KATC StormTeam 3 Weather BLOG

High pressure over the SE U.S. will push to the southwest ushering deep tropical moisture and a potential tropical system westward into Texas and Mexico over the next several days.  This means rain chances will gradually decrease across Acadiana through Friday with typical July heat and humidity and surpressed rain chances Friday into the weekend. 

In fact, the pattern looks rather sedate finally with respect to the tropics for the better part of a week (after the system in the Gulf moves inland by Friday) with no major suspect areas anticipated through the second week of July.  We could see a more active tropical pattern redevelop for the 3rd week of this month…with the eventually that it will likely get very busy in the tropics from mid-August on.  For now, enjoy the heat and humidity, but not too much, as heat indices will likely reach the 105-108 degree mark this weekend.

Acadiana is our home so when close to 2,000 square miles of land disappear a natural disaster becomes a national crisis.   Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection and Restoration Act a Federal protection plan would be able to work directly with those charged with cleaning and restoring the coast because of the oil spill.  So I am going to say it, and maybe you thought the same.  Why is that every time a disaster effects our coast either man made or natural the entire Nation and even the world notice after the fact?  Lets take part of that delayed reaction as a compliment and an example of how important Louisiana is to the world, and not just economically. The other  excuse ,”out of site…out of mind”.   We are stuck between two extremes, the collapse and preservation.  The middle, lies a natural wonder that supports almost one-fourth of the domestic oil and gas production, and the largest seafood harvest in the lower 48 states.   The Natural Gas resources have only just begun to be researched and geologist say the supply is one of the largest in the world.  Wetlands protect the  shipping and fuel production corridors in the U.S. from hurricanes  and open gulf conditions one of those ports receives over a million barrels of oil every day, that’s more than 13% of  our foreign oil supply.

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita really showed America how dependent they were to Louisiana.  I know first hand the panic Southeastern States were under when even a mention of gas not being available.  Prices were over $6 a gallon at the pump and the lines were down the road.  This was said to have cost Americans $1 BILLION dollars a day.  That crisis lasted only days as gas become undeliverable to major cities immediately following the storms.  More than likely most people you ask that live outside this area don’t even remember those days, I will give some credit, maybe they would recall if mentioned.  We are the ones that stay to repair….work….succeed….live….learn….play….love….and die here.              The resources are present and available and the technology to harvest improves everyday.  To just stop drilling would be to choke us.  I am going to put myself out there and say this.  Yes, we need to make improvements and learn more about drilling a mile below the Gulf surface.  Today the worlds deep water  remains an unknown and  unexplored part of the world that we know very little about.  But we must move ahead and learn from the tragedy.  Action + Progress = Success to us all.   Don Briggs, L.O.G.A.  President, said it best…”think about this after Katrina and Rita there were several rigs that were damaged some destroyed the amount of spilled oil was minimal”, he reminds me that he does not want to speculate on  what happened but said “this was a devastating failure and we lost 11 people”.  Those men gave it all.

The value we have here in Acadiana also lives in the estuaries,  the unique mixture of salt and fresh water are the nursery for shrimp, crabs, and several fish species.  The dockside harvest value averages $310 million, and the recreational boating and fishing is a billion dollar industry.   We came here and they laughed…we settled here and they said it could not be done.  We found success here and now they want to take it away.   My experience tells me it’s in the best interest now for oil companies to be safe, responsible and profitable.  Not careless.  The businesses  in Acadiana that are strong and working are the ones that operate honestly and safely.  It just does not fly any other way here.

A cultural heritage made famous with Mardi Gras is rooted much deeper than just parties and parades.  It is a heritage of family and friends, hunting and fishing, cooking and community.  Yes also we must give thanks to the prosperity that comes from living near the rich marshes, estuaries and fossil fuel mines below.   I have always been  proud of the independence Louisiana has when faced with a disaster…..we take care of our own.  Would you say $14 billion was high price to protect the coast, but think about if nothing was done the cost is estimated to be $100 billion.  Our nation can not afford to lose this critical infrastructure for energy production, commercial shipping, oil and gas distribution, and seafood harvests.  Yes we can have it all…a pristine and vital coast that produces, protects and brings us all glory.

