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30 years ago, December of 1983, it was COLD! Really Cold! It was so cold that the Arkansas River froze over! ABC affiliate, KATV has video of the Arkansas River from that month and it was posted on their blog. Here is the clip:

I went back into the record books and grabbed the December of 1983 climate log from Jonesboro. In 1983, Terry Wood kept that log and you can see his signature near the bottom of the page. You can click the image to enlarge, but let me point out some points. First, on December 18th, we had a high of 34. That night, the temperature fell to 8 degrees! We did not go above freezing for the rest of the month! Take a look:

Other interesting things to notice:

• We had 3 nights below ZERO.
• The HIGH temperature on Christmas Eve in 1983 was a whopping 6 degrees.
• The coldest morning was Christmas morning at 5 degrees BELOW ZERO.

I'm on vacation right now, but since I'm a weather geek... I'm still looking at the weather. There is a chance of severe weather and flooding rains on Saturday. Here are the bullet points as of Friday at 6:30 am:

• Heavy rain and flooding is greatest threat.
• 2-4" of rainfall will likely fall, with the chance of higher amounts in some spots.
• There is a chance of severe weather during the daytime hours on Saturday.
• Straight line winds are the greatest threat, but a tornado can not be ruled out.

This weekend, Jonesboro is going to be PACKED. The NEA basketball tournament is underway, the Holiday Extravaganza tournament is happening, it's a busy travel weekend, and a lot of people will be shopping! The weather may impact a lot of people!

Here are the bullet points to focus on:

• Heavy rain is the main threat. Rain chances will exist Fri-Sun, but most of the rain will fall on Saturday.
• There is a chance of severe weather, with the greatest risk on Saturday.
• 2-3" of rain is likely with this storm.
• Wintry weather is highly unlikely anywhere in Region 8.

Here is the official storm totals map that was released by the NWS in Little Rock. Not too far off from our forecast:



As we said all week and despite the rumors, we never though it would be as bad as 2009. Scroll through the blog and you will see me mentioning that a few times.

Have a great day and be safe on the roads! I'm spending the rest of my day at home with my family! Bring on the fireplace, the SEC championship, and some NBA 2K14 with my kids!

Ryan

I'm going to make this update as simple as possible to avoid confusion. Here are the bullet points at 8:30 am on Thursday morning:

• We already have some areas in Region 8 at or below freezing. 
• The freezing line will move from the NW to the SE through the day.
• Precipitation will increase through the day.
• Once you hit 32 or below, the rain will be considered freezing rain.
• Tonight and Friday is when the precipitation accumulates.
• Freezing rain and sleet at the start.
• Many areas switch to all sleet between 3-7 am Friday morning.
• Many areas switch to snow by lunchtime on Friday.
• I have no idea if you will lose power or if your kids will go to school. LOL :)
• This is a bad storm, but not as bad as 2009 because we should switch to sleet.
• Another round comes on Sunday and looks like it will be freezing rain.
• The coldest air in over a decade comes in next week.

It's Tuesday morning and it's still looking like a significant Winter Storm is going to impact Region 8 by Friday. Let's breakdown the points:

• Travel conditions deteriorate Thursday night and especially Friday.
• All modes of wintry precipitation are possible. Likely to go from rain to freezing rain... to sleet... and then to some snow.
• Right now, 0.50"-0.75" of glaze is possible with some sleet and snow on top of it.
• Worst case scenario would be more freezing rain than anything.
• Winter Storm Warnings and possibly Ice Storm Warnings are likely.
• A Winter Storm WATCH has already been issued for some areas to give advanced warning of what is going to happen on Thursday night and Friday.
• A second round of wintry mix will come in Saturday night. and Sunday AND is starting to look as impressive as the first round.
• Best case scenario (not likely) is to stay above 32 degrees and it be just rain. That might happen closer to I40.

• We are expecting TWO rounds of precipitation. At this time, it appears the first round comes in Thursday PM into Friday. The second wave comes Saturday night into Sunday morning.
• Freezing rain and sleet appear to be the main type of precipitation, but snow will fall, too.
• Just a reminder, freezing rain falls as liquid and glazes as ice.
• Sleet falls as pellets of ice.
• Snow... well, you always remember what snow looks like!
• This could be a bad storm, but it will likely not be as bad as 2009's ice storm.
• Lastly, I don't know if you will be out of school on Friday!

