Sunday, May 1, 2011

Watch for more fiery trails in the sky! A new month brings a new weather pattern!

May 1, 2011

Developing.....graphics and editing still taking place....

This week we will keep our eyes to the sky for more shooting stars. We have the Eta Aquarids meteor shower that peaks on Thursday night and Friday morning. Expect about 10 shooting stars per hour and they are known to also leave fiery trails since these meteors making up this shower are known to move at a whopping 150,000 mph. Make sure to look to the east southeast about an hour or two before dawn on Friday morning. This shower is caused by the earth going through the dust trail of Halley's comet which will not be visible to earth until mid-2061 and was last seen our sky in 1986. Enjoy the show.


Nature is also lighting up the skies this week with more storms which are breaking out across some of the tornado ravaged areas of the deep south. While severe weather is likely it will not be nearly as widespread as last week. Here at home this weather system will warm us up to well above average temperatures over the next couple days. By time it arrives late Tuesday night and Wednesday it looks like it will not have much wind shear or moisture to work with limiting instability. This means do not expect another squall line of storms, just isolated shower or thunderstorm activity.


If there is good news the long-range models for the rest of May keep our average high temperatures at least closer to normal after our warmest April in 9 years. More importantly rainfall should start picking up as well and end closer to normal. This pattern change is being caused by many factors including pressure changes across the globe. This includes a much weaker Bermuda high pressure in the southeast and a stronger high pressure near Greenland. This set up brought us beneficial rains to start the new year. This is welcome news but for this week no help for our plants but we will have a nice reinforcing shot of Spring weather by late week!

No comments: