Thursday, October 13, 2011

A trough will head eastward across the eastern United States Friday with a ridge of high pressure building over the Deep South Friday night and Saturday. The trough and associated surface boundary will be much drier than the system last weekend, and have a much more subdued impact. The surface ridge will cover most of the southern tier states through Monday while a developing low in the western Caribbean Sea slides northwestward. Winds will freshen across the southern extent of the ridge between the high and the Caribbean low. The location of the ridge will likely keep Indian Summer conditions going through Tuesday across the southern United States.

There is still much debate about the upper low from last weekend that has the science community at odds with the media. The surface feature that developed was much weaker than the upper low that produced the MCV over central Florida, and the winds along mainly the east coast of Florida, extending northward to the Outer Banks. All the features of the system were over land and had little tropical characteristics but the folks on that channel I "love so much" not, but the Weather Service and Hurricane Center in an uncomfortable position. The local WFO's were handling the event very well and advertised the impacts for up to 6 days ahead in some cases.  I tried to down play the impacts as far as the tropical development goes as did the WFO's and NHC. We kept looking at the flooding potential and at strong wind fields which is exactly what the effects were.
Several questions for the viewers again...
Would you have paid more attention to the weather if there was a named storm?
Would you have done anything different to prepare if the system was name as a tropical storm?
Is there anything I can do better to inform you with the possibility of a similar event in the future?
Please send comments to billycott@gmail.com

Thanks and have a great weekend,
Bill

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