Another front will be crossing the area tomorrow morning with slightly cooler conditions for just tomorrow. Moisture will be quite limited with this front so significant rain chances are not expected. Some light fog and clouds will move in late tonight and for early tomorrow morning, but the front should sweep any fog out of here by daybreak while lingering clouds should scour out by midday with mostly sunny skies anticipated for tomorrow afternoon. Highs tomorrow should be in the mid-upper 60s while we should top out near 70 on Friday under fair skies. A storm system developing in the Plains this weekend will likely engender a nice warm-up with breezy conditions for Saturday with highs reaching the mid-70s. We could push the lower 80s on Sunday ahead of a moderate cold front that will cross the region by late Sunday. Showers and storms will be possible late Sunday into Sunday night but right now it looks like most of the strong dynamics and the possibility of severe weather should stay to our north. Cooler conditions should return for early next week.
I talked about Philip Klotzbach’s and Dr. Gray’s hurricane forecasts tonight referring to their overestimation of the Atlantic Basin activity. While it turned out to be a near “normal” season the forecast group has gotten hammered hard by the press that generally misuses and doesn’t understand the complexity of the information. As usual perception is reality and because the U.S. wasn’t struck by a bad storm the perception is that it wasn’t a bad season and that the long
range forecasters were way off mark. However, it wasn’t a good season for those in Central America and Mexico where two Category 5 storms struck, and in Hispaniola where a late season storm (Noel) was responsible for more the 150 fatalities due to flooding. The overestimation by the Colorado State group and many others was likely due to the preponderance of upper level cold-core lows and their associated vertical wind shear that kept tropical systems short-lived and prohibited stronger development. Why there were so many upper lows remains a mystery, but each and every year there are factors that are impossible to forecast or anticipate and although the past two years we have seen an overestimation of (and near normal) activity, we remain in an active decadal cycle that will continue for several more years. While I’m not a long-range forecaster by trade I feel the need to defend a community (particularly Dr. Gray and Klotzbach) that have been calling for the very active years since the mid-90s and correctly predicted that between 1995 and 2010 we would likely see unprecedented hurricane damage in the U.S. I came across this article from Dr. Pielke from the University of Colorado and it makes some very interesting points with regard to hurricane activity, perception and a global climate changing environment…check it out.