Hurricane's Effect On Oil Disaster

Super Soaking Rain

Sometime when it rains the event lasts longer and the rain comes down heavier than our typical afternoon thunderstorm routine.  This was the case through the deep south this weekend.  When there is a “tropical connection” to a rain event, extreme or record rainfall often  occurs.  This happened back in September 2009 during the Atlanta  Flood  and  what  occurred this past weekend northwest of Jacksonville over parts of Tennessee, including Memphis. 

This image shows a satellite‐derived precipitable water (PWAT) picture. It is better than using a water vapor image to track moisture transport because it can see moisture in the low levels of the sky. High pressure off the east coast has tapped tropical moisture from the eastern Pacific as well as the western Caribbean.

You can see from the image how PWAT values are nearly double normal levels and have resulted in a focus of moisture  from the Gulf Coast northward into the Ohio Valley.  This “efficient” rainfall resulted in very heavy rainfall over a fairly short period of time.  

Hottest March on Record

When you look at the entire worlds temperature both on land and water, March turned out to be the warmest on record. NOAA analyzed the data and found the average ocean temperatures were the warmest for any March and the global land surface was the fourth warmest for any March on record. Also, the planet has seen the fourth warmest  January through March period on record.  It is hard to believe in light of our local record cold weather this past winter.  These patterns underscore how climate change results in unusual weather patterns that should become more frequent.

Getting Dirty Has Never Been This Fun

Is that mud in Marks teeth?  It is.  And after getting rinsed down by a fire hose and after a 30 minute shower, I am still finding dirt in my ears.  After spending the morning crawling in mud for the MS Mud Run this is the result.

More than 2800 people came out to Cecil field to run in the 6 mile military style obstacle course which benefited the North Florida Chapter of the Muscular Sclerosis Society.  The event raised over $250 thousand for MS.  Runners and spectators spent the day under full sunshine after a cold morning in the upper 30s.

This was the Race's second year and it tripled the number of participants from its inaugural run.

I had no idea what I was in for!  The course had us wading through waist deep mud, scaling a 8 foot wall, climbing a 20 foot wall, rope walks, and the worst, swimming through dark culverts placed under roads.  If you ever wanted to swim through muddy ditches like the ones on the sides or roads, this is for you.  Before the race those pants were red.  It doesn't get any dirtier than this. As daunting as this sounds, it was a blast and I can't wait until next year. Check out more videos here.

Snow In Florida

The forecast for snow and sleet I posted in my blog a week ago verified and we had snow flurries as far north as Palm Coast and Crescent City in northern Florida.  It is extremely hard to predict a snow event for the sunshine state. It snowed in other parts of Florida. Flurries fell as far south as Kendall the same day Saturday January 9th 2010.  Several other locations around Miami and also Boca Raton had flurries.  No snow fell in Jacksonville due to dry air evaporating the flakes before they fell to the ground.  The air was more moist behind the Arctic front in Central and south Florida.  This provided an environment for sleet and flurries south of Jacksonville.

This Skew-T sounding from Jacksonville at 7 am shows the green dew point line matched with the red temperature line which stays below freezing. The extra space between green and red lines at the bottom shows the dry air layer near the ground over Jacksonville which caused the snow to dry up before reaching the ground. Closer vertical lines represent more moisture in that layer of the atmosphere.  Altitude increases from bottom to top and temperature decreases from right to left.

The snow set up was unique in that arctic air was parked over the state while moisture was drawn out of the Gulf from an upper level short wave in the jet stream.  This created a saturated moisture profile through the atmosphere.  Where freezing levels were low enough some flakes reached the ground.  Most areas had a warmer mid layer that caused the flakes to come down as sleet and ice pellets.  The second graph shows the freezing layer at 1104 feet with deeper moisture close to the ground at 7am in Tampa.  Sleet fell in Tampa.

It has been colder but is rare to have the cold last so long. Jacksonville had 6 nights of back to back freezes in a row but missed setting a record for consecutive freezes set in 1977 for 8 nights below freezing.  St. Simons island and Alma Georgia however broke a record for the longest run of frozen nights since 2000/01 winter.  Temperatures reached the teens Monday morning 1-11-2010.

The extended cold caused the Intercoastal Waterway in Ponte Vedra to freeze near the edge.  This is brackish water and the salinity must of been low enough to alow ice to accumulate.  Dead fish were near as a result of the cold water. I saw widespread fish kills around Tampa Bay and along the beaches in Treasure Island the following weekend. Fernandina Beach water temperatures are 45 and the Atlantic is 52 but shallow protected parts of the ICW may of dropped to 32 degrees.

