Roy Exum: The Eye Of The Storm

  • Monday, February 27, 2017
  • Roy Exum
Roy Exum
Roy Exum

There is a very serious building in Norman, Okla., that houses the nation’s Storm Prediction Center for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service. According to a Four-Day Forecast released on Sunday, north Alabama and the Chattanooga area are in the middle of the bulls eye for the United States.

Yes, it was about 40 degrees and sunny when you left church on Sunday but late this morning, maybe closer to 1 o’clock, rain is expected to fall over the Tennessee Valley. The high for Monday is supposed to be about 57 degrees but tonight it won’t fall more than 5 degrees. Tuesday it will spike about 70 degrees, the warm air bringing thunderstorms around 4 o’clock. And, on Wednesday, you better batten down the hatches.

I am neither a weatherman nor an alarmist but Tuesday night it will stay “too warm,” never dropping below 60 degrees, and as March arrives on Wednesday, temperatures are expected to be very warm by mid-afternoon and – believe this – the experts at the National Storm Prediction Center are promising at least a 30 percent chance of “severe weather.”

Apparently a storm system over the Great Lakes has a wall of frigid air coming towards us from the north as you read this. The above-normal temperatures that start arriving from the south tomorrow, combined with a dose of balmy air from the Gulf, indicate the dew point will be over 60 when the two systems collide like “Roscoe on a Rocket” right over our heads Wednesday afternoon, lasting into the night. March will “arrive like a lion,” I am telling you.

My mantra has always been if there is a 30 percent chance of tornadoes, downed power lines, falling limbs, and flooded roads then there is a 70 percent of none-of-the-above. But the top weather experts around the country are unanimous in the belief there has never been a winter like we are experiencing. In Utica, N.Y., the tradition snowball fight just turned into a sock-ball fight under 60 degree skies. This year Dallas has already had 13 days with temperatures over 80.

In January, a record for the most days above freezing was tied in Washington, D.C.; already this month a new record for February has been reached. The famed cherry trees around the Tidal Basin will bloom earlier than ever. California’s floods have eliminated every memory of the recent drought and, in Pittsburgh, where the high is traditionally around 40 degrees, it was a record 78 degrees on Saturday.

Northern and Central California are so water-logged that flooding is worsening everywhere. A literal “atmosphere river” is causing the record rains. Five contractors at the besieged Orville Dam were fired on Friday for posting “scary pictures” on social media sites – “it is against company policy” – and the area is still under extreme watch through Tuesday. San Francisco is under “extreme rainfall” warnings through Tuesday and the threat of strong winds/power outages is out for the top half of the entire state.

In Stanislaus County the Tuolumne River's Don Pedro Reservoir could overflow in the next 48 hours – it is 97 percent full – and if the dams begin to fail, the result could be horrific. Already five people are dead because of the rain. An additional threat is where will the water go that is now flowing down from the mountains. “This is a long way from being over … rain is the last thing we need,” said a spokesperson for the Weather Service.

Weather Channel computer and radar data predict a warmer-than-average outlook for the month for the entire eastern U.S. but everything below Louisville, Ky., on the map – stretching from west Texas to the Atlantic – is predicted to be “much above average.”

Conversely, the computer images, radar indicators and most of the weather indicators were reported to be still “out of sync” yesterday afternoon for the corridor between Huntsville and Nashville for this week, other than to all indicate a severe weather pattern could result in what has been loosely termed our “tornado alley.”

About half of the eastern United States is threatened by this week’s storm warning but the ‘eye of the storm’ includes the top half of Mississippi and Alabama, all of middle Tennessee, and lower Kentucky.

* * *

ACCORDING TO NASA, last year the world experienced the earth’s warmest temperatures since modern record keeping began in 1880. Globally-averaged temperatures in 2016 were 1.78 degrees warmer than the mid-20th century averages. That made 2016 the third consecutive a new record for global average temperatures was set. Most of the warming occurred in the past 35 years, with 16 of the 17 warmest years on record occurring since 2001. Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said, “We don’t expect record years every year, but the ongoing long-term warming trend is clear.”

* * *

The trouble with weather forecasting is that it’s right too often for us to ignore it and wrong too often for us to rely on it. ~Patrick Young

* * *

We often hear of bad weather, but in reality, no weather is bad. It is all delightful, though in different ways. Some weather may be bad for farmers or crops, but for man all kinds are good. Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating. As Ruskin says, "There is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather." ~John Lubbock, "Recreation," The Use of Life, 1894

* * *

Bad weather always look worse through a window. – Anonymous.

royexum@aol.com

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