Friday, August 20, 2021

Rocky Mountain High In August !

Most of us are tired of dealing with the brutal summer heat & humidity, so I decided to show you pictures from this morning of the higher terrain in Colorado.  My son (Rob) sent these to me showing lots of snow that fell yesterday and over night.


The top photo is from the visitor's center in Rocky Mountain National Park while the bottom pic is I-70 at Vail Pass.  Yep, the changing of the seasons is beginning and in a couple of weeks we should start to see some cold fronts here.  Yippee!


Back to reality...we are in the heart of hurricane season and have 2 well formed storms.  Hurricane Grace is heading into Mexico as a Cat. 1 or 2 while Tropical Storm Henri shows signs of getting better organized.



Henri is staying well east of Florida and should become at least a Cat. 1 tomorrow.  The middle pic has Henri's compact cluster of storms while the bottom is a much bigger Grace.  Since Grace will be inland tonight, we focus on Henri.


NHC keeps shifting the center line track farther to the west as model runs indicate.  This will bring significant impacts to the Northeast and might even include NYC.  Remember the worse part of the storm will be to the right (east) of the track, but Henri is expected to slow down and that will allow the rain squalls to wrap around it.  As it moves over the Gulf Stream tomorrow, there is the potential for Henri to get to stronger.  My friend, Joe Bastardi with WeatherBell Analytics, believes Henri will undergo rapid intensification on Saturday over the Gulf stream and become a Cat. 2 or 3.   Folks up in the NE should be taking this storm VERY SERIOUSLY.  IF you have friends or relatives there, make sure you call them to say this is no joke.  Power outages will be extensive and coastal flooding widespread.   Henri will become a network field day with many crying this is due to Climate Change.  Remember Super Storm Sandy?  mark my words.




The western trough that brought the chilly air to the West is lifting out into Canada.  You can see the low cloud swirl over estern Montana and North Dakota where temps are in the 50s & 60s.  It's really getting colder up over northern Canada.




Ahead of the cold front, tropical air has surged up into eastern Canada with dew points near 70.  The Deep South is really soupy with DPs approaching 80!




The well advertised upper high shut off our daily showers, but there is a cluster to our north and east.  We're not expecting much rain for the next 2-3 days so this weekend will be a real heat wave.   Finally,




I close with these pictures which I grabbed off of Facebook this week.  The top has me in front of the paper forecasting charts back in the late 70s with the next pics having me doing our annual Ch. 8 Hurricane special back in the 80s and plugging our tracking charts.  The bottom is our FOX 8 weather team in the late 80s.  At left is Ken Aucoin, the middle is the late Al Duckworth with the little fella.  thought you might get a chuckle of me in my youth!  Enjoy the hot weekend and alert your friends in the Northeast.  Stay tuned!