Saturday, February 7, 2009

Severe Weather Awareness Week...

With no real cold air in sight for the next 7-10 days, our attention will shift more & more from the threat of freezing temperatures to the threat of severe weather. Beginning on Monday, NWS has designated in Louisiana & Mississippi...Severe Weather Awareness Week. Just like Hurricane season, we have a "season" where tornadoes & damaging winds are more likely to happen. That period for us is mid February into early April. After that, the threat shifts farther to the north as the Jet Stream retreats away from us. The most important thing to have in your home is a NOAA Severe Weather Alert Radio. They can be programmed for a specific parish or county & can be purchased for about $30. Since severe(killer) storms often happen at night, these radios can provide some life saving extra minutes to awake you and allow you time to take cover. Fortunately, we rarely see the kinds of tornadoes that hit farther to our west & north.

In the short term, it appears the deep dips (meridional) in the upper air across the eastern states will relax & turn mainly west to east (Zonal) for awhile. Great news for us because each day allows the higher sun angle do its magic and make it less likely we will see a major freeze for the rest of this season. That doesn't mean you can go plant your tomatoes. We still have plenty time for more frosts & light freezes. As the warm air returns, I do expect fog to start to be a problem depending on the wind speeds.

7 comments:

ONLYREAL said...

Looks like there could be some strong to severe thunderstorms on Wednesday, looks like there may be some really high wind-sheer over our area that day to allow it to happen,however,it is still questionable how deep the moisture will be when the second shortwave passes north of our area,right now it looks like the moisture may not be deep enough which may supress the thunderstorm activity to a certain extent,It looks like whill have a squall-line move through our area on Wednesday with more sesonable temperatures to follow, then a third shortwave late in the work week.

storm said...

Great article on 2/9/09.

http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog

Colder winters to return?

ONLYREAL said...

Storm,
I read somewhere the other day that said we only have 5 years left until the next ice-age.
lol

storm said...

Onlyreal,
Now that would be extreme in the other direction. I do think we will be entering another cold phase for the next 20 years or so.

ONLYREAL said...

Ohh I think another Ice Age in 5 years is insane.I never said I believed it.Just thought I would share it becuase I thought it was funny.

But I do think the warming cycle is starting to hit the brakes though.

Bourbon St. Blues said...

Hey Onlyreal...when you did research on the snowfall in New Orleans, what was latest date it snowed...for example, Dec 11 was the earliest it has snowed here when is the lastest?

ONLYREAL said...

I did my research from 1900-2008 the first time it snoed in the 20th Century was in 1908.