No five day to display
Summary
Today’s blog will be a bit abbreviated, as my Grandmother remains in ICU and we’ve been quite tied up with that situation. Continued prayers are appreciated.
For today, we’ll see scattered showers and storms. The first batch is coming onto the plateau as I type this. None of this activity is expected to be strong or severe, though some heavy downpours are certainly possible. This first batch of rain and thundershowers may go a long way in stabilizing our atmosphere and keeping us from getting any rough storms this afternoon.
Below is the current radar at 9:15, with all activity moving east, northeast.
With that being said, any storm that does develop this afternoon, in the wake of this earlier activity, could be strong and we’re always mindful of the lightning any storm can produce.
Tonight, a stronger batch of storms may move in from the west and we’ll have to keep an eye on these. The Storm Prediction Center had placed portions of West TN in the slight risk of severe storms, but they have now upgraded portions of that slight risk to enhanced. Slight is level 2 and enhanced is level 3 on the “potential severe weather scale”, which goes to level 5.
Below is the current threats for today. Notice the bulk of the severe weather threat stays well west of the plateau for the daylight hours of Monday. We’ll see how well it all holds together as it moves east and threatens us later tonight. At this time, we’re not anticipating anything too terribly strong, but it is worth keeping an eye on.
I’ll try to keep an eye on those storms and let you know if there’s anything rough holding together to make it here.
Showers and storms may be with us again on Tuesday. A strong cold front is moving in and after that front passes we’ll enjoy a fall-like air mass from Wednesday to Friday, with highs in the 70s and lows in the 50s.
Tropics
Nothing to talk about here.
Records
Back in 2000, severe storms threatened our area. Winds with severe storms downed numerous trees and power lines down in Lincoln County, around the Fayetteville area. Trees fell on cars and houses. One fatality resulted from a man being caught in the storms while flying his gyrocopter. An image of a gyrocopter is pictured below.
On this day in 1886 a horrific hurricane blew onshore near the town of Indianola, Texas. The hurricane was so intense that it completely destroyed the town of Indianola and the town never rebuilt. Indianola is located about halfway between Corpus Christi and Houston.
I’ve talked a bit about how the smoke from fires out west have made it to here a time or two this summer, creating some beautiful, colorful sunsets. The smoke has been high in our atmosphere, so it doesn’t bother us down here at the surface.
Back in the summer of 1910, an enormous blow up of forest fires scorched three million acres in Idaho. At one time, 1736 fires were documented at one time! The fires killed 85 people. Of that number, 78 were firefighters. The smoke from these fires spread a third of the way around the world and darkened skies in parts of the U.S. and Canada. These fires resulted in federal fire protection laws being passed.