ryansmorningblog-Bay-Net

The past 35 of 36 days have been above average. When showing the Almanac, I noticed that many of the record highs are from 1910, so I pulled the old climate logs for Jonesboro from 1910. I wanted to see how warm it was in Jonesboro in March of 1910, but I also wanted to see how the Summer of 1910 looked as well. Did a warm March lead to a warm July? Let's start by looking at March of 1910:

You can click the image to enlarge, but you can clearly see that it was a warm month in March of 1910. It was a little drier than the month we are in right now, but the temperatures sure do remind us of the March we are seeing now. The average high in March of 1910 was 75. Now let's look at July of 1910:
You may be surprised to know that July of 1910 was average! There was also some decent rainfall, with a total of over 3.00". Not too shabby in July! I'd love to have a July like that!

So, can we project much from this climate data? Well, not too much. It does prove that a warm March does not automatically mean we are going to be in a blazing drought this Summer!

Enjoy the warm weather!
Ryan

We're transitioning to that time of the year when we look for the slightest little disturbance to spark off some storms. I calls these disturbances hiccups in the atmosphere. They are a little hard to pinpoint and it's hard to determine just how much rain and storms they may bring, but we typically increase the rain chances as these hiccups move through. In the above image, do you see the moisture to our SW? That's associated with the hiccup that will move through late tonight. Here's some computer model data pinpointing when and where this little disturbance could be...
It's subtle, but there is a little "vorticity" moving through tomorrow morning. The blue shows the hiccup in the atmosphere. It's just enough that some storms should develop and we are increasing our rain chances. Another weak disturbance comes through later to give more rain chances.

Enjoy!
Ryan

I hope this is not a sign of things to come. I've had several friends that are farmers lately ask if we are going to see a wet and flooded season this Spring. While I would hope that we do not see a repeat of that, we are not getting off to a good start in March. Many parts of Region 8 could see 4-6" of rain over the next 7 days.

The above image is the midnight run of the GFS model and it indicates a very wet period starting late Wednesday. Thursday looks VERY wet, with continued rainfall through the week. In fact, there are some signs pointing toward some severe weather this weekend.

We're going to keep a close eye on the flooding situation, but will also watch the threat of severe weather.

Ryan

Sadly, it appears that March 2, 2012 will go down as a historical day for tornadoes. I hope we are wrong, but it surely looks like a rough day as of now. Fortunately, the bulk of it may be East of our viewing area, but we still need to be on our toes starting TONIGHT. The above image is the Severe WX outlook for tomorrow (Friday). Notice, the greatest risk is from Cincinnati to Nashville to Tupelo. But, let's not jump ahead of ourselves. We will have to watch TONIGHT, too. Here's the severe weather outlook for tonight. Click the image to enlarge:
 Here's a graph of the data that shows the peak times of instability. This is the NAM model from this morning. While I initially thought that we only had to worry about hail tonight, I'm not going to rule out tornadoes.


MAKE sure you have a way for a warning to wake you up in the middle of the night!!! Get a weather radio OR sign up to get FREE text messages of warnings in Region 8. Here's the link to sign up. Use a desktop or laptop to register:

http://www.kait8.com/category/217781/the-loop-email-and-text-alerts-control-center

Be safe and keep up with updates on my Twitter feed at @ryanvaughan

Ryan