* 245 is the average number of days Juneau, Alaska gets precipitation at the airport in a wet year. Only 3 days (on an average) gets more than one inch in those type of years. Juneau Airport is near sea level in Coastal Southeast Alaska. Precipitation is much, much heavier not far east of Juneau.
* 12 miles inland is all it takes east of Juneau to encounter elevations as high as 15,000 feet.
* 3,000 feet and above is the elevation where snow is forecast for the east part of the Brooks Range in North Alaska.
* 62 was the high in Anchorage Sunday and their high is not expected to exceed the 60s all this week as not only Anchorage, but almost all of Alaska is experiencing an exceptionally cool summer. Some reports say the second coolest in over 40 years. A group from our church just returned from Alaska. (Several groups go each year during summer) The last group reported that there was more snow and ice than they have seen in recent years.
* 6 inches is the projected rain amount during the next five days over parts of South Mississippi and around El Dorado, Ark., and Shreveport, La. This is based on an NWS product called QPF (Quantitative Precipitation Forecast) In my class at Martin Stewart Elementary School, west of Havana Junction and in my science class at Akron High School, where weather was always a big issue, we would have quickly renamed the product TRF (Total Rain Forecast)
* 2 inches if the projected amount along the Tuscaloosa-Birmingham-Anniston Corridor. Good dose of that could come tomorrow and tomorrow night.
* 36 is how many counties in Arkansas now under a Flash Flood Watch, mainly over the west and south portion of the state.
* 19 counties in Northeast Louisiana under a Flash Flood Watch
* 19 Mississippi counties under a Flash Flood Watch (West Central and Southwest)
* 3.67 inches of rain in Oklahoma City the last 24 hours. The radar today looks like it has a wide interstate highway of rain and storms from East Oklahoma to the mouth of the Mississippi River and off the Alabama-Northwest Florida. The showers and storms are training SE but the nearest showers to Birmingham at noon were over the Extreme South.
* 108 was the airport temperature at 6:28 pm today in Baghdad (Iraq time) The humidity was 13%. Highs for the rest of this week expected to be between 105-109–a slight backing off of the extreme heat.
* 1,450 is about how many pingos can be found in the McKenzie Delta in Alaska. Bet you did not know what a pingo is. I did not until almost noon today. Pingo is a Inut word meaning “rounded hill” and their formation is weather related. They form during periods of tremendous arctic cold over the tundra. They are thrust upward from the flat tundra by the growth of its ice cone. I would like to see that.
* 44 was the lowest temperature atop Mt. LeConte in Great Smoky Mountain National Park this weekend, It occurred Saturday morning. We had a little just-for-fun forecast contest on the blog over the weekend. I missed it by five degrees, but four readers hit it on the nose and a number of others were off by only one or two degrees.
* 9.08 inches is the current rain excess for Boston so far this year. They received an additional 1.25 inches of rain yesterday.
* 0.65 is the current EXCESS for Birmingham Airport.
* 12.07 is the 2008 shortfall for Huntsville Airport. Quite a contrast. Huntsville has received 24.57 inches his year. That is still a lot better than 16.49 inches on this same date last year.
* 0 is how many tornadoes I have actually seen in action despite being involved in weather since 1957. (Zero, zip, none!) The nearest thing to it was a funnel cloud over the north edge of Great Salt Lake about 35 years ago. That spooked a lot of folks. Ironically, when I walked into the U.S. Weather Bureau at Birmingham Airport at 8 am on an April morning in 1957, there was a tornado already on the ground in North Walker County and several persons were killed. What a way to start a weather career!
