Felix In The Making?

An all new edition of the ABC 33/40 Weather Xtreme video is available in the player below, and on iTunes…

I am probably going to go into a rant on tonight’s WeatherBrains show about the often bad and misleading weather information flowing from some national news networks (broadcast and cable) as they cover Hurricane Dean. Some of the “weathercasters” are downright dangerous with their lack of knowledge of the science and the issues involving tropical meteorology. It would be like me trying to cover a complicated news or sports story. I could fake it, but generally speaking, I most likely would not know what I was talking about. I know the networks love to hire young, attractive people, and I sure don’t fit into that category, but it would be nice to see someone that was born before 1980 with a formal education and background in meteorology handling their weather coverage. (Am I starting to sound like a cranky, old weather geek, or what?)

HOT HOT HOT: Birmingham is reporting 97 degrees at 2:00… looks like we will peak near 100 degrees tomorrow, Wednesday, and Thursday as the upper air high strengthens and moves right over us. The warm air aloft associated with the ridge will also cap off most of the showers that try to form, and most communities will be dry through mid-week. A very familiar story.

The ridge begins to break down again over the weekend, and that should bring an increase in the number of showers and thunderstorms during the afternoon and evening hours by Saturday and Sunday, and daytime temperatures that are a little lower.

LONG RANGE: The GFS continues to hint at lower heights, cooler temperatures, and better rain chances during the final few days of August, and the beginning of September. Bring it on.

DEAN: Scroll down for J.B.’s excellent posts on Hurricane Dean. No impact on the U.S. other that high surf along the Gulf coast.

FELIX? As Tim Coleman points out on his post earlier today, the NAM is now on the bandwagon, developing a tropical storm east of Florida later in the week. The system is now known as AL92, and the BAM tropical models take this system, now moving northwest and bend it to the west in response to the strong ridge to the north (the same one responsible for our hot weather). The Canadian GEM has the same idea, although the 12Z run is way too fast (it moves it into New Orleans by Saturday!). We also note the Florida State MM5 is on the bandwagon.

Bottom line is that their is real potential for a tropical storm (maybe even a hurricane?) to be threatening some part of the Atlantic coast of Florida by the end of the week and the weekend. Based on the persistence and strength of the ridge, don’t be shocked if this does wind up in the Northeast Gulf of Mexico after the move through the Florida peninsula. As the western periphery of the ridge weakens, some kind of move in the general direction of Southeast Louisiana or the Mississippi coast is surely possible. But, that for now is all voodoo.

WEATHER PARTY: Get all the latest weather news over on our sister site, WeatherParty.com. Be sure and register while you are there; you can submit stories and vote on them to determine what is published on the front page. Many good stories over there on tropical weather and much more.

I had a great time today speaking to the 6th graders at Huffman Middle School… be looking for them on the KIDCAM today at 5:00 on ABC 33/40 News. I will have the next Weather Xtreme video by 7:00 a.m. tomorrow… and in the meantime the blog will be as busy as traffic on Highway 280, in the words of J.B. Elliott, with updates on Dean and anything else weather related!

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