C.W.P.P.R.A

* Attend public meetings

*  Subscribe to Water Marks

*  Study coastal wetland loss and restoration issues

*  Volunteer

More information:  www.LaCoast.gov  (337) 266 8623

So TruVu Max is up and running and we are pleased with where we stand. Together with the most experienced weather team, this new weather system is the best of the best and will serve to protect and inform Acadiana.  Obviously the crude disaster has kept us in an elevated state of weather and news coverage and the approaching “busy” hurricane season has us preparing for the active months ahead.

By adding this  major software and hardware upgrades to our weather facilities as well we stand stronger and well prepared. This is also in addition to recent processor upgrade to Power Doppler 3000 (which gives us the highest definition radar in all of Southern Louisiana) we have unveiled the KATC Interactive Stormtracker.   The interactive tracker takes National Weather Service Doppler radar imagery and allows the user zoom down to neighborhood level and gives full control to the user to watch weather in Acadiana or anywhere in the U.S.  In addition, other tools such as user controlled animation, satellite imagery, land and water temperature contours and lightning data, there are exclusive tools for tracking severe storms, including the same TITAN storm tracking capabilities that we use here at KATC.  And if that isn’t enough, there is an integrated hurricane tracking program included and the utility even has overlays for tracking the oil spill in the Gulf.   Check it out and give it a spin!

Finally Dave, Chris and I are now working weather with products with the latest “state of the art” platform of TV weather graphics.  This system is definitely the “next” level platform that will bring high definition satellite, radar imagery, and graphics to Acadiana.  The “TruView Max” system (from WSI, the leading commercial weather graphics and data company) features a continuous live weather engine that ingests the latest satellite-delivered weather and computer forecast data with no rendering time.  The weather imagery and graphics to be simply put, are awesome!

Let us know how you feel…

The dead zone occurs naturally, but human activity is making it much worse by allowing tributaries to become overfilled with some nutrients while those tributaries lack in other key nutrients. Nitrogen (in saltwater) and phosphorus (in freshwater) are the nutrients that contribute most to algal blooms. A lack of silicon in the water limits the growth of diatoms, a helpful type of algae. So where’s this nutrient pollution coming from? Intensive farming is the practice most commonly linked to dead zones.

Intensive farming, also called intensive agriculture, uses a large investment of capital and some combination of fertilizer, pesticides, fungicides, heavy machinery, irrigation and other modern farming techniques to maximize output from a plot of land. The practice is characterized by higher productivity and requires fewer laborers than extensive agriculture.

Critics accuse intensive-farming practitioners of harming the environment through creating animal waste and fertilizer runoff, using dangerous pesticides, contributing to animal disease and providing inhumane conditions for livestock. Today, intensive farming is both quite pervasive and productive, although the use of fertilizers, chemicals and safe environmental practices can vary drastically depending on the farmers and government regulation.

Some scientists cite the ethanol craze as a contributor to the dead zone. The use of biofuel crops means more corn than ever is being planted in the United States. Corn requires a lot of fertilizer, which is full of nitrogen that seeps into groundwater and ends up in the Mississippi by way of local rivers. Nitrogen levels in the Mississippi River were up 35 percent in May 2007 compared to 2002, and the river’s water levels were down more than 20 percent compared to five years prior, causing a huge influx of algal blooms [Source: The Herald Tribune].

Loss of wetlands has drastically reduced the ability of regional ecosystems to remove nitrogen from local waters. Seven Midwestern states lost 35 million acres of wetlands over the last 200 years, while 50 percent of wetlands are gone from Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas [Source: NOAA].

