Spring Break Is Coming!

In honor of the fact that Spring Break is just a week and a half away here at State, and the fact that my sister's Spring Break is next week, I figured I would give her fair warning about the weather for next week! Please note, this is a forecast for 5-10 days in advance, this is all subject to change as this is not the easiest thing to forecast. As one of my professor says, "Anything past 3 days is magic."

Ocean City, Maryland:
Ocean City is right on the ocean(duh!), here is a Google Earth image to show you all where exactly it is. It's right along the border of Maryland and Delaware on the Peninsula.

The weekend to start spring break(this coming weekend) is not looking so great for anyone on the East Coast. GFS is the free model that goes out past 3 days into the future, and currently it is showing a large low pressure in Ontario on Saturday morning, with a long cold front extending through much of the Mid-Atlantic, and even into the Deep South. Most of what Ocean City can expect is rain, since temperatures will be above freezing through Saturday night into Sunday morning. I doubt temps will recover much on Sunday as the cold front moves through Saturday night into Sunday. Highs should hang out in low-mid 40s for Sunday. Sunday night might reach down to freezing with the clouds having cleared out during the day on Sunday. A slow warm up will occur from Monday into Tuesday. Monday should be in the upper 40s, Tuesday will be in the low-mid 50s with southeasterly winds. Unfortunately, this is in advance of another system that by Tuesday afternoon/evening will be approaching. Wednesday morning is currently when I anticipate this making an impact on Maryland. Thankfully it should push quickly out of the area and by Thursday things will clear out again and warm up once more. The GFS expects a very quick warm up into the high 50s and pushing sixty. This warm up is again very short-lived with another system taking direct aim at VA/MD/DE for Thursday evening. Unfortunately, outdoor activities may be rather limited due to the weather for my sister and her friends. Thankfully all of this will not be snow or any other wintry precipitation.

Saturday: Rainy.
Sunday: Clearing, cool. 44 F.
Monday: Sunny 48 F.
Tuesday: Sunny, warmer 54 F.
Wednesday: Cloudy with rain moving in later: 52 F.
Thursday: Rainy and warm 58 F.
Friday: Cooler, 49 F.

Next Week I will plan on discussing Fort Collins, Colorado, since I will be headed there for my spring break! Hope you enjoy this!

Progressive Pattern Over The South

It has been awhile since I have written much about Oak Ridge and the rest of East Tennessee. However, today is as good a day as any to get back on the horse.

Things are shaping up to be something very interesting in terms of snowy/sleet/rain mixtures. Current models and forecasts are for the accumulating snow to be up to the north, closer to the TN/KY border than in Oak Ridge.

As I write this post, national RADAR shows the rain is pushing into the area from the south and west. However, it appears to be in the form of virga. Virga is when the rain evaporates in the air between the cloud it fell from, and the ground. The rain is associated with a low that is currently still sitting over Central Texas. This low pressure is not very strong. This image shows the vorticity(uplift) surrounding the low, the uplift is what is causing the clouds, and the precipitation. Much of the precipitation at the moment is in Louisiana and Southern Mississippi and Alabama.

The brighter colors indicate positive vorticity. The numbers are pressure heights

This is the GFS map of the same thing.

The GFS shows just how weak this system is. The GFS is has the low as very disorganized. The GFS is also brings the low and the cold front to the south of East Tennessee, meaning we will have winds shift from out of the east, to the north and then to the northwest.




This low is going to make its way towards Tennessee, and the precipitation will move into the area overnight and into tomorrow. Along with the low, there is a cold front which will pass just to the south of East Tennessee on Sunday morning. While the cold front is to our south, temperatures will not get very high Sunday. The high will be sometime during church, and as you make your way to lunch, the wind will be shifting from the NE, to out of the NNW. The temperatures will drop from then on. Highs around East Tennessee should only make it into the mid-40s.

Once this system clears out Sunday night, temperatures will drop into the mid-upper 20s. Sunday night is when there may be some snowflakes, and in SE KY there will be some accumulation, but not much.
The mountains should also get some snow due to the altitude. Monday and Tuesday show a slight warming trend, with lows in the mid-upper 30s, and highs getting back to near 60 on Tuesday before another system looks to make an appearance Wednesday into Thursday. None of these systems are very strong, nor are they bringing with them lots of cold air because they are coming up to us out of the deep Southwest. We are under a progressive pattern with systems steaming across the country every few days, keeping us wet, but not really cold. Things do not seem to be changing until next weekend or early next week. Then we MAY finally get out of this pattern, and get a low from the Northwest instead of the Southwest. If this is the case, March may very well come in like a lion! Gotta love old wives' tales!