Snow Potential In Jacksonville

A unique forecasting challenge is coming up this week for the potential of winter precipitation on the First Coast.

An unusual long lasting Arctic outbreak of air is holding over Jacksonville all week. A series of freezes is in the forecast.  These charts from Sunday represent the potental for sleet over southern Georgia Friday morning. The top two maps show temperatures and wind at 850 mb which is about 5000 ft. The first map is 1 am with the freezing isotherm on the state line. The second map shows the freezing level moving south by noon over Orlando. This is the new cold air pushing south behind Friday's front. If this were earlier it would be certain to snow in Jacksonville.  But the warmer air in advance of a cold front will cause the boundary layer or air within 3000' of the ground to be warmer earlier in the morning.  The next map is 7 am with the freezing isotherm on the state line.

The bottom two charts are a key tool for determining the type of precipitation in the winter.  Thickness charts like these represent the depth of each layer in the atmosphere.  Colder air makes the air  contract and is less thick.  Warmer air increases thickness.  Snow is a good bet if the last blue line is over your forecast location. This is the 540 thickness line. You can see it is almost over Tampa early in the week on Monday night at 1 am.  The green represents rain.  It is cold and dry in Jacksonville during this time period and temperatures are in the low to mid 20s at the surface. 

But by Thursday night when the rain arrives, the thickness increases over Jacksonville.  This is why the forecast is tricky.  This GFS forecast model run indicates the green over coastal Georgia would be snow.  Sleet is more likely due to possible warmer air just above the ground in northeast Florida.  The accuracy of computer models in pinpointing exact temperatures in the vertical layers of the atmosphere is a challenge that can bust a forecast. 

Super strong cold advection which is the cold air moving south is shown by the parallel black pressure lines (isobars) at right angles perpendicular to the blue thickness dashed lines.  This means cold and windy conditions Friday as the reinforcing new blast of arctic air keeps freezes going into the weekend.

Hail Size Increased In Severe Storm Warnings

When you think of what makes thunderstorms severe, most people assume lightning is a factor.  But it is not part of the criterion for issuing severe warnings.  The National Weather Service (NWS) is responsible for issuing severe thunderstorm warnings when winds reach 58 mph or  higher.  But hail is also part of the factor.  It used to be when hail reached 3/4 of an inch a storm became severe.  But the now the  threashold is 1."

The one inch criterion had been use in hail country of the southern plains and over  the western United States. Hail is common in these locations due to lower freezing levels in the atmosphere and stronger vertical updrafts.  Updrafts result in the formation of hail when water droplets freeze and get carried upward until the they freeze and fall back down.  The cycle repetes until the hail grows too large for the updraft to keep it suspended in the air.

This is a good idea because it reduces the perception of over warning saturation during our busy summer storms season. Warnings are often issued for penny sized or 3/4" hail.  It is rare for 1" golf ball sized hail to occur in our area. Now thunderstom warnings carry more weight and hopefully people will take them seriously when storms hit.

TWO TYPES OF WATERSPOUTS

It is not often we see waterspouts in Jacksonville.  Well today I think we had the most famous waterspout in Jacksonville history. Over 50 of you sent us pictures and the waterspout seemed poised for the sky cameras as it slowly moved north over the river today.  Waterspouts typically are located in the waterspout capital of the world, the Florida Keys.  The Keys provide a perfect environment for an average of 400 waterspouts every year.  Jacksonville's balmy, hot, and humid weather was just like the islands.

Light winds made for favorable waterspout conditions.  Outflow boundaries from previous thunderstorms moves east from the I-75 area and collided with the east coast sea breeze resulting in severe storms with 1" hail and lightning which struck a home on fire near Normandy on the Westside.  As the storms moved north from Putnam and St. Johns county, the perfect placement of the river underneath provided an ideal location for the waterspout.  Fortunately the long length of the river was the reason why the waterspout never moved ashore.  Typically they have a lifespan of only 15 minutes.