Despite the dead zone’s gradual expansion, scientists argue that we have the capability to reduce it. Limiting the use of nitrogen-rich fertilizers, implementing water conservation and recycling practices, and preventing sewage leaks and runoff from waste treatment plants should all help to keep nitrogen levels down. In 1998, the U.S. Congress passed the Harmful Algal Bloom and Hypoxia Research and Control Act, which called for examining the research and working to contain harmful algal blooms and hypoxia. Researchers at universities and the NOAA are using modeling techniques to estimate how much of certain compounds need to be removed in order to reduce the dead zone’s size.

Ironically, the dead zone could be positively affected by an active hurricane season. A major contributing factor to dead zones is when water becomes stratified — warm, fresh water settles on top of colder, saltier water. This stratification limits the aeration of deeper waters as algal blooms settle to the bottom and decay. A hurricane could stir up the Gulf waters, dispersing some of the algae and partially replenishing oxygen levels.  While these storms may stir up the dead zone and possibly increase the brown shrimp catch, they will come at a time when Gulf Coast communities are still recovering from the devastation of hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Thanks again to the great blog posts that Rob has been doing with the debate on climate change!  I’m excited to see the Daily Show interview too, so Rob…please make sure you Twitter, Facebook, email, text, call, yell, or smoke signal the air date when you find out.  I’m interested to see the “smackdown”!  I certainly agree with  Rob in his series on Global Warming/Climate Change.  I especially agree that our viewers in the past few years have been asking more than the general “What’s the weather?” question.  Which means either the media hype is driving climatology to the forefront, or that we, the local weather authorities are doing our AMS duty by continually educating our viewers on environmental issues.

Even though Rob and I (because of our schedules) only get a few chances to sit down together and really “go weather geek” every once in a while.   I know that he is always trying to keep up with the latest technology, environmental issues, forecasting techniques, while all the time just trying to let everyone know if it’s going to rain at a festival.  As he speaks or writes in technical terms, you realize just how much he has absorbed in his 1/4 century of weather forecasting (Sorry dude, you’re older than me).  But remember, Rob still likes sports, The Daily Show, Facebook, and all of the other things we do every day.  And, like you and me, he’s watching the forecast to see if he can schedule a “day in the yard” .

So enough of the butt kissing.  Now, I don’t have 25 years of forecasting experience, but from my first little “Radar” job with McDonough County, Illinois civil defense beginning in 1988, I’m starting to realize why the “grays” are showing up as I too approach the quarter century mark.  I read the same journals and have met or listened to the finest weather experts on the planet.  Plus, being in the media for (nearly) 20 years..I’ve gotten a good dose of what most would call…sensationalism.

The number one thing that I and many of the local media meteorologists and weather casters, absolutely, positively, agree with is, “We need more time to study this issue before we come to a definitive conclusion.”  Thanks to the rapid advancement of technology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, information comes easier to all of us.  More importantly, the quality of that information is better or as I like to say, “It’s in HD!”   Rather than taking a scientific approach to explaining recent disasters and applying some kind of theory or blame, I want to take a more realistic view of why it appears that there are more disasters.  I can sum this up in four words.  “THERE ARE MORE PEOPLE!”  The summation is four words, now the 1000 word explanation.  Sorry folks, I don’t get to talk much in my short weather forecasts, so my blogs and KATC.com stories  are usually long.

Lets start with the San Francisco Earthquake in 1906.  This quake wiped out a great American city in a matter of minutes.  The telegraph lines were the only method of rapidly getting the news of the disaster to the rest of the nation and the world.  Most people east of the Rockies didn’t know the earthquake had happened until the next day when they read the headline on their newspaper.  A full 24 hours!  Today, if a disaster happens anywhere in the world, it is transmitted instantaneously via TV, radio, internet, and mobile devices.  Because we can video or take a picture with our mobile phones, we get an instant view of what’s going on in real time!  Plus, because there are more of us on the planet, there are more of us to gather that news and send it to our friends!  So, if 10,000 people can send info from the Haitian earthquake zone, do we think there were 10,000 earthquakes?  Of course not.  Are we having more disasters around the world than we did in 1906?  Probably not, there’s just more of us to see them, more of us to spread the news, and more of us connected around the world at the same time!

