Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Winter's Grip & Spring's Tease

Winter is gripping the eastern 2/3 of the nation today.

Wow, there are a slew of watches, warnings and advisories for snow, sleet and freezing rain today -- stretching all the way from the hills around San Antonio, TX through Dallas, Little Rock, Memphis, Cincinatti and right up into New York and Boston. Check out the map below!



Many schools are closed today along the southern end of the wintry weather, as you can imagine, since they aren't used to the wintry weather.

And much of the southern extend is getting ice which when accumulations reach a half inch to inch, it all but shuts down life as we know it until things thaw and melt. Growing up in Arkansas, I've been through many ice storms.

The polls have closed on my last question -- Are we seeing more extreme weather? More than half of the 92 votes said no.

  • No, I recall crazy weather as a kid -- 34%
  • No, it's just unpredictable Mother Nature -- 31%
  • Yes, definitely in my area -- 22%
  • Yes, but not where I live -- 10%

    I have posted a new web poll so check it out.

    NOAA has released their 2008 temperature summary for the United States. Overall, the year was near average but December was below average.

    Click here to read more.

    Meanwhile, spring is teasing the southwest US this week with highs in the 70s to lower 80s expected around Los Angeles and Phoenix by the end of the week.

    And a few days ago someone had posted a link to temperatures for the Northwest USA, asking what all the acronyms meant and which one CoCoRaHS fell under?

    RAWS means remote automated weather station. SNOTEL are automated weather stations in the mountainous regions of the west. DOT are department of transportation weather stations. Just to name a few...

    I would assume CoCoRaHS falls under MISC (if they are using our data that is)
  • 3 comments:

    1. Looking at the national map of CoCoRaHS reports for today it is interesting to see the swath of no reports in the area hardest hit by the ice storm. I assume that this area of the map is missing reports because of widespread power failures.

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    2. Some of it just may be lack of stations. Compare national precipitation against national stations and it seems like the storm swath is overlaying where we need more stations!

      Though Missouri's reports look pretty decimated today compared to a few days ago.

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    3. I moved my comment from a previous section.
      But, Yesterday, In Southern Middle TN, it was 66 degrees :) and about two weeks it was 3 degrees.
      My daughter wore shorts all day yesterday. Today we had hoped to breakout the sled but that may not happen :(.

      ReplyDelete