KATC StormTeam 3 Weather BLOG

You may have noticed that  haven’t been on air this week and many thanks to KATC I have been attending the American Meteorological Society’s Broadcast conference in beautiful Miami Beach.  This conference combines presentations obviously about weather, but also how to be a better broadcaster and communicator of scientific information including topics outside of the weather realm. 

Roughly 200 attendees had the opportunity to take a course in tropical meteorology which was quite informative and we are looking forward to touring the National Hurricane Center…the mecca for tropical meteorologists! 

In addition, Hurricane Center Director Bill Read will be the keynote speaker at lunch today provided the tropical wave in the Western Caribbean doesn’t develop too quickly… if not we may be seeing him and his team in action at the NHC.   

This morning the subject of climate change has been the focus…always interesting perspectives…with disaster mitigation on the docket through the early afternoon.  Hopefully that will be followed by a little sand and surf later this today. 

Incidentally the talk of the conference amoungst many of us meteorologists has been the oil disaster in the Gulf.  Visually my flight out of  Houston was quite interesting where I did see what I believe were ribbons of oil roughly 20 miles off the Bolivar Peninsula  near Galveston along the upper Texas coast.  Flying over the main spill area south of Venice Monday was also quite interesting with colors more a kin to the dispersant rather than oil.  Again these are more casual observations and the visual inspection offshore the Louisiana Coast was from 30,000ft.  Obviously the big story over the last couple of days has been the thick stuff washing up onto Pensacola Beach…rough to watch. 

The new wild card of late is what Dave and Chris have been watching in the Western Caribbean…this system continues to show slow signs of development with models carrying this “something” into the Central Gulf by early next week…a tropical storm may be quite possible…never dull in our world.  Stay with KATC for the latest on the system as Hurricane Hunters should be on their way to investigate later today.  I will see you Monday!