HAIL STATE

Dear Readers of crankyweather,

I certainly hope that as you have read this blog that you understand at least a little of what I say. However, apparently not everyone at Mississippi State University is quite as literate in weather as you wonderful people are. Today, as we had some snowflakes, sleet and rain come down on campus, the students were all talking about the "hail" outside. Twitter was full of students commenting on how ironic it was that it was hailing at state, where a common greeting is "Hail State." I am writing this today to put down this bit of unintelligent thinking, and to  combat the rumor that in the winter, it can hail whenever, as opposed to in the summer, when hails comes down only in certain thunderstorms. According to dictionary.com, sleet is defined as "precipitation in the form of ice pellets created by the freezing of rain as it falls." Hail on the other hand is defined as "showery precipitation in the form of irregular pellets or balls of ice more than 1 / 5  in. (5 mm) in diameter, falling from a cumulonimbus cloud." I would like to go further than just this general definition, which, in all honesty is a little wordy and confusing.

Hail is created during a thunderstorm by the updrafts and downdrafts of the storm. A raindrop begins its life as a piece of ice; at the altitude at which they are created, it is below freezing. When this raindrop falls in a thunderstorm, it falls, melts and combines with other raindrops, but before it falls out from the cloud, an updraft picks it up and sends it back up to the top of the storm, where it refreezes. So this same raindrop, just larger, has frozen, and begins falling to earth again. This process happens several times, and eventually the hailstone will be too heavy for the updraft to send back up, and so it falls to earth. This is the life of a hail stone. Sleet has a much simpler life story.

Sleet, begins as a snowflake! Thats is awesome just by itself, I know. Anyway, the snowflake begins falling to earth, but as it falls, it reaches air that is warmer than freezing. This snowflake melts there, however below this layer of warm air in the sky, there is another layer of cold layer. This layer refreezes the snowflake, only now its not a snowflake, but an ice pellet... sleet. The sleet then falls the rest of the way frozen to the surface where it hits you in the head, and you notice it more so than rain or snow, because it hurts more. This is why sleet, snow and rain can all occur simultaneously. Because each individual flake, pellet or drop is going through this on its own and may not be at the same stage. 

Freezing rain is another winter precipitation type people are often confused on. Freezing rain happens when the ground is below freezing, but the air directly above it is not. This means the sleet doesn't refreeze until it hits the ground. This creates a glaze over the surface, on roads, this is known as black ice. This type of ice is quite common in North Carolina, which is infamous for its ice storms. Freezing rain is extremely dangerous because it is hard to see, especially at night. If anything is "shiny" and you are driving on it, take extreme caution, or better yet, stay home, read a book, sit by the fire and have something warm to drink!

In conclusion, sleet does NOT equal hail. Sleet is often mixed with snow and rain. Hail happens during a thunderstorm. Hopefully this has cleared up some questions that may have been in your mind as you went about your business today. :)

Campus Connect Forecast

My Campus Connect forecast for Practicum lab this week.

We covered teasing weather, which is where we have a 20-40 spot where we invite people to come back after the commercial break to find out what the weather story is for the day.

This is the full forecast for this week. Enjoy! Critique is also very much welcomed.

Weather: In Pictures

Taking a quick break from forecasting here tonight, and sharing some of my pictures from Christmas break.

Over Christmas, John King, my roommate and I went up to the Smoky Mountains to visit, it was his first time, and considering I live an hour and a half away, it was the perfect reason to go. We went to Abrams Falls, since I hadn't been there and its only a two mile hike to the falls. This is what greeted us when we came down a hill and around a corner. Of course, we took pictures with the falls, cuz thats just what geoscience majors do.

We began hiking back, and found some evidence of the April tornado outbreak, Tuscaloosa wasn't the only place that got hit, even the Smoky Mountains were affected by them. This dispels a common myth about tornados, they are not affected by hilly or uneven terrain. Living in the mountains does not completely protect you from tornados.

You can kinda see how the trees fell.

This shows it better, how a good sized swath of trees were blown over and twisted.

If you look past the foreground, which isn't very interesting, you can see a large section of trees destroyed by the tornado.

Just a nice picture of the creek/river along the trail.

This trail was closed for several months due the tornados, where the trees and other debris were blocking the trail in several places. Thankfully, it reopened mid-summer, and so by December when John and I hiked, the trail was cleared. They did have to burn along some sections of the trail to remove the debris from the tornados.

Well, I hope you enjoy this little slice of my life, with a little tornado thrown in. I thought this would be nice since it has been a super warm here in Mississippi this winter, and when its a warm winter, you can expect dangerous storms, and tornados can occur.