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Here's one of the pictures I showed tonight on the news. If you have been watching, I've been showing old pictures in celebration of Jonesboro's 150th birthday. This is the old water water located between Main Street and Madison. While the water tower is the focal point of the picture, I was more interested in the building at the top of the picture. (click to enlarge)

That's the old Jonesboro High School. It was destroyed on May 27th, 1973. That tornado killed 4 people in the city and caused MAJOR damage.

I've been searching for pictures of the old Jonesboro High School. If you have one, email me at ryan@kait8.com

Have a great night,
Ryan

You may have noticed today that I am sharing some old photos of Jonesboro on the news in celebration of 150th year of the city. I'm having a great time showing these pictures and I hope you are enjoying them as well.
I've always been a fan of old pictures and I like to find buildings that are still there. Take a look at these pictures and you'll see several landmarks that are still downtown!
There are several more pictures to show you this week! I look forward to showing more on Region 8 News at 5:00 and 6:00... and maybe 10:00.

Have a great night!

Ryan

PS- Do you have any old photos of Jonesboro? Email them to me at ryan@kait8.com

The other day, we looked at some old records of the 86-87 El Nino winter to help forecast this year's upcoming winter. Tonight, let's take a look at another El Nino winter, 1997-1998.

Once again, these are some old climate logs from Terry Wood. This first one is Dec of 1997. There are a couple of things to note. First, notice the wintry weather on December 8th. While it was only an inch or so of Sleet/Snow, it closed some area schools according to Terry's notes. That's a early season event for this area! Flurries lingered for a few days, too. We had another couple of days with some light sleet/snow at the end of the month. Accumulations were not noted. I'll talk more about this later, but note the "windy" wording on Christmas Eve. (click image to enlarge)
This next chart is from January of 98. There are a couple of icy events noted, but once again, Terry notes a very windy day on the 7th...

Now here's where the "windy" weather really kicks in. Click the image to enlarge and notice that Terry specifcally notes 5-6 days as being "windy". At times, winds were sustained at 40 mph. No major winter storms are noted, but some thunderstorms are mentioned.

As mentioned in an earlier post, the storm tracks in an El Nino winter typically pass just south of us. With the lows coming close to us and to our south, pressure gradients could be higher and lead to a windier than average winter. Also, as we saw in the 86-87 Winter, "wet" snowfalls were noted. With lows passing south south of us, I think that is a possibility, too.

SOOO, my official Winter forecast for the 2009-2010 Winter is:

• Slightly cooler than average temperatures
• Windier than average
• A couple of wet snowfalls of 2-5", maybe an early season one in December.
• A couple of SMALL icing events. Nothing like last year!!! Just some slight glazing!

It's been fun looking over some old weather logs. I hope you enjoyed reflecting back on Region 8 weather as much as I did!

Ryan

Meteorologist Sarah Tipton and I were just talking about Saturday's forecast. It appears "mostly dry", but there is still a small hiccup. If we did not have a home ASU game, I would not be as concerned, BUT we have thousands of people going to the game and they need to know the forecast!

Below is the NAM model. We call this the 500mb level and it shows us where the "spin" or "vorticity" is in the atmosphere. We typically talk about "Upper-Level Disturbances" based on these maps. The below image is for late Saturday. The bright yellow and oranges indicate an upper-level disturbance moving in behind today's system to our north. This MAY be enough to give us a sprinkle or light shower in SOME parts of Region 8 on Saturday. This is why we have not completely taken out rain chances yet... even though it is only a 20% chance! Click image to enlarge...

Below is the BUFKIT program that lays out certain parameters of the same NAM model and model run. Notice that it DOES show a little sprinkle or shower possible between 5PM-8PM. With that said, it only shows a little over a TRACE of rain. IF this happened, it would hardly be enough to dampen the roads. Click to enlarge and remember that the timestamp goes from right to left.

SOOOOOOO, we are keeping a 20% chance of rain in the forecast for Saturday, BUT the forecast looks completely dry Sun-Thu.

It's looking like this El Niño pattern is going to persist into the Winter. As a refresher, an El Niño pattern is noted when there is a shift in water temperature and atmospheric conditions in the Tropical Pacific ocean. The "long name" is the El Niño Southern Oscillation and the triggers behind it are still not fully understood and are still being researched.

Looking back at El Niño winters of the past can give us a "possible" glimpse at the 2009-2010 Winter. I say that cautiously, because there are variations and nothing is guaranteed.

With that said, a colder winter now appears possible. Precipitation is still questionable. El Niño winters in the past have not shown a termendous amount of precipitation, BUT the storm track is just south of us...

I have some really cool things to show you over the next few days. I'm going to look up some data reagarding some El Niños of the past. You'll be shocked to see what I dug up on the 97-98 winter and the 86-87 winter.

Stay tuned!
Ryan

Look at the rainfall estimates from the isolated storm that formed in South Jonesboro today! Doppler radar estimates 3-4"of rain in some spots. Most of this came down within 30 minutes!
Some pictures were sent to us showing the flooding in parts of Jonesboro. These pictures were sent from Crystal Crawford on Neely Road. The picture below is the most amazing. There is a river going through the neighborhood!!!

I'm assuming this is typically a small drainage ditch or creek. You could kayak in it today!

And finally, here's another shot of some water over the road. From my understanding, the water went down fast, but caused some problems before going down...

If you have some pictures, go to www.kait8.com and post them to THE LOOP. You can also post video, much like YouTube.

Ryan

Look at the 6 day rainfall totals from last week! The areas in pink and purple indicate the areas that are estimated to have 6-10" of rainfall! As you can see MOST locations had several inches of rain, BUT look at the little area of blue in Mississippi County. Those are areas had less than a half inch!
Here's a closer look. If you see the light blue areas, radar indicates only 0.15". Sooo... not "everyone" is soaked. Dell, Burdette, and even Blytheville have missed out on alot of the rain.

The HPC has Region 8 picking up over 2" of rain this week, and I agree. The wet weather is taking a little break, but will return!

I've been slacking on my blogging lately, but I'm picking it back up with a big day! Soccer season started today for both boys! My youngest son started his first game and scored a goal today! My oldest son is now in the U8 league. It's a lot faster and tougher than the U6 league. Needless to say, he's pretty pooped right now.The rain held off for the most part. We had a little drizzle during George's game, but it was not too bad. Now that we are home, it's POURING rain. We're going to go do the perfect thing for a rainy day. We're off to go see Partly Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs. Sounds like a good movie for a weather geek family.

Anywho, my blogging break has ended. As always, this blog is more about "life" stuff than weather stuff, but I may talk about this rainy pattern in a blog post tomorrow.

Have a great weekend!
Ryan