Tropical Storm Igor has formed in the Eastern Atlantic. It is forecasted to become a category 2 hurricane by early next week, but it expects to curve northward well before it reaches the mainland of the United States:
courtesy: Weather Underground
And whenever I hear Igor, I think of this:
As of 2pm east coast time Hurricane Earl was a couple of hundred miles off the coast of North Carolina. Its max sustained winds are around 125, which puts Earl in Category 3 status. While it has been moving westward for most of its life, it has begun to move north at 18 miles per hour. This means that it will not be in Asheville (though I never expected it to be, being 400 miles from the coast). While landfall is not expected, the western swath of the storm is projected to affect much of the Northeast:
Currently there are Hurricane Warnings for the North Carolina coast, as the storm will be passing by overnight tonight. Another concern could be a near landfall off of Cape Cod tomorrow night into Saturday morning. Because of that the Massachusetts coast, as well as Nantucket/Marthas Vineyard, is ALSO under a Hurricane warning.
Again, while landfall is not expected, it should still pack a punch, with winds up to 7o mph for some coastal areas and high seas. Even though the storm is expected to weaken (in fact it already has, being downgraded from a category 4 to category 3 at the 2pm discussion), it can still do some minor damage so be careful up there.
As a weather weenie, I love staring at radar images of storms. Used to do it as a kid, and I still do it to this day. The same can be said for satellite images, however most of the time those images are updated every 30 minutes. Luckily there are times where we can see rapid scans of storms, ESPECIALLY during hurricane season. And so this was released today of Hurricane Danielle, and my productivity dropped for about 23 minutes…enjoy
After being in Asheville, North Carolina for a little over three weeks, it is starting to feel like home. For those of you that don’t know, I am currently working at the National Climatic Data Center. While NCDC is part of NOAA, I am currently contracted through the Cooperate Institute for Climate and Sciences. (Don’t believe me? see this). The job has been great so far, and I hope to learn a lot over the next few months.
Speaking of NCDC, they released this the other day:
According to this, July 2010 was the second warmest July on record. The warmest month occurred in 1998, which was also an El Nino year
Greetings from Frederick, Maryland! The halfway point of our leg from New England to Asheville, NC.
I am sitting in our hotel room dreading to go outside. The forecast high today is expected to be above 100 (with heat indexes almost at 110!!!). As I overlook the information over the National Weather Service webpage, I notice this image:
Then I notice the link that is associated with it:
http://forecast.weather.gov/images/wtf/hot.jpg
Maybe it’s the heat talking, but I found that to be funny
