Weather Notebook

Clearing out the notebook…

Tonight is opening night for Major League Baseball and opening day is tomorow. Mother Nature may deal fits to teams in several cities this week. That’s is often the case for early season contests in more northern cities. Boston could get rained out Monday afternoon for their home opener against the Rays. Baltimore may also be wet. Cincinnati could see snow showers during their game between the Mets and Reds with temperatures in the lower 40s and a strong NW wind. I doubt the President will be throwing out the first pitch at Comiskey at the White Sox play host to the Royals. How about game time temperatures in the 30s with snow and a 40 mph wind? St. Louis won’t be much better.

Four places we know the openers will get played: Houston, Arizona, Toronto and Minnesota, where there are domes or restractable roofs. One year ago, 22 games were postponed in the month of April. We could easily see five games rescheduled on Monday alone.

Dr. Jeff Masters from the Weather Underground wonders what a solar storm of magnitude of the Carrington Event, the most severe ever to hit the Earth were to happen again. A fascinating read.

The NWS in Grand Forks, North Dakota says that the Red River may crest even higher in late April than it did earlier this month.

The first operational dual-polarization radar is now in operation at the National Weather Center in Norman, Oklahoma. The OU-PRIME radar will allow forecasters to see not only wind and precipitation, but also the size of droplets. The radar not only transmits its radiation in the horizontal, but also in the vertical, giving researchers and forecasters more information about what the radar is seeing and whether returns are raindrops, sleet, graupel or hail. The radar will lead to better rainfall estimates and better forecasts of hail and wintry precipitation. Here is a KOCO-TV story on the radar. NWS offices will start to be upgraded in the summer of 2010.

A USA Today article says that Colorado’s snowpack is slipping a bit here at the end of the season. DId you know that Colorado snow supplies water to ten western states.

The Bulletin of the AMS features a great article on the public’s understanding of probability of precipitation. The finding: they don’t.

Tom Skilling and the folks up at WGN in Chicago have a bang up severe weather presentation lined up for later this month.

Category: Uncategorized