Tuesday, August 6, 2019

As Basic As It gets...

After playing golf at Oak Harbor in Slidell, my friend Marvin and I journeyed over to the Lost Cajun (Fremaux exit) for a delightful lunch.  As we were leaving. it started to pour, and I mean really pour down.   As I entered the interstate heading back to the South Shore, visibilities were very limited and I kept my speed down to 50 mph.    But like magic, buda book, buda boom it was over.  Driving 2 miles took us from a torrential tropical downpour to bright sunshine and no rain.  As soon as I got home, I checked the satellite loop and you had to look real hard to see how small a storm it was and how quickly it came and went. But that's August across most of the South at this time of the year.  Storms can build 5-8 miles in the vertical but only have a horizontal cross section of 3-5 miles or less.  Explains why some get brief flooding while blocks away nothing happens.  Since the upper high that has been sitting over the Rockies only slowly drifts/shifts our way, I don't see any major changes coming for the rest of this week.   Underneath the upper ridge it's very hot (Dallas hit 100 for the second time all summer), but daytime heating storms are providing many of us with enough cooling relief to make it bearable.  So as we know, it's August for another 3 1/2 weeks and it's supposed to be hot.

Nothing is going on in the Tropics.   96L still has a mid level swirl down over the central Caribbean but there are no storms around it and no hint of any low level circulation.  Long range Models bring another upper disturbance around the upper Rockies ridge and hint it might make it into the northern Gulf for NEXT weekend, much like how Barry formed.    Way too soon to know if they are correct.  Stay tuned!

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