Dan’s Wild Wild Weather Journal

I hope you are enjoying this mild weather, because there is little doubt that it will come to an abrupt end late Thursday. Over the weekend, I saw some -40 readings up in N.W. Canada, and that air is still sinking southward.

Take a look at this link. It is a high definition camera on a mountain over the beautiful village of Banff in Alberta. I have been watching the Bow River freeze up as it runs through town. The low this morning there was -25C. About -15F.

http://www.banffgondola.com/live_cam.asp

The numerical weather computer models are bringing the front through the Tennessee Valley late Thursday night, into early Friday morning and I expect temps will slide slowly, during the day on Friday. Make no mistake though, the coldest air will slide north of us.

Arctic airmasses make for some tough forecasting because the real cold air is shallow and heavy. Weather models tend to push it down too slowly and out to quickly. More improtantly, the storm track pattern is changing and I think this is just the first surge of some arctic air. More to come! (Can you tell I like the cold? “wink wink” )

Will it be cold enough to snow-yes. Will it snow.. very unlikely but we might see some wet flakes before the air drys out behind the front on Friday. Don’t give up hope, if you are a snow lover.. winter is just beginning and I did not see an airmass this cold all winter last year! Mother nature is making a lot of it this year, and it usually ends up heading south!

Later,
Dan

On days like yesterday, all a weather guy like me can do is to stay out of the way and offer himself up to run errands. I have never had any journalism classes and my nerdiness has made me think many times, that I would be more suited for a job with NOAA than in TV.

It is truly amazing to see a group of professional producers, reporters and anchors/correspondents take absolute chaos, and turn it into calm and clear reporting.

I know of one reporter who has a young child in school. Just like me, I know that all they wanted to do was to hug their kid yesterday, but you would have never known it on air.

Reporters see a lot of bad things. Some can deal with it, and some (If not many) cannot. They quickly go do something else. I know I could not do it.

So I had an amazing first hand seat yesterday as a superb news gathering team worked non stop for over 12 hours to bring a very sad story to the Tennessee Valley, and the Nation.

Take Care, and give your kids a hug.

Dan

In the last 30 days, we have added 3 major new computer and software systems to the weather office.

The first is a new weathenet system that allows us to show any and all of our weatherbug sensor stations. Along with this is a new weatherbug for our viewers. If you have not already downloaded it, it is on our weather page on whnt.com. Just put in your zip code and it will find your nearest weatherbug sensor. These are professional grade stations and the data is very accurate.

I have had some emails from a few people who have found that the weatherbug sets off their anti virus software. This is a known problem and be assured the weatherbug folks in Maryland would not allow something like that on their software.

We have also upgraded some software we have been testing to allow us to see radar images in 3d. We can now see what armor sees in 3 dimensions! With this software upgrade we started running our Armor radar in what we call a volume scan. It actually does scans 7-12 different angles as the antenna rotates. This gives us a view of the entire atmosphere within 100 miles(every 3 minutes!).

Not only is this valuable for real time severe weather forecasting but it will help our partners at UAH who use this radar for research. There are only 4 or so dual polarimetric radars in the USA and we have the only one in a television station weather office in the world. (Although I hear that several stations around the world are now looking at building one).

I will be presenting a paper on our radar to the American Meteorological Society conference in San Antonio in January.

Last and not least (Certainly most expensive!) we have upgraded our work station/graphics computer. You have probably noticed this with improved graphics. Actually you have seen just a fraction of this systems capabilities. We will show more as Winter comes on.

The biggest change we have made is to produce a more forecast driven weathercast for you. Instead of spending time on the weather that is happening now, we will focus on what will happen! This new system allows us to show you the actually computer models we look at each day. I can show you the model that I think is the most likely to be right and strip out the complicated Meteorology and just show clouds and precip. and or temps. (The Metr. stuff we need to see is still available for us and I may show some of it from time to time.)

The new 10 day forecast is a part of our “new look” and as I say each time I show it, the last 3 days are an educated guess and could change dramatically. Still, I feel that it has some forecast value as long as we warn our customers (That is you!) I will write my next blog solely on the 10 day forecast.

Later,

Dan

PS Thanks to all of you who emailed to say how much you enjoyed Elvis-it was a real hoot to do it!

Category: Forecast Center, Forecasting, Meteorology, Weather,