Are there more tornadoes?  100 years ago, the Great Plains were sparsely populated, so hundreds of tornadoes might have drifted across the landscape, never being seen by anyone.  Does that mean those tornadoes didn’t happen?  It’s funny to think of a tornado chaser in a horse drawn carriage, with a pencil and paper to draw the tornado with.  Do you think his friends would believe him when he showed them his drawing? 

Are there more hurricanes?  Are they more destructive?  I’ll refer to the above paragraph about the number of hurricanes.  100 years ago, unless you were on a ship, you would never know if there was a hurricane in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.  Remember, not all hurricanes hit land.  Like the tornado, if there was no one to see the hurricane, did it really exist?  Of course it did.  But we’ll never know the actual count from 100 years ago. 

As far as hurricanes being more destructive.  I’ll have to say “YES!”  Now remember, I said “more destructive”, not “more powerful”.    Since there are more people living along coastlines than there were 100 years ago, there are more homes, businesses, and infrastructure in general.  If there is more to destroy, then it is more destructive.  Even tiny little Tropical Storm Allison in 2001 was destructive.  But overall, was it powerful?  No.

Can global warming create more powerful hurricanes?  That’s an, “I don’t know”  Sure, warmer waters can add fuel to the fire, but if global warming is actually taking place, then the atmosphere and the waters would be warming at the same time.  So the ratio would remain about the same.  In weather, it’s the more “opposite” features that create the rough stuff.  Hot air and warm air colliding doesn’t produce a severe weather event like hot air and “cold” air colliding.   In 2005 (click links for maps) we had 28 named storms and four category 5 hurricanes.  In 1933, there were 21 named storms, and zero Cat 5′s.  Strange, though.  When you look at the map for 1933, almost every storm formed west of 55 degrees longitude.  In 2005, we had seven named storms that formed EAST of 55 degrees and never went west of 60.  So, if we subtract those seven storms, we get a total of 21…just like in 1933.  There were no satellites in 1933, so maybe there were more hurricanes, and possibly some of those could have been Cat. Fives.  If nobody was there to see them, then they must not have happened right?  You can’t compare 2005 data to 1933, or 1833, or 833.

Therefore, if there are more people, it doesn’t mean there are more natural disasters world wide.  It just means more people are around to witness these disasters.  And with the technology today, more connected people can send and view these disasters at the same time anywhere on the planet!

Now for my take on the whole Global Warming thing as a whole.  Nothing technical here at all, just my answers and beliefs.  Do I believe that Global Warming exists.  “Yes“.  Do I believe that our actions in the last 100 years have accelerated Global Warming.  “Yes“, but only because since there are more of us, there are more of us to screw things up.  Do I believe Global Warming has “naturally” happened in the past?  “Yes“  Do I believe Global Warming will melt the ice caps and trigger sea level rises?  “Yes“  Do I believe that if the planet warms, and the ice caps melt, and there is more water available for evaporation and that evaporated water becomes clouds, reducing the amount of the sun’s energy to reach the surface of the Earth gradually cooling us back down?  “Yes“   Do I believe that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction?  “Yes“  Do I believe (Natural or Man Made) Global Warming could eventually trigger Global Cooling?  “Yes“ 

Do I think global warming is producing  more weather events and disasters than there were 100 years ago.  “NO”  Do I think global warming will have a significant impact on the number and intensity of tropical systems in the near future?  “Absolutely NO!”  Do I think global warming is going to screw up my 8 day forecast this week?  “Um, No.”

Do I think we should abandon all environmental causes and rape the Earth of all of its natural resourses while dumping all of our waste and polluting the planet with no accountability and no plan to preserve the world that our children and grandchildren will inheret?  Will you believe someone has asked me this question already when I disagreed with their political view?  My answer, “Of course not!”

Do I think any one of the floodwalls in New Orleans could have collapsed (or been sabotaged) on any given sunny Thursday afternoon flooding the city with 450,000 people going about their daily business?  “YES”

Do I think any major city on the planet is threatened by some sort of natural disaster and could be destroyed to a point even worse than a “Katrina”?  “Yep, it’s already happened in China, Haiti, etc…..”

Do I think I can trust someone like Al Gore to accurately predict the weather for April 15th, 3010?  Come on folks, some of you reading this don’t believe Rob or I will get the forecast right this weekend!

StormTeam3 Meteorologist Dave Baker

Good Morning Acadiana-Weekdays 5-7am!

weather@katctv.com

We love to kick a weather joke around sometimes. We know in that our weather is not always funny but it does kick me up a notch or two when people send a line or two my way.  Saved some for you and want to share.

______________________________________________________                      What is the Mexican weather report?     Chili today and hot  tamale.

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Where did the meteorologist stop for a drink on the way home from a long day in the studio?       The nearest ISOBAR.

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A husband and his wife were sound asleep when suddenly the phone rang.  The husband picked up the phone and said, “Hello? how the heck do I know? What do I look like, a weatherman?” He slammed the phone down and settled into bed.  “Who was that?” asked his wife.  I don’t know. It was some guy who wanted to know if the coast was clear.”

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Summers in Canada…….Hi,did you have a good summer?  Yes indeed, we had a great picnic that afternoon!!!

______________________________________________ Whatever happened to that cow that was lifted into the air by the tornado.  Udder disaster!

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How do you spot a happy motorcyclist in good weather?  He’s got bugs on his teeth.

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What’s worse than raining buckets?  Hailing taxis!

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After the airline pilot had managed to land his plane–very rough–following a descent through exceptionally heavy weather, he came out of the flight deck to wish his passengers farewell as they gratefully entered the Jetway on their way back from Dallas, Texas.  The pilot remembers best a comment from a little old lady who asked him politely whether to satisfy one question she had. “Did we land, or were we shot down?”

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Go ahead a share if you have a good joke.  I have learned to not think I heard them all.

April 1, 2010

Chris Paulsen

              Beautiful blue skies and cool dry air looks to be the player of the week.  Trees and shrubs are showing bright color and unlike most times we are finding something that needs to be do outside.  After and crazy and sometimes unbelievable Winter Acadiana is in the thick of Spring. 

              I feel confident that we can put Winter behind us with no more freezes expected.  This pattern of cool & dry will run for the week. 

To Do List

           TO DO LIST:

           I have my outdoor chore To Do list made.  After you finish this important job now would be a good time to make a repair list for outside.  Take a walk through the yard and makes notes of lose siding, shingles and even gutters blocked with leaves, especially Live Oak, these tend to be very heavy and gutter guards don’t always hold them back.  Check the roof also for fallen leaves that might have collected, leaving them on the roof may damage roof and eaves. 

        Check your trees fall branches that might have broken but not fell to the ground.  You can remove them now to avoid damage they may cause when they fall later.  The winter was tough on many plants and shrubs so you may have lost some.  But look closely at the base of the plant there may be some life under all the dead leaves.  This winter cause much of our plants to die back further then other winters.  Before digging them up give them a little more time to recover.  They may still be alive and with the warm weather here they break out a little later. 

       Any preventive maintenance you can get do now will only put you ahead for Hurricane Season 2010 starting in June. 

   Now the only thing left to do is buy a Fishing License and explore the waters of South Louisiana.

There is a bright side to the cold winter that gripped the nation in 2010.  The cold weather pattern was so strong that there was no way for any warm, moist air to move in.  With no temperature contrasts, and no collisions of different air masses, there weren’t too many thunderstorm outbreaks during the first three months of this year.

Normally, the severe/tornado season gets going along the Gulf Coast and the southeast in mid February.  In March it picks up from the ArkLaTex to the lower Ohio Valley.  April is prime tornado season for much of western Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas.  May is usually busy from Nebraska to the Canadian border and anywhere in between the Rockies and the Appalachians.

According to the Storm Prediction Center, over the past three years November, December, and January are the slower months for tornadoes.  April, May, and June are the busy months, with May being the most active month for tornadoes in the United States.  In January, we’ve averaged 37 tornadoes nationwide over the past three years, 78 for February, and 138 for March.  So far this year, 41 in January, 1 in February, and 14 so far this month.  This is about 22% of normal.  The lone tornado in February was in southern California of all places.  California only experiences on average 4 tornadoes per year!  Will this trend continue?  Not too sure yet, but the three most active tornado months are upon us. 

Fortunately most tornadoes that occur in Louisiana are weak.  They can do considerable damage as well as cause injuries or deaths.  Unfortunately, many of the killer tornadoes in Louisiana have occurred at night, or are rain wrapped.  Because of this, the sleeping person may not have gotten the warning ahead of time, or wouldn’t be able to see the storm coming.   The safest place to take cover is in the center part of your home on the lowest floor.  Try to put as many walls between you and outside.  Stay away from windows, and if possible, cover yourself with blankets or pillows to protect yourself from flying debris.  Schools, government facilities, and businesses should have a Tornado Action Plan in place and should be tested at least twice a year.  Television, weather radios, email, and text messaging are other ways to get early warnings.  The more time you have to take cover, the better your chances for survival.

StormTeam3 Meteorologist Dave Baker

Good Morning Acadiana-Weekdays 5-7am

weather@katctv.com

In fact it’s so cold it feels like, well….Toledo!  Yesterday’s high temperature was only 46 degrees.  It tied the coldest high temperature for March 21st.  That’s about 27 degrees colder than it’s supposed to be this time of year.  It’s 13 degrees colder than our coldest normal high temperature in early January!  Spring officially began Saturday afternoon, so Sunday was our first “full” day of spring!  

A late season cold blast gripped much of the nation east of the Rockies, spreading cold rain and even snow flurries as far south as central Louisiana!  Wrap around cloud cover blocked any chance for warming.  Those clouds should clear today, so temperatures will warm into the 60s, but still more like January than late March.  70 degree temperatures will return tomorrow.  Most of the week will be quiet weatherwise, just a few showers will be possible Thursday.

And yes, it was very much like Toledo yesterday.  Their normal high for March 21st is 48 degrees. Ours is 73.  They don’t hit normals in the low 70s until the end of May, or about the same time we start complaining that it’s too hot!

StormTeam3 Meteorologist Dave Baker

Good Morning Acadiana-Weekdays 5-7am!

weather@katctv.com

I used to be a big fan of Daylight Saving Time.  I remember summer evenings, racing through supper just so I could get back outside with friends in the neighborhood.  The curfew law in place by my Mother was “Be home when the street lights came on, and not a moment later!”.  I grew up in the Midwest where there was still a little bit of daylight as late as 9pm, so the street lights stayed off until 8:30.  That was like midnight to a 10 year old!

Fast forward 30 years.  I work on a morning show.  I have a wife and four kids.  It’s already hard enough to get the proper amount of sleep every night, but it’s especially tough when it’s still daylight outside at bedtime!  Naturally, living things go through the motions each day of waking up and falling asleep guided by the sun.  But us humans want more.  We want to use as many minutes of each day that we can.  If we don’t complete each of our tasks for the day, we figure out how to get more work done.  Since we can’t control the sun, we’ve decided to control the clock instead.

