NOAA Joins Doom & Gloom Crowd...

Years ago, only the late Dr. Bill Gray of Colorado State University issued a preseason "forecast" for the total number of storms & hurricanes.  Now there are over a dozen companies & government agencies that issue their predictions.

Today NOAA was the last one to join all the others who are saying the 2020 season will be very active with 13-19 named storms, of which 6-10 become Hurricanes with 3-6 of those reaching major (Cat. 3+) status.  If you read their whole press release, you found this small, but important, piece of information.  "NOAA's outlook is for overall seasonal activity and is NOT a landfall forecast.  Some companies are now trying to show where the higher chances for landfall are, like the one below from Weather Bell Analytics.

Now I'm not a rocket scientist, but isn't the above areas pretty much the same, more or less, every year?  The Gulf, the northern Caribbean & the U.S. East coast?   Really, these preseason numbers are meaningless without pinpointing (impossible) exact locations months in advance.  We must prepare this year like we do every year, except this year we have the Covid-19 virus to include in our precautions.  I'll have more on preparedness as we get into the season.

Today was back above 90, but it still didn't feel that bad.  Why?  Look at the dew points.  It'll start to feel bad when our DPs get into the mid & upper 70s like south Texas.

The weather map still shows lots of rain under a slow moving upper low in Kentucky with the heaviest now over the Carolinas.  You can see how much cooler it is under that upper low.  The changes I see for this holiday weekend are pretty much what happens at this time of the year.  We begins to see daily daytime driven showers and T-Storms.  Coverage on a typical summer day is 30-50% so if ou have any outdoor plans the next 3-4 days, be prepared to see some rainy intervals.  It's called Summer in the South.  Another big surge is coming down out of the Ohio River into the Lower Mississippi River so expect our high water levels to continue well into June.  Stay tuned!