Jim Weber's Blog

The drier, less humid weather from earlier in the week is gone. It was a nice break from the humid weather as we get ready for a long, hot summer. That drier weather did come at a price with the lower humidity, breezy winds, and still no rain, it just dries everything out even more. That was very evident with the wildfires on the east coast this week. The Florida Division of Forestry uses the Keetch Byram Drought Index to illustrate how each of the counties in the state are doing with the drought. Just a few weeks ago most of central Florida was in the 100s. Check out the index for today...Hillsborough is running in the high 400s.

The wind has turned more out of the WSW so that means more moisture is moving across the state. This is in the form of humidity which does help to slow the wildfires, but makes it feel muggy outside. Here is the dewpoint map from late this afternoon over Florida. Earlier in the week when it felt really comfortable the dewpoints were in the 30s and 40s. Once these numbers get into the 60s it starts to feel more humid when you step outside.

The rain is ever so close to us...in the panhandle they are seeing rain as close as Tallahassee, but this front is going to stall out and stay just to our north. The weekend does not look to bad with highs in the mid 80s and a small chance of some showers which would be a good thing to see since we need the rain. It will take much more than what we may see this weekend to make a dent in the drought. In the meantime will will watch the front tease us just to our north with better rain chances across north Florida.

On another note the Hurricane Center officially retired the names Dean, Felix, and Noel witch were storms from the 2007 season. Dean made landfall on August 21st near Costa Maya on the Yucatan Penisula.  Felix made landfall as a Cat 5 hurricane on September 4th at Punta Gorda, Nicaragua. Noel moved over the Dominican Repulic as a Tropical Storm and moved off the NE coast of the US producing hurricane force winds. You can see the entire article from NOAA by clicking Full Story.

It's the last day of April and officially it will go down in the books as wetter than normal, but that is only thanks to all the rain on April 6th where we picked up 2.05" on that one day. Otherwise there was not much to speak of in April. We have also seen the last couple of fronts get weaker and weaker as they move into the state. This time of the year we are known as the graveyard of fronts. The last front that moved thru on Monday night brought lower humidity and only marginally cooler weather. One nice bonus is with the drier air it did allow for a cooler night last night.

Brooksville had a cool low of 44° last night! The front left nothing but clear skies across the entire area today. We had a high of 84° today here in Tampa but with dewpoints in the low 40s it felt more like a late March day. One of the really cool tools we get to use at FOX 13 is McIdas HD which we normally use to display GOES 12 imagery. One of the other things we use it for is to display true color images from the MODIS satellites known as Terra and Aqua. What a great view from the sattellite today! Not a single cloud over 80% of the state. With the mid day pass from the satellite and the sun over head it makes the coastline look like it is glowing with the sun glint. Check out these images!

And a close up of central Florida:

If you look close you will notice a little smoke drifting south from a fire in Okeechobee county. These images are 250 meter resolution images taken this afternoon from the Aqua MODIS satellite.

So now we are heading into May and it is also one of our drier months. Typically our rainy season starts up around the 2nd or 3rd week of June. So May is usually just dry and HOT!  Cold fronts have little to no effect on our weather because they either just don't make it here or by the time they get here they are so weak they are really nothing more than a shift in the wind and slightly drier air. We may mention a front and unless you watched the weather that day, you would have no idea today was any different than the day before. With that in mind it looks like this weekend will be one of those fronts. A cold front is heading our way for Sunday, but all the energy will go well to our north so maybe the northern part of our state will see a shower or two, but other than that just a shift in the wind. Here is a little animation from the GFS model showing our weekend front.

April started off on a wet note, but ever since the weather has been fairly typical for this time of the year. Well we did have that big cool down last week, but since then we have seen a very persistent low sitting of the east coast of Georgia.

This afternoon we saw a few showers bumping up along the east coast of Florida and they have persisted into the evening. These showers have not made it into the interior of the state so our weather remains pretty much status quo. With hardly any clouds and no rain we have seen highs in Tampa in the mid 80s the last two days. This week we have been talking in our weathercast on TV about this weather pattern because with this low sitting to our east and high pressure sitting to our west it just keeps a dry northerly wind over us with a bit of an afternoon seabreeze developing to keep the coast a bit cooler. You can see this spin off the east coast and notice what clouds there are move towards the south over the gulf in this McIdas HD satellite loop. That shows a very quit pattern for us.

This pattern will stay with us for the next few days until another front moves to the eastern US....this front won't head into Florida but what it will do is help to push the lows and highs along and switch up our wind directions...that will give us a bit more moisture and may give us atleast the chance of a shower towards the weekend. You can see that in the model run out of SkyTower HD VIPIR.

On Thursday morning the winds our more out of the Northeast for us...I think the cloud cover in the model is a little overdone...but you get the idea...it will still be dry.

Then by Friday we have the front moving towards the east. It won't make it into Florida, but it helps to nudge a high of the South Carolina coast. That will give us more easterly winds which in the summer would mean afternoon storms. In April it means partly cloudy skies and maybe just enough moisture to give us a shower.

State Sen. Bill Posey put forth the idea for Florida to opt out of daylight savings time. This kind of stuff just ticks me off. While the entire state is dealing with soaring home owners insurance and people losing their homes because of it. The economy stinks and so many families are concerned with just wanting to maintain their quality of life in the towns they live in.  This senator thinks there are no more important pressing issues than his annoyance that he had to change the time on his watch and a few clocks. He argues the time change throws the body's equilibrium off and produces more jet lag. That has got to be the weakest argument I have ever heard. If I fly to California there is a 3 hour change regardless to whether we are in daylight savings or not. If we opted out then only part of the year would it be a two hour difference...unless I was flying to Arizona because then it would be 3 hours again.  Gets confusing doesn't it? Arizona and Hawaii do not change their clocks...Indiana used to be a hold out and you know what happened, everyone got tired of being out of sync with the rest of the country...everyone was always asking "What time is it in Indiana?"  It got to be a big hassle because part of the year they are in sync and part of the year they are not.  Consider what life would be like here in Florida if we did away with daylight savings time.  Florida which is known as the "Sunshine State" would have less evening sun for the tourism. Welcome to the "Sunshine State" where the sun sets early. You say...who cares I live here....I am not a tourist. Well this state thrives on tourism. Now think of all the updates to your computers and just about any other electronic device that would have to be updated to the new rules that in Florida, DON'T change the time in your computer when the rest of the country does. Now when I call out of state to my insurance company to find out why my home owners has gone up so much I find they are closed...oh yeah thats right because even though we are in the same time zone they are 1 hour ahead of me. I for one like more sun in the summer months...the sun setting so early in the winter is depressing.  So I say to that Senator, get out the manual to your microwave and read how to set the clock in it and stop complaining about time and get back to work on what Floridians really need fixed.

Tonight was an interesting evening with things related to space. I stepped outside with my wife and 2 month old daugher a little after 8pm and watched the International Space Station fly over high in the sky. Sure this happens often and you can even click here for the link to find out when it will be visible in our area. What made this cool was around 10 minutes after the space station flew by we were greeted by the sonic booms of the space shuttle landing knowing it was just docked at the space station a couple days ago. It was a nice evening to get out and enjoy the outdoors and enjoy something that the