The above image is an animation of two rounds of precipitation that is expected to come through Region 8, Thursday night though Sunday. The TYPE of precipitation is still questionable. Many of you wonder why we can get freezing rain instead of snow. Let's take a look at the forecast sounding for Friday:
The above image is a graph that we use to see what the temperature does as you go UP through the atmosphere. Let's start at the top of the image (high in the atmosphere) where the air is BELOW 32 and snow forms. As the snow falls, it hits an area of air that is ABOVE 32 degrees and the snow flakes melt into liquid drops. Those drops continue to fall and then hit the air near the surface that is 32 degrees or below. If there is a thick enough column of air, those drops can refreeze into SLEET. If they do not have time to refreeze, they fall as liquid and freeze on contact. This forms a glaze of ice on everything and puts weight on trees and power lines. As you can imagine, we want to see sleet or snow instead of freezing rain!

To be honest, I hope the data shifts to an all rain event, but that is looking less likely. I'm not a fan of winter and REALLY not a fan of ice.

We will continue to watch the situation. Make sure you catch all of the updates on Twitter at @ryanvaughan

Take care,
Ryan

 Now, let's talk about the Apps for your iPhone. The screen shot below is our Storm Team weather App. If you open it, slide the bottom line to "Video" and click it, you will then have several options. You can get the latest recorded weather segments OR if it is newscast time, you can watch the newscast LIVE. This is also available during severe weather.


If you have any questions about watching LIVE video on our Apps, feel free to email me at ryan@kait8.com OR tweet me at @ryanvaughan

I hope this graphic makes sense because I just spent 20 minutes making it! :) It shows why I encountered freezing rain and not snow at 31 degrees on my way home from work:

As you go up in the atmosphere, the air is above freezing between roughly 3600' and 8600' (red line). Snowflakes form high in the atmosphere, but on their way down, they melt between 8300' to 3600'. In some cases, the drops refreeze before it hitting the ground and sleet is formed. If it does not have time to refreeze, it hits exposed surfaces and freezes on contact into an ice glaze.

In order to get snow, the air has to be at or below freezing throughout most of the column of the atmosphere.

With that said, we may see some slick spots. I still think that some people may see the entire column go 32 or below, so I'm not completely ruling out some light snow in spots.

Be careful if you are driving late tonight!
Ryan

I'm finally sitting down to look at some data today. After going to Church all morning, spending time with my family this afternoon, eating Thanksgiving dinner with our Church family, and putting up the Christmas Tree... I'm sitting down with a cup of coffee to see if the kids will go to school tomorrow! I know, I know... many kids are already out for Thanksgiving Break. Not my kids! lol

Everyone throughout the day has been asking about the winter weather threat and most are simply wondering, WILL THE KIDS GO TO SCHOOL?

Here are my thoughts in the simplest form:

• It's the first wintry weather of the year, so the panic level will be a little higher.
• There is not a lot of moisture, but enough where SOME places will have travel problems.
• It has been cold enough for this to "stick", even on the roads.
• At 8PM (Sunday), Freezing Rain and sleet is already being reported.
• While there is some sleet being reported now, best chance comes after 9AM on Monday. This will cause some problems with school districts. Cut them some slack.
• Accumulations will be between a dusting and 1" of snow and sleet.
• Other parts of the state will have more accumulation than Region 8.

It's typical to have  fields burning across Region 8 in November. On many afternoons, you can look on the horizon and see smoke. Today, I got a tweet that spawned this blog:

If you look at the pic above (click to enlarge), it appears that the smoke hits an invisible ceiling and starts fanning out. In fact, that is exactly what it does! As the smoke rises, it comes to a point where something happens. But, what is it?

If you look below, we have a skew T for the time period of the pic. This diagram is showing you what the temperature (red line) and dewpoint (green line) is as you go vertically into the atmosphere. At about 2300', the temperature stops dropping, as it typically would, and starts rising! This is a temperature inversion and because of the inversion, the smoke stops rising. Remember, warm air rises. The smoke encountered air that was warmer than it was and it stopped rising.