There are two types of waterspouts and fortunately we had the weaker non-tornadic waterspout variety.   The other, tornadic waterspouts, begin as true tornadoes over land in association with a thunderstorm, and then move out over the water. They can be large and are capable of considerable destruction. What we had was a fair weather waterspout. They form only over open water. They develop at the surface  and climb up in association with warm water temperatures and high humidity in the lowest several thousand feet of the atmosphere. They are usually small, relatively brief, and less dangerous. The fair weather variety of waterspout is much more common than the tornadic.  Needless to say it was scary for everyone today.  Thanks everyone for all the great photos you emailed.

GETTING HOT THIS WEEK

The hottest month in Jacksonville is July. Temperatures most days in the month are 90 degrees or higher. The end of July begins the start of summer and First Coast locals always sweat out hot afternoons waiting for cooling thunderstorms. In fact, over a 30 year average of July months, 23 days are above 89 degrees.   

Get ready for a return to ninety's all week long into next week. June is often a scorcher.  In 2008, June had 21 days at 90 or above.  That was also the hottest month out of the '08 summer.  The average for 90 degree days in June is 16.  The onset to this upcoming heat wave is due to a lack of forecasted rain and a ridge of high pressure in the Gulf.

The 500 mb ridge in the Gulf results in sinking air over Jacksonville which suppresses thunderstorms.  The blue vectors show NW winds around the right side of the Gulf ridge.  
Looks like the pool or river will be the best places to cool off.

TAKING MY JOB TO THE BEACH

Well some days are better than others at work.  For this interview we got to do something different.  A water interview with professional surfer Karina Petroni sure beats sitting at my computer desk.  Thanks to Josh Hansbrough at Birdman Productions for taking the water shots.

How Many Gallons Of Rain Fell?

Imagine laying down a tarp over Duval county to collect every drop of rain that fell this afternoon. How many one gallon buckets of water would the storms fill?

Let's figure it out. One inch of rain over a square acre will fill up 25,154 gallon buckets. Or if the inch of rain fell over 1 square mile it would fill 17,380,000 gallons.

Jacksonville is 757 square miles or 484,480 acres big. By multiplying 17.38 million gallons of rain by 757 miles equals 13,156,660,000 gallons of water over Jacksonville for each inch of rain.

This image shows radar estimates for rainfall over the past 3 days.  Duval has orange and red colors showing rain of 5 to 9 inches.  So based on an average of 7.5 inches of rain, the total amount of rain that fell over the past 3 days in Duval equals 98,674,950,000 gallons of water.
Not all the rain soaks into the ground. Runoff from impervious surfaces like roads, parking lots, and thick clay soil reduces the amount of rain that sinks down to the aquifer.  Our flood warnings represent areas where the ground is not absorbing the rain.

SMILES IN THE FACE OF CHALLENGES

What a great time at Jacksonville Beach Saturday. Life Rolls On empowered 23 individuals with spinal cord injury to experience exhilaration and independence through surfing.  Seven  participants were first-time surfers.  Imagine surfing for the first time in 2' surf. One participant told me it was amazing to get past her usual beach boundary where the sand starts.  Typically this is as far as she get to the shore but today she was able to get to the sand and beyond.  To actually go in the water and surf a wave was an unforgettable experience for this person confined to a wheelchair.

Check out Anthony Free who rode the waves Saturday. He is in the middle of us all. I was part of the deep water green team. We pulled Anthony out and positioned the rider in the right part of the wave before pushing him into a long ride toward shore.  Anthony was brave and kept wanting more.  He should be proud for what he accomplished Saturday.  Anthony pushes the boundary and lives life to the fullest.  Good job!

SURFING WITH SPINAL CORD INJURIES

Imagine surfing without the use of your arms or legs. Some people who are confined to a wheelchair would never think surfing could be possible. Well now those with spinal cord injuries will get a chance to push the boundaries and surf in Jacksonville Beach Saturday with the help of local volunteers. I will be on site in the water coaching participants and Channel 12 will be on location in the morning for a live shot. The, They Will Surf Again, event takes place behind the lifeguard house on JAX Beach from 9-2 pm Saturday May 16th. This is a wonderful event that is put on by Life Rolls On. They help people with spinal cord injuries surf, golf, and live life to its fullest with adaptive sports.
If you are physically challenged but want to water ski, golf, surf, play tennis, or try many other sports, you can contact Brooks Adaptive Sports Program right here in Jacksonville.

DOPPLER ANALYSIS

On Thursday evening a Mesoscale convective complex (MCC) rolled eastward from the Panhandle and raced into Lake City and into Northeast Florida.  A MCC is a thunderstorm complex that has specific characteristics.  This storm which brought over 1-2 inches of rain overnight is typical of a MCC.  They are nocturnal, last at least 6 hours and the size of the cloud tops are at least 62,000 miles with temperatures measured by a satellite of -26 F or colder. 

