Active Weather Week Around the Country

Hi everyone!

Hope you all have had a wonderful week!

Every once in awhile, I get scientist-y (is that a word?) here on Weather Wanderings. Especially when big weather events are happening. It also doesn’t hurt to talk about these things when I am doing discussion in class.

So let’s get right down to it. Starting with the most pressing matter: another Hurricane.

Hello, Matthew!

As you can see from the photo above, there’s a new Hurricane in town and this one’s name is Matthew. This storm was upgraded to a hurricane as of 2 p.m. Mountain Daylight Time.

At this moment, models predict the hurricane will move northward, pass Florida and possibly continue into the Atlantic Ocean, away from the US. Be forewarned, there’s still a lot that could go on in the next couple of days that would affect the storm’s path.

For more information about the Hurricane, click here

Now onto other severe storms:

Severe Storm Activity in Virginia:

One of the scary things about weather, it can go crazy at night!

Take a look at the discussion below. A thunderstorm with some rotation popped up around 7pm Eastern near Charlottesville, VA on 9/28/16. (Note: no tornado confirmed). However, I did look and some warnings were issued for this storm.

So, want to see what goes in to evaluating if a storm is severe? Here’s the very short discussion I wrote for my radar and satellite class. Enjoy!

 

1) Using Base Reflectivity 0.5 degrees (Figure 1), the first intense radar echo was observed at 2357 UTC on 9/28/16. The echo was located south of the Charlottesville, VA METAR. This is Northwest of the KAKQ Radar Station.

(Figure 1)

2)The wind according to the Base Velocity 0.5 degree product as shown in Figure 2 indicated a southwesterly flow. The Charlottesville METAR verified this observation.

(Figure 2)
3) The EET product in Figure 3 indicated an echo top of 40,000 ft during the most intense precipitation period which is indicative of possible hail.

(Figure 3)

4)Using the NOH product to locate other hydrometers (Figure 4), the product shows that hail and graupel were present in the echo.

(Figure 4)
5) From the Storm Relative Velocity product in Figure 5, there was a storm with rotation located south of the Charlottesville METAR at 2357 UTC.

(Figure 5)

Welcome Back to The World!

Hi guys!

I missed you all so much. Now that I have fully been on vacation and have figured out how I am going to attack this semester. I can happily announce that I am back to blogging.

So let’s start with this weekend. The picture above is from, I kid you not, the view from our porch of our cabin for the weekend. I seriously love Colorado.

Although I can’t tell you exactly where this picture was taken because the place where I was is particular about media coverage I can tell you it is somewhere in between Estes Park and Nederland on Peak to Peak Highway in Colorado.

The nice thing is even though things are starting to cool down here, it is still warm enough to get around and hike a bit. It is also still warm enough for wildlife to be out.

I was lucky enough to see some deer over the weekend too. I literally just shut the door after taking the dogs out for a hike when a herd of deer swarmed my cabin. There were 4 in total (One buck and 3 does) and they seemed happy enough to graze around while I frantically search for my phone to take a picture. The pic above is of the one straggling doe that stuck around just so I could get her picture.

But my weekend was not just all fun and games.

I also got in a lot of reading too. If you are geeky about meteorology and want to learn about radar, I highly recommend this book. I am currently reading this because I am taking a course in radar and satellite at school however, the professor who wrote this book sells these on his website for about $40.

Just thought I would write a little update for you. Hope to have more interesting blog posts soon.

Until then,

-M