Weekend Edition
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Weather Headlines
A hot week ahead
Rain chances hold off until the end of the week
Rainfall deficit climbs to 4 inches below normal
Meteorologist Mark’s Wx Vlog
unavailable today
Seven-Day Forecast
Daily Forecast
Sunday – Wednesday: Mostly sunny and hot.
Thursday: A chance for a shower or storm. Otherwise, partly to mostly sunny and hot.
Friday: A better chance for showers and thunderstorms.
Saturday: A chance for showers and thunderstorms.
Forecast Summary/Discussion
It just keeps heating up and drying out. By the end of the week, a weak frontal boundary and daytime heating could lead to some showers and thunderstorms around the area. Let’s hope so, as we will be getting awfully dry by that point!
Meteorologist Mark’s Wx Concerns
Almanac for Yesterday
Tropics
Tropical Storm Ana, the first named storm of the 2021 hurricane season, continues to spin out at sea. The storm will move northeast in the coming days and even farther away from land. The official start of hurricane season is June 1st.
Sun & The Moon
On This Day in Wx History
1988 – Thunderstorms produced severe weather across much of the eastern U.S. Golf ball size hail was reported in Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina and Ohio.
Yesterday’s National Temperature Extremes
High: 101° at Rio Grande Village, Texas
Low: 11° at Hatch, Utah
Weather SnapShots
Check out this incredible picture of a tornado from Colorado yesterday. Photo by John Sirlin (@SirlinJohn).
NASA Nerdology
Today we celebrate astronaut and pilot Ellison Onizuka. Chosen as a member of the 1978 “Thirty-Five New Guys” (aka TFNG) astronaut class, Ellison became the first Asian American in space during STS-51-C. Ellison died in the tragic Space Shuttle Challenger explosion in 1986.
Sunday Story (Back!)
Thankful for a Cool Spring
The spring season has brought many days of below-average temperatures to the Cumberland Plateau. We’re not alone. Much of the nation has seen cooler spring weather.
While many folks would rather see warm sunshine in the spring months, there is a big reward for cooler weather. A recent study showed that nearly every National Weather Forecast office in the country has issued fewer severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings than they normally do in the spring.
Nationally, there have been nearly 2,000 fewer severe weather warnings issued this year than average! That’s a lot of storms that didn’t cause property damage or loss of life.
The cooler weather has sent many of us scrambling to protect tender vegetation from frost more times than we can count, but it’s worth the trade-off when you consider how bad the storms can be this time of year.
One of the main ingredients for severe weather is warm weather. The warmer the temperatures are, the more potential there is for storms to become severe. Warm air holds more moisture than colder air. That warm and humid air is like high octane fuel for storms. The warmer and more humid that air, the higher the octane of the fuel.
Cooler air is drier air and more stable. Warm air rises to form big clouds and instability, cooler air sinks and leads to a more stable atmosphere. So long as we stay cool, the weather stays quiet.
The northern Gulf Coast is one of the few areas of the country that has seen an active storm season. That’s about as far north as the warm and humid air has been able to move for much of this spring.
Warmer weather will be here soon enough, and with that will come better storm chances. Let’s be thankful for the cooler weather that has led to quieter skies!