Now I know that most of the working world is 9-5!  With kids and school, that means up at 6, kids on the bus at 7, head for work at 8, and if we’re lucky, back home by 6pm.  During the winter, that means getting up when it’s still dark, and getting home as the sun sets.  But with the warmer weather and longer days during the summer, we have extra time in the evenings for activities with the family, yard work, or whatever.  And…we switch the clocks forward one hour, so we can keep the sun out even longer during the evening.  We call it Daylight Saving Time.  I propose (from a morning person’s perspective) that we call it Daylight Stealing Time! 

You see by switching the clocks, you’re not saving anything.  Even though the sunset Saturday was at 6:15 and sunset Sunday was 7:16, the day was only 1 minute longer.  And this is because of the natural progression from Winter to Summer.  The days get longer.  So basically the other 59 minutes of daylight was stolen from the morning.  Anyone have trouble getting a teenager out of bed for school Monday?  Felt yourself yawning during the day this week?  Still having trouble getting to bed at night?  Experts say, just losing that one hour, takes a full week to adjust to.  I go to bed later than most of my morning crew, but 11 o’clock Sunday night, and around 10 the last two nights is taking its toll on me.  3am is still 3am no matter if it’s Daylight or Standard time.  The weekend can’t get here any sooner.

Those of us in the meteorology world work on two clocks.  Local time and Universal time.  The prime meridian is the imaginary line that divides the eastern and western hemispheres.  It runs through Greenwich, England.  You may have seen UTC, or GMT, or Z time.  All of these are the same.  The time in Greenwich is the official time of the planet.  If you have a clock set to Universal Time in Louisiana, the the clock says the same thing in China, England, Australia, and Siberia.  When weather balloons are released, they all go at approximately the same time…around the globe using Z time.  That way we can get a measure of the atmosphere around the world, all at the same time.  Unfortunately our local clock changes.  Z time does not.

I always try to use the most up to date information to produce my weather forecast each day.  You wouldn’t want me to base my forecast on a computer model from yesterday right?  Well, when daylight time kicks in, that’s exactly what I have to do.  Because of the time change, essentially I (and you) are doing everything one hour earlier.  Well our computer models are running at the same time as always.  Some models update more than others, but some of the most dependable models update every six hours at 0z, 6z, 12z, and 18z.  Before daylight time the 06Z models would be ready for me to use for the morning show (usually ready by 4am).  Now the 06z stuff doesn’t come in until our show has started (after 5am).  Therefore, the most recent model I can use is 0z.  Subtract 5 hours from 0z and you get 7pm our time…yesterday. 

With older data, my forecast is based on weather parameters that may have changed.  With less accurate data, the forecast becomes less accurate too.  Now the changes in the models usually aren’t too dramatic.  But when it comes to very specific forecasting, such as hurricane tracks, the paths from model run to model run can switch by hundreds of miles in a short term forecast, to thousands of miles by day 5.  Making big changes during the show is a hard enough task in itself with Weather on the 3s.  Some of the maps and the  adjustments to the data can take up to an hour to produce.  Have you ever seen a forecast saying the hurricane was going to Florida, and when you get to work everyone is talking about the hurricane coming here.  Well the new model was used during the second hour of the show, you watched the first hour and missed it.

I can’t make the rest of the world change just because of my forecasts, but I might be able to fix the whole sleep thing.  I suggest, instead of pushing the clocks forward one hour, let’s roll it backwards by 23.  You still get the daylight saving time effect in the evening, but instead of losing an hour of sleep, you gain almost a whole day to adjust!  Everyone loves a three day weekend right?  Then, when it’s time to change the clocks back in the fall, you’ll have to lose a day going forward 23 hours. I choose MONDAY.  Skip the Monday, have the week begin on Tuesday making a four day week.  Seems like a win/win scenario to me!

StormTeam3 Meteorologist Dave Baker

Good Morning Acadiana-Weekdays 5-7am!

weather@katctv.com