These pictures show the storm before it reached Jacksonville when it was in the Panhandle. The top two images are base reflectivity from the Tallahassee WSR-88D Doppler radar site. A bowing section of the thunderstorm is approaching St. Marks at 6:40 pm indicating strong mid level air dropping down to the surface due the denser cooler outflow.  This gust at the surface spreads out and bows the cell radar signature on the radar.


Twenty minutes later the storms rapid eastward movement is shown in the second picture entering Taylor county.  The cell was moving east at 60 mph.


The last picture is the radial velocity product  that clearly shows  the downdraft moving away from the radar site in red and yellow.  The greens are winds moving into the storm in relation to the WSR-88D's location.  Notice the moist strong winds coming in off Apalachicola Bay.  This fueled the thunderstorms and they remained severe when they blew into the First Coast. 

SHINY CARS UNDER A FOGGY SKY

It was a great turnout for the Concours d'Elegance at Amelia Island Saturday.  The fog was a nice change for photographers looking to get a unique perspective on the classic cars.  The lighting was soft and the dew added vintage appeal.  This was my first time attending and I will certainly be back.   The ticket price on some of the cars going through the auction was humbling.  There were many buyers at the RM Auction.  I only saw a handful of cars that didn't meet the reserve asking price. 

Of all the cars on display, I saw my favorite which was a 1960 era BMW.  Take a look at this green car and you can see how unique it is.  You get in it by lifting up the front trunk and it only has 3 wheels.  This is my style.  If price were equal,  this would be my pick over any lamborghini.

NEW WATERING RESTRICTIONS

Here is a law that is a good idea. New rules will help people make sure they conserve water while promoting healthy landscapes. It is so unnecessary to water your lawn every day. In fact this promotes fungus in your lawn. Sometimes I see people with sprinklers on during the afternoon. This just wastes water as it gets evaporated before sinking to the grass roots. If you are using reclaimed water you don't have to worry about these new watering restrictions, otherwise pay attention to which day you are allowed to water because restrictions start with the time change.

All counties in Northeast Florida must water on Wednesday or Saturday if you have an odd numbered address. Even addresses can water on Thursday and Sunday during Daylight Saving Time. The two a day week allowance drops to one day a week during the cooler months of Eastern Standard Time. Business have a different set of watering days.

Watering should last no more than 1 hour per zone and the amount should be about 3/4" deep. Make sure to water before 10am or after 4 pm to avoid getting a citation. Full details can be found at the St. Johns River Water Management District. So much for Slip and Slide Tuesdays.

GREAT WEATHER FOR WEEKEND EVENTS

It is the time of year when outdoor events start to ramp up around town.  This weekend couldn't be any nicer with mostly sunny to sunny skies and highs in the upper 70s to 80.  No rain is in the forecast but some fog may develop in the early mornings.

The Harvest of Hope music festival at the St. Johns County Fairgrounds takes place Friday through Sunday.  Proceeds benefit migrant farmers and the music helps us appreciate non-commercial artists.  A nice change from pop music.  Camping weather will be perfect. 

At Metro Park Saturday there will be a fundraising walk to help wipe out diabetes.  Type 1 diabetes is a deadly disease that affects millions of people and a large  percentage of them are children.  This will be a fun way to help find a cure.  Sign up here.

In Palatka the 63rd Annual Azalea Festival takes place on the banks of the St. Johns River.  It is always a Technicolor explosion of flowers in Putnam County this time of year.  A parade takes place Saturday along with a fun run and music plus food.

Stay tuned for next weekends forecast.  Its a big deal since thousands will be running in the Gate River Run.  But if running is not your thing, riding in style may be your pick at the Amelia Island Concours d'Elegance.  Each year the finest classic cars are displayed in one of our areas most beautiful beaches.  Keep your fingers crossed for more fine weather, but long range projections are indicating some rain.

Wave Masking Makes For A Sneaker Swell

It was impressive to see chest high clean swell on our beaches Thursday. An offshore gale kicked seas up to 23' off the mid Atlantic and some of it sneaked into our breaks. It is rare to get powerful waves with offshore winds in Jacksonville. I thought the surf would of been much smaller but the swell was big enough to resist attenuation by the west winds that gusted over 30 mph. Sometimes offshore winds will knock the surf flat. In retrospect, a look at the models shows why the surf stayed up. Above the WW3 period chart clearly show an impressive 15-16 second swell hitting Florida and the Bahamas in yellow. The blue is a separate 5-6 second windswell moving northeast due to the WSW winds. The 2 dimensional graphics masks out the underlying groundswell.

