Monday, April 4, 2011
What a Spring break it was this past week. You see Lauren and I getting ready to go see the fireworks at the Magic Kingdom. She truly is a princess! My family and I enjoyed a wonderful trip to Disney World and we got in all the rides despite record amounts of rain in Central Florida. It felt like we were in a tropical rain forest at times. But the weather cleared just long enough so we could get in all the rides! I would not let it rain on our biggest day that is for sure! I enjoyed the Pirates of the Caribbean ride especially when we went through the outflow boundary out ahead of the thunderstorm before we dropped. What I noticed is there in fact is a lot of weather intertwined in many of the Disney rides if you look close enough. This is the way it should be. Weather plays a big role in all of our lives. The worst ride was the Mission Space ride at Epcot where they have you in a simulator and you blast off from earth and go to Mars. I was rudely introduced to G forces that took my breath and almost my lunch away. It looks like my plan of being a space meteorologist for private missions to space is put on hold for now....lol. I have even more respect for astronauts after that ride. The landscaping also caught my attention at Epcot. When I was younger I never paid attention to such things. But now that I am older I could not get enough of learning about the different plants that actually told a story about the culture of each country we visited. I cannot wait to get back. I hope you had a great spring break and while it was not the best of weather weeks here at home I think you can agree that our parched lawns and gardens are much happier.
Check out the trees all tassled on this sunny side up back to school morning! These tassles will be blowing in a summer wind today with some gusts making it over 30 mph. I made sure the girls had the shorts out for school. Temperatures could rocket up to near record levels in the upper 80s out ahead of the season's strongest Spring storm. Our record high for today is 90 set back in 1974 and we will be close. Let's take a look at where this morning's convection is taking place by using our free weather app that now uses your only live doppler radar data.
Yes, it is a stormy morning in Texas and Arkansas. This is the front that has now brought over 300 damaging storm reports across the country including baseball size hail near Dubuque and damaging wind gusts of 80 mph in Kansas. The Rockies which played baseball in the 80s on Saturday had a game postponed due to snow yesterday! Wind damage scooted all the way across Indiana with damage reported in Williamsport but no tornadoes! There was no surface low pressure to back the winds and this helped keep the wind blowing in the same direction through much of the atmosphere keeping us from having an outbreak of tornadoes. Now a low pressure is expected to develop later today here in the deep south so the tornado threat will start to increase significantly. I expect a QLCS to develop which is a quasi linear convective system or squall line of storms known to produce mainly straight line wind damage but it can also produce isolated tornadoes in its meso-vortices or areas of spin that naturally occur as the cooler outflow boundaries are impacted by the surface friction of the earth. Our main threat remains wind damage here at home but a brief isolated tornado cannot be ruled out since we are going to be located in the front right entrance region of a powerful jet stream.
Timing will be tricky. We could see this QLCS race out ahead of the main front late tonight and reach portions of our viewing area between 3 a.m. and 7 a.m. The Storm Prediction Center has placed us in a slight risk for severe weather. Most of my wind parameters have wind gusts of 50-60 mph with the main line that comes through. Once the storms clear by early afternoon on Tuesday temperatures will only be in the 60s. I will keep watching this for you but the latest for now is that strong storms are still in the forecast late tonight and Tuesday morning. The rest of the week looks terrific including the Sun's home opener. I will head into work to grab a few updated model runs for you here on my day off. Check back this evening for another update.
Last but not least a big thank you to the Presbyterian Riverside Scouts. They had a lot of fun on yesterday's station tour and were so happy with the weather they brought all of us Thank you Berry Munch Girl Scout cookies. I had never had them before and can tell you they are a must try! Dan, Deanna, and I went through a whole box in a blink of an eye and I had to hide the rest from Dan...lol. We went over severe weather safety and these scouts will always remember when the thunder roars outdoors head indoors! We will need to remember this by later tonight. This was the first tour I can remember that had so much fun they stayed for both of our evening shows! They were awesome and to be able to inspire these young smart kids is what makes my job all worth it. Just watch, one of these girls in the picture above will be on television some day, as a meteorologist. I better run, literally! I am going to run 6 miles, then head to First Coast News to get everything ready for Live Doppler Day on Tuesday. Take care, stay safe and stay tuned. Blog update coming your way tonight! Talk to you soon.
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