Tuesday, May 29, 2018

Tropics Returning to Quiet Phase...

As we end May and begin the official start of Hurricane season on Friday, it’s so nice to see nothing happening tonight, nor in the near term (10-14 days) future as the MJO has gone into the unfavorable (sinking air) phase.  Watching David show a building upper ridge in Texas expand eastward over us really paints a very hot & mostly dry pattern for the rest of this week into the weekend.   Without any cooling showers, we are likely to flirt with record heat over the next 5 day.  There are numerous showers covering the central plains into the Ohio & Tennessee Valleys tonight.  What remains of Alberto is moving into western Kentucky and will move into Illinois & Indiana  drenching the farmlands with needed moisture.  As a kid in NW Indiana, I remember the saying about the corn crop…” it’s knee high by the 4th of July”.  Anything less and it would be a bad crop year.  So far I think it’s going to be a great growing summer for corn, wheat  & soybeans if the rains keep coming.  

 

David also showed the track of Alberto as it came up from the Caribbean into the eastern Gulf bending sharply westward before abruptly shifting back to the north making landfall between Destin & Panama City.   This was a far different track than the early on model runs that brought the storm to us.   Unfortunately, once those tracks were out, government reacted declaring state of emergencies shutting down operations of state run facilities (Ship Island Ferry) and panicking many folks to cancel their weekend beach trips.   I think the lesson learned (hopefully) here is not to over-react to those early computer model runs that in this case resulted in the 5 day errors of over 250 miles.   Some say it was a good practice for first responders, and it was.  However, many businesses were really hurt and that is sad because “the wolf never came”.   Cry wolf too often and the public won’t listen when the wolf really does come.   Government must always error on the side of safety, but they need not believe on 4-5 day out computer models as gospel.  Stay tuned!

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