Above is a look at only the new windswell period. It would of been totally flat here if it weren't for the groundswell running against the northeast moving windswell.

A graphical version of actual wave observations at the St. Augustine buoy confirms two separate swells. You can see the graph of wave energy with the period at the top and energy measured at the left. This information shows two wave groups. The largest peak is the new windswell at 6.5 seconds and the groundswell is indicated at 15 seconds. When looking at wave models they only show swells with the most energy. In this example it would be the windswell since its energy is higher. A forecaster could totally miss predicting the groundswell without confirming this spectral density data. Unfortunately this happens often since there are so few buoys off our coast.

CLIMATE COOLING MYTH

How can the scientific community be so certain the Earth is warming when in the 1970's there was a perception the planet was headed into an ice age? Could we be headed into an ice age or was this just a myth?

Scientific evidence has shown the Earth is warming as a direct consequence of human anthropogenic activity. This theory that increasing atmospheric CO2 emissions made the Earth warmer is shown to be a fact and no longer theory. The concept has been around since the nineteenth century when a Swedish scientist, Svante Arrhenius, calculated that increasing CO2 would raise the Earth's temperature. Only recently has the debate taken on political values.

So how is it an international group of climate scientist's concluded the Earth is warming and that it is caused by man made activities? Didn't the temperature record show the planet was cooling? The answer: yes. The record of temperatures compiled since the 1870s showed cooling during the 1940s through the 1960s.At this time the notion of global cooling had been accepted but not understood. Up to this period temperatures were getting warmer. But two revelations were discovered, CO2 and orbital oscillations, which could explain the unsteady state of global temperatures.

In the early years of climate science, preliminary evidence lead a few researchers to speculate a new ice age would spread over the Northern Hemisphere. In 1930, engineer and geophysicist Milutin Milankovitch calculated that sunlight concentrations hitting Earth would change based on regular changes to Earth's tilt and orbit. This explained why the planet warms and cools over timescales of thousands of years. Earth's climate clock fluctuates over long periods of time but it has never shown such a rapid record rise in temperatures since humans have walked the planet. So the most unequivocal reason for the warm up was discovered on a mountaintop in Hawaii.

It is called Carbon dioxide. A scientist named Charles David Keeling measured CO2 and found a direct trend in the molecules properties to trap heat and cause the Earth's rise in temperatures. This data made it clear and conclusive that fossil fuel burning increased this heat trapping gas.


But attention grabbing global cooling headlines in the 1970s overshadowed the scientific literature. The New York Times, Time Magazine, and Science News all ran articles about how the planet may be headed colder. Popular media helped increase the global cooling perception.

If you would like to read more, I would suggest an article written by Thomas C. Peterson who I met at a weather fellowship at the SPC in Norman Oklahoma. He was is a climate expert at the National Climate Data Center and wrote part of the 4th assessment of the IPCC report.

COLD ENOUGH TO SNOWBOARD IN JACKSONVILLE

Is it cold enough to ski in Jacksonville?  Well this morning it was cold enough but not long enough.  Friday morning was a cold one but a morning that was far from setting any cold record.  The record today was 22 set in 1927.  The Jacksonville airport hit 3, Craig Field 34, Glenn St. Mary 29 and Hastings 31.
Tonight will be colder and we can expect a hard freeze except south of St. Johns county and the beaches.   A hard freeze means temperatures reaching 28 degrees for two hours or more.  These are the conditions for ice riding in North Florida.

Snowboarding in Jacksonville from Mark Collins on Vimeo.

Around this time last year we had a cold snap with temps dropping into the 20s.  I was probably the first person to go go snowboarding on TV down an ice hill in Arlington.  A local resident turned on the sprinkler system early in the morning and hosed down a grass hill adjacent to the river.  The water froze and the hill was certainly slick enough to ski or snowboard.  In fact a couple of the hoses cracked and the sprinkler froze up completely before we could spray down an even larger area.  It was an interesting experiment with a fun payoff.  If you are not up for making an artificial ski run tonight, this weekend will be a good time to head  8 hours north to some of the ski spots in North Carolina.