An all new edition of the ABC 33/40 Weather Xtreme video is available in the player below, and on iTunes…
Be sure and scroll down to read Tim Coleman’s excellent article on how the heat relates to the lack of soil moisture. We have mentioned that many times here since the spring, and it is coming back to haunt us here in August. All of the solar energy is working on heating the ground instead of evaporating soil moisture, and with a big ole, nasty upper high overhead, that means relentless heat this time of the year.
Also, Tim has a wonder set of pictures from his trip to Mount Washington… I am jealous! I think everyone who really loves the weather needs a trip up to that big mountain at least once in their lifetime.
Today will be the seventh day in a row with 100 degree heat for Birmingham, and it looks like we will see daily maximum temperatures over 100 through the entire week. The string of consecutive 100 degree days might reach go all the way to 12, which will easily beat the old record of 8 consecutive days which was set during the summer of 1980. Temperatures are not as high as 1980 (so far!), but the longevity of the heat this year will be the story.
The one positive is that dewpoints are relatively low over the northern half of the state, so heat index values are not much higher than the actual air temperatures. It the “dry heat” that folks in the Southwest U.S. often talk about.
The heat wave won’t last forever, but the GFS has been struggling with the intensity and the placement of the upper high, and I think for now persistence is the best forecast through Friday.
TROPICS: The wave that is about to enter the Gulf of Mexico has a chance to become a tropical depression or a tropical storm during the next 48 hours, but the heat ridge will push that system into either the northern coast of Mexico or the southern tip of Texas.
But, the big one is the the wave in the far eastern Atlantic; it sure looks like a tropical depression on satellite images this morning, and there is no reason to believe this won’t become a major hurricane in coming days as it makes the long journey across the “big pond”. With the ridge holding firm to the north, a recurve scenario in the Atlantic seems unlikely, and this one seems to be headed for the Caribbean, and perhaps the Gulf of Mexico. The 00Z GFS moves it into the Mexico coast, well south of Brownsville, Texas, early next week, but that is all voodoo at this point. Any weakness in the heat ridge here could move the system more to the north. All we can do at this point is wait and watch, but with all of the latent heat energy in the Gulf of Mexico, thing thing could really become a monster.
Been a typical Monday… many of the NOAA sites are down (the ones I use for model output and other graphics for the Weather Xtreme video), so the post is a tad late this morning. I am headed off to Vincent Elementary later this morning for a weather program; then it is back in the office by early afternoon, and the afternoon edition of the Weather Xtreme video should be up by 3:30. STAY COOL!
