Winds from the East; Weather is Least

Wednesday and today were a classic example of what happens when a subtle easterly flow keeps clouds locked in place as that air gently upslopes the piedmont and into the ridge and valley of PA.  As I traveled about central PA today, I passed through several pockets of drizzle embedded in the overcast.  Remarkably, the air above 5,000 feet was quite dry!  It was the low humid air that condensed into our overcast today.  here is the current visible satellite pic as of 5 pm over PA.  Once to the west of the Susquehanna, there are several breaks in the overcast as some ample mixing with the upper levels allowed some dry air to erode the more dense overcast in the upsloping area. 

Here is the water vapor image showing the dry air in the mid levels.  The white blobs (wet air) over MO & TN & KT is on tap for Saturday afternoon into late Sunday morning. 

There will be numerous opportunity for showers and thundershowers through Monday.  But the most likely time will be late Saturday through Sunday afternoon.  But, rain could fall anytime Saturday-Monday.  Here is the NAM-WRF model's total precip depiction through Sunday evening.

Looking beyond this upcoming weekend, the weather seems to want to trend to near normal both in temps and precip.  There is consensus amongst the models that a trough will be persistent in the eastern part of North America.  As a result, the heat will have no opportunity to invade the northeast and in fact, it appears the intensity of the heat will be smacked down to only above normal temps.  Here is both the ECMWF and the GFS ensembles for next weekend.  The only discrepancy is the cold anomaly over the pole.  That could throw a monkey wrench (not the Foo Fighters) into an eastern trough if it is as strong as depicted on the GFS.  Usually, cold over the pole means ridging in the eastern part of NA.  So the Euro looks a bit suspect at this time.

Now onto Emily.  She's had a tough time of developing into a hurricane.  She still needs to be monitored and this system will create havoc over the tropics and ruin some vacations, and could even run onto the east coast of FL.  Look at the various solutions below.

There has been a large shift in the storm's track to the west in the last 6 hours of guidance from the modeling.  It does appear that parts of FL could be inundated by the rains from this minimal storm but only one model strengthen this into a Cat 1.  The official position from NOAA seems to keep the true, deep moisture off the FL coast.  The other interesting point of the map below is the wet period that we are going to experience Saturday-Monday.  The "droughty" conditions that we were experiencing are now starting to fade with this trough entering the eastern part of the continent. 

Here is the latest IR pic of Emily.  It looks rather disorganized, don't ya think?

In closing, the only thing good about about today's 500+ point drop on the Dow is that oil also dropped over $5 a barrel!  I will not be blogging over the next week...not because I lost my shirt in the market today and will be bridge jumping, but I will be vacationing with the boys visiting a few more ballparks in the western part of our country.  As a result, I will have limited time to not only monitor the wx, let alone espouse my ideas in this blog.  Rest assured, however, I will share some thoughts on the wx upon our return and we will be in the heart of hurricane season at that time.  From the middle of August until the latter part of September, hurricane season is in full mode. See the graphic below.

And on a brighter note, I just read an article that the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and its Hi-Resolution cameras may have detected running water (fluid) on the equatorial part of Mars during its summer!  The dark features (indicating running briny water) in the pictures below are about a football field long and about a meter wide on average.  Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink...no, I will not recite further from the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, but how wonderful our discoveries show that water is not as unique as once thought and as isolated on the monopolistic Big Blue Marble. Check out the pics!

Have a great week's end!

Smitty

AA:  Showers and storms anytime Sat-Mon, but mostly Sat evening into Sunday afternoon.  Emily is yet another fizzle of a storm...as was my call for an inch of rain on Wednesday....but it was cloudy and damp at least!  Near normal temps middle to end of next week....typical mid-August wx with mid 80s for highs.  Off to the baseball trip next week.....