Have a great day!
Ryan

Tomorrow afternoon is going to be COLD. It's going to be about 30 degrees colder than it was this afternoon. The winds will be blowing 20-30 mph and the wind chills will be in the 30s! This will be a BIG change over a 24 hour period, but not as much as this same date in 1911! Take a look at this climate log from Jonesboro in November of 1911. Click image to enlarge:

Notice, it was 80 degrees on November 11, 1911 and the low on November 12, 1911 was 15! That's an amazing drop!

Fortunately, we are not going to see severe weather as this cold front moves through. That was not the case in 1911. If you look at the notes on the lower-right side of the page, they mention LARGE hail on November 12th.

Get ready for the cold air. You feel it tomorrow (11/12/13)!

Ryan

Typhoon Haiyan appears to be the strongest Typhoon ever and is grinding through the Philippines at this hour. In case you wondered, a typhoon is a hurricane, but carries a different name because of it's location.

For LIVE updates on the Typhoon, HERE IS A LINK to CNN International.

-Ryan

During the tornado coverage, I showed this product below. It's shows the correlation coefficient or difference in height and width of objects being detected by radar. This helps us see debris because it's CC is much different than most precipitation. Do you see the small, round, blue area SW of Caraway (below image). I believe that was tree debris from the swampy areas in the St. Francis river. Judging by radar, the tornado formed SE of Bay, crossed the St. Francis river, and hit Caraway.
Here's the possible debris signature as it came into Caraway...
After the rotation goes through Caraway, causing a lot of damage, the debris signature continues moving northeast toward highway 77.



Finally, how about a 3D look at the storm structure? These storms were not building up too high. They are called "low-topped" storms, but as learned tonight... they can still pack a punch! Notices the weaker echoes where the tornado occurred. That's called a BWER or Bounded Weak Echo Region. It's the lower reflection, where the rotation is located.
I was going to write more, but I'm tired and going to sleep! I'm glad everyone is safe tonight and I may type more tomorrow.

I hope to be LIVE in Caraway tomorrow, so stop by and say "hi" if you live there!

It's been 20 years since kids were Trick or Treating in the snow in Region 8. Snowball fights on Halloween night in Arkansas may be weird, but that's what happened almost 20 years ago. When you hear about this night, it's always referred to as the time "it snowed on Halloween", but it was not ACTUALLY Halloween. You see, Halloween fell on a Sunday and many cities in Region 8 chose to trick or treat on the night before. So, the snowfall was actually on October 30th. The above image shows the strong upper-level low that had dipped south to help bring the snowfall. This is Saturday evening's 500mb map.

I decided to dig up some old climate logs to see what was written about this snow event and this is what I found. Here is the Jonesboro log for October of 1993 from Terry Wood. Click image to enlarge:
Notice, Terry logged that we had sleet and snow, with about a half inch of accumulation. Some places had more accumulation than others. Here is the historical log from Pocahontas. They has a nice snowfall, with accumulations of over an inch! Region 8 Weather Watcher, Jason Hampton, said they were having snowball fights in Randolph County as they were Trick or Treating! Click image to enlarge:
Finally, let's check one more location from that day. This climate log came from Doniphan, MO. Notice, over 2" of snow reported! Once again, click image to enlarge:

September was an odd September. 25 of the days had above average temperatures and we ended the month 5.1 degrees above average. On two days, we hit 100+. On September 10th, we officially hit 101, but the Jonesboro thermometer was running a little warmer (2-4 degrees) warmer than everyone else.

It was a rather dry September. We ended the month with 1.28" of rainfall. This was 1.78" BELOW average. The wettest day was September 20th with 0.95" of rainfall.

In summary, it was a drier and hotter September than on average. Fortunately, we do not use the Farmers Almanac, because it showed the opposite. Here is what it showed for The Region from Arkansas to the Gulf Coast. We would be considered "north" in this region:

Stay tuned. We are going to investigate the long-term prediction for the 2013-2014 Winter soon.

Have a great day!
Ryan

It's been awhile since we have had a nice and steady rainfall, but many locations will see a good soaking today. As with most things in life, we like getting rain, but we don't need too much! Many farmers have told me that seeing some rain today is not going to be bad thing, but we do not need too much. Many people that have plans to go to football games want the rain gone by 7PM! So, let's dive into the data. First off, most of the data was showing less than an inch until last night's data. Now, most is showing 1.00-1.50", with isolated higher amounts.

Judging by radar trends this morning and reported amounts so far, I think most locations will get over 1.00" of rainfall. What about timing? The rain is already overspreading most of Region 8 at 8AM which may mean it will get out of here faster, right? Well, maybe. It does appear the system is moving faster, but many spots may still have some rain at kickoff at 7PM. Our "Game of the Week" is at the Nettleton/Valley View game. I still plan on being there for the Academy Sports Gameday Forecast, but if storms are still lingering... I'll be at the radar screen. Stay tuned.

I'll be giving updates throughout the day on Twitter at @ryanvaughan

So far this month, we are running about 3.6 degrees above average for the month of September! You don't need me to tell you that it has been hot! Each day, the high temperature has been at or above average. While it has been rather hot, I've noticed that most of the record highs this month are from 1925, so I did some research this afternoon. Take are look at the climate log from September of 1925 taken by the sisters at the Holy Angels Convent on KAIT road. This was the official climate log for Jonesboro:

Look how hot it was! 100+ for the first 10 days. While it has been rather warm this month, it was not nearly as bad as 1925.

It's always neat to look at these historic climate logs. The comments sections often have some cool things to read. Be sure to click the image to enlarge. I think it is interesting to note that despite the hot and dry start in 1925, they ended with almost 6.00" of rainfall.

We will talk more about this data from 1925, tonight on Region 8 News at 5:00 and 6:00.

Ryan

All of the data coming in is showing a different setup for next week. Are you ready for a cool down? The map below shows how above or below average the temperatures are this morning. 

We recently got a new suite of weather graphic computers and they are incredible. One of the features of the system is to incorporate 3D models into a graphic. In a bigger city, this can be really fun because most of the buildings have a 3D model associated with them. In NE Arkansas, there are only a couple of buildings on Google Earth that are in 3D and they appear to have been class projects at Paragould High School and Valley View.

Last week, I sent a tweet out asking if anyone knew where I could get a 3D model of Liberty Bank Stadium. To be honest, I had found a 3D model of Razorback stadium (which I used last night) and really wanted one of The Vault to avoid complaints and phone calls. (Yes, I would get phone calls if one forecast graphic looked better than the other.)

Anywho, a guy named Jeffrey Hughey tweeted me and said that he can build one. So, Bryan McCormick and I went to LBS and took several pictures from all angles of the stadium. In just a couple of days, Jeffrey had the model built and yesterday I made this graphic with it!

So, after bugging my friends at ASU for a long time about this, we tackled the problem! I wonder if Mr. Hughey wants to build the Convocation Center for basketball season? :)

Here's a cool benefit of this project, as well... Once Google approves the 3D model in the next few days, you will see it when you use Google Earth! Cool, eh?

Am I too excited about graphics?

Ryan

A lot of people have been asking me if this summer has been "abnormal". We first must ask ourselves, "is there a such thing as 'normal' in weather"? Many times in our business, the words "normal" and "average" are used as synonyms. I'm guilty of using of using the word "normal" from time-to-time, but usually use the word "average". An average is what-it-is because there are higher numbers and lower numbers. Let's look at the rainfall in August over the past 5 years:

2008: 4.57" VERY WET
2009: 4.17" VERY WET
2010: 0.24" VERY DRY
2011: 2.49" WET
2012: 3.82" WET

The 30 year average for August is 2.54". So far, we have had 3.23" this August and we are only halfway through the month. So, is it abnormal? Let's just say... we are above average! If you just take the first 12 days of August, we are 2.24" above average so far.

We have had measurable rainfall for the past 10 days, which has made us feel like the entire Summer has been wet, but actually, July's rainfall was below average... barely.

It's all about the averages. Some months are wetter than average and some months are drier than average. This happens to be one of the above average years for rainfall in August.

To see this graphically, here is the climate graph for 2013. First, here is a legend:

For those wanting dry weather, the rain chances are much lower today and almost 0% Wed-Fri. In addition, low humidity and sunshine will take over Region 8!

Have a great day,
Ryan