Damaging rains bust the drought in portions of Florida Panhandle
Flood waters are receding in the rain-drenched Florida Panhandle and coastal Alabama today, where prodigious rains from a moist, tropical airmass interacting with a stalled front brought flooding that caused at least $20 million in damage to the Pensacola, Florida area. The most remarkable rains fell in West Pensacola, where 21.70" was recorded over the weekend. Pensacola airport received 13.13 inches of rain on Saturday, the city's second-highest 1-day rainfall total in recorded history. The only greater 1-day rainfall occurred on October 5, 1934, when Tropical Storm Nine brought 15.29" of rain to the city. Satellite loops of atmospheric precipitable water show that this weekend's heavy rains were caused by a flow of very moist tropical air that originated over the warm waters of the tropical Eastern Pacific and flowed northwards across Mexico and Central America to the Panhandle of Florida. This moist airmass has been replaced by relatively dry air over the Gulf, which should limit rainfall amounts today to the 1 - 2 inch range. A cold front expected to arrive on Tuesday will serve as the focus to bring additional rains of 1 - 2 inches per day to portions of the region Tuesday and Wednesday. Before this weekend's mighty rainstorm, the Florida Panhandle was experiencing severe to extreme drought, with 12 - 15 inches of rain needed to pull the region out of drought. This weekend's rains have busted the drought the extreme western Panhandle, but surrounding regions of Alabama, Georgia, and Florida still need 10+ inches of rain.
Figure 1. Radar-estimated rainfall for the Florida Panhandle from this weekend's rain storm.
Figure 2. Amount of precipitation needed to bust drought conditions over the U.S., as of June 2, 2012. A Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDI) of -0.5 is considered the boundary of where a drought exists. The 12 - 15 inches of rain that fell across the extreme western Florida Panhandle and coastal Alabama over the weekend were enough to bust the drought in those regions. Image credit: NOAA Climate Prediction Center.
Some rainfall amounts from the storm, from 7 pm CDT Thu June 7, through 3 am CDT Sunday June 10, from the latest NOAA Storm Summary:
...ALABAMA...
TILLMANS CORNER 4.3 WNW 10.77"
GRAND BAY 0.6 NW 10.03"
MOBILE DOWNTOWN ARPT 8.97"
...FLORIDA...
WEST PENSACOLA 10.9 SW 21.70"
PENSACOLA RGNL ARPT 15.08"
MILTON 10.9 SSW 14.42"
PENSACOLA 3.8 N 13.88"
JACKSONVILLE 11.6 ENE 4.31"
...GEORGIA...
AUGUSTA/DANIEL FIELD 4.08"
WARNER ROBINS AFB 1.95"
VALDOSTA RGNL ARPT 1.50"
...LOUISIANA...
PONCHATOULA 11.8 E 5.64"
SLIDELL 4.29"
LACOMBE 1.4 N 3.73"
BATON ROUGE 2.5 E 2.26"
NEW ORLEANS/LAKEFRONT 2.13"
...MISSISSIPPI...
PASCAGOULA 7.50"
GULFPORT-BILOXI 6.52"
PASS CHRISTIAN 3.5 NE 4.69"
The Atlantic is quiet
There are no threat areas to discuss in the Atlantic today. The NOGAPS model is predicting formation of a strong tropical disturbance capable of becoming a tropical depression in the Western Caribbean by Sunday, but none of the other models is going along with this idea. We could get something developing in the waters offshore of North Carolina late this week, along the edge of a cold front expected to move of the U.S. East Coast on Tuesday - Wednesday. The GFS model has suggested something could develop in this region in several of its recent runs.
Jeff Masters
Out the front window as our house flooded
Reader Comments
Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 — Blog Index
Hurricane Hunters...flying into hurricanes.
It shows what they do up there and stuff.
They're flying through Irene right now. Hurricane-force winds extended out 100 miles from the center.
Outside of the Tropics
1. ECMWF
2. GFS
3. UKMET
4. CMC
5. NOGAPS
Outside of the tropics, the ECMWF is definitely the best as well. Between the GFS and UKMET it is rather close, however. Model verification actually reveals that the UKMET is better at predicting 500mb heights, however, with the finer resolution, longer range, and more model runs per day, I find the GFS to be a more useful model. Then comes the CMC which isn't far behind for fourth place, and finally the NOGAPS which is pretty far behind the other four global models.
I don't mind disagreements. Disagreements are fine. But it seems like anything Levi says is automatically construed as truth, which is fallacious. I think that's called "appeal to authority" in informal logic.
Thanks for that post.
Weather Outlook - May 20
GFS spits out another piece of energy that will move towards the SE coast on Wednesday from the lower MS Valley around the base of a saggy, baggy trough in a scenario similar to synoptics that gave rise to Alberto. This piece of mid-level energy is, like Albert's mid-level vort, forecast to become cut-off from the westerlies and meander around a bit S of Bermuda as a relatively strong ridge of high pressure builds over the TN Valley and the southeast. Which would represent a bit of a short-term pattern change with the trough setting up over the western US, Look for some heat indicies to approach the 100°F mark towards the end of the week.
At the surface, an elongated area of low pressure (a surface trough) should still be in place. Extending from the Caribbean, across Cuba and at times, into the western Atlantic. In conjuction with the cut-off mid-level system and a decent fetch of moisture along the surface trough extending out of the Caribbean, we may see a blob or two worth watching. This would be in addition to the continuing signs from the models to lift a purely tropical system out of the Carbbean.
At least you get away from it it can be 25 f and the dewpoint will be like 69
Well first it would have to actually get to 25F, which it never does here. :P
So we were supposed to take your comment as fact because wouldnt that be informal logic?..Sorry, I dont consider it "appeal to authority"..I call it "respect for one's talent"..the guy does an excellent job here...He's good! I was only pointing out that Weather could be possibly right. Its fine to disagree just as you stated
Did I say that?
In my experience it really depends on the year. Some are good some years, while other times they do poorly.
8 Inches of snow in Gillam Manitoba yesterday! Average is 2 inches for the whole month of June!
I'm not an expert, but as I stated earlier on the blog, the ECMWF is good for short-range (before 120 hours out) and the GFS is better for the long-range although it shouldn't be the final say-so for anything.
With the update, I'd say GFS but emcwf is still very strong
Temperature readings between 18 and 25F seemed rather common during the winter of 2009-2010. I miss those days.
Also, I would like to do as Cody did, and proudly admit that I'm not an expert.
Very interesting show, I never figured that they would have to miss passes or have problems with birds. I also didn't know they can directly measure the windspeed by looking at the wave caps. Hurricane Nate was an interesting storm for sure, they thought it would become a Category 3 but briefly became a Category 1 and the Texas Death ridge prevented any hope for Major.
I'm curious to see other people's takes on the models...their biases, strengths, weaknesses, etc
WHY DO U ALWAYS HAVE TO SAY THE TWO MODELS I MENTIONED LIKE 30 SECONDS BEFORE ME! Wahhhhhh
Okay hahaha back to reality
DUCK!!
This kind of mentality runs off many good people. I'm not going anywhere, but still.
This was the 2011 winter
I think we went through that earlier and took about two pages..Im spent..Im interested to see however if the Doc mentions the Nogaps tomorrow in the new blog..
No it wasn't, lol. We were still an the grips of an El Nino when this happened.
No, you pretty much got it covered. GFS and ECMWF are good for the tropics and outside of the tropics. I've never used the UKMET for Severe Weather forecasting honestly, never really thought using it. The CMC and NOGAPS do develop way too many storms. I think the NOGAPS tends to blow the systems up more though. In fact, it shows our Caribbean disturbance next week hitting Florida as a hurricane.
that thing got some spin in western virginia?
OK thanks. I keep an eye on GFS mostly. Will check it against emcwf this season. I heard they were updating some of the models but wasn't sure which ones.
Link, please.
Lol, TWC is back.
NCEP/EMC Global Model Performance
Link
Thank you!
No problem bud! Been following Oz for the last couple of years... good stuff!
Viewing: 601 - 651
Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 — Blog Index