a cold front (see map, above).
Most of the cooler air in the US (see below) is currently confined to the Colorado Rockies (as well as Maine; they are under a snowstorm as well right now).
To see how today’s forecast highs (by The Weather Channel) stack up against the normal (or average) highs for today, see the map below. You can see that Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, and the Texas Panhandle are well below average, while much of the rest of the US is (finally) near or above average. Yay.
The big question remains, when will there be some good, chase-able severe thunderstorms within my region again? There are a few interesting-looking troughs that may move through in the first week of April, but it appears that a lack of moisture and instability may still be a big problem. Obviously the models can and will change before then, but the first decent chance of a big severe weather day may not be until mid-April or so. In the meantime, that gives me more time to get work done and write blog posts about nothing much in particular. 😉
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03.23.10
Posted in Non-US Weather, Weather News at 3:20 pm by Rebekah
Today marks the start of a series of posts on global weather. Most of us, understandably, are most concerned with the climate and weather in our particular neck of the woods; however, I think it can be both fun and educational to take a look at weather in other parts of the globe.
This week’s featured city is Perth, Australia.
Perth, Australia. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
Home to over 1.6 million people, Perth is the capital of and largest city in the state of Western Australia. A few facts about Perth:
- Time zone: Australian Western Standard Time (UTC+8)
- Elevation: Sea level
- Climate zone: Mediterranean (hot/dry summers, cool/wet winters)
- Average high temperature: 76 °F (24.5 °C)
- Average low temperature: 55 °F (12.7 °C)
- Record high temperature: 115 °F (46.2 °C)
- Record low temperature: 31 °F (-0.7 °C)
- Average annual precipitation: 33.6 inches (852.6 mm)
Recent weather: Late Monday afternoon (March 22), Perth was hit by several severe thunderstorms that brought golfball-sized hail (1.75-inch-diameter), heavy rain, flooding, landslides, lightning, and wind gusts of over 75 mph. Damage from the storms is estimated at $100 million. Perth receives on average about 0.8 inches of rain in the month of March, and almost all of this rain fell in less than 10 minutes yesterday. A total of 1.6 inches of rain fell in the afternoon and evening.
A low-pressure trough came ashore in the afternoon, sparking the formation of several strong thunderstorms (see radar images, below, from the Bureau of Meteorology).
Perth radar at 0750UTC on 22 March 2010 (3:50 pm local time).
Perth radar at 0850UTC on 22 March 2010 (4:50 pm local time).
Forecast weather: High pressure is headed for the West Coast of Australia, so warm and dry conditions are expected to persist in Perth throughout this week. According to the Bureau of Meteorology, highs are forecast to range from near 84 °F to 90 °F under mostly sunny skies, with lows ranging from 57 °F to 66 °F.
For more information on Perth, here’s a link to Wikipedia.
For more information on the recent severe thunderstorms, here’s a BBC news article, and here’s a news article from The West Australian.
For weather maps and information on Perth weather, see the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.
Next week I’ll take a look at the climate and weather in another part of the globe. If you find these posts interesting or helpful, if you have suggestions, or if you have a city or country you’d like to recommend for next time, please leave a comment!
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03.21.10
Posted in Weather News at 4:34 pm by Rebekah
The several-inch snowstorm and blizzard predicted for central Oklahoma was largely a bust.
In short, there wasn’t enough moisture for large snowflakes to form, so we just got a light snowfall with tiny flakes all day. The wind lived up to its billing, though; sustained winds yesterday (and today) were mostly in the 20s (the highest I saw was 31 mph) with gusts in the 30s (the highest was 40 mph). This brought the wind chill temperatures down to the low teens, so it felt quite cold last night!
Patrick Marsh (a fellow meteorology grad student at OU) has a nice write-up about the (lack of) winter storm on his blog.
We only got about an inch of accumulation in places around Norman, and I think most of that was from blowing snow. Snowfall totals were more accurate further north and east, though. See below for the NWS current observed snowfall totals.
It looks like we’ll be under a ridge for most of this coming week, so temperatures will quickly warm up again to the 60s.
In other news, the Iditarod finished up yesterday; defending champion Lance Mackey won his fourth race on Tuesday, and the final musher, Celeste Davis, rode in to Nome yesterday. It has warmed up to a toasty 20 °F in Nome.
Classes at OU start again tomorrow. Although I didn’t go anywhere outside Norman or Oklahoma City, or take too much time off, I did have a fairly relaxing, nice spring break. It’s hard to believe that there’s only another 7 weeks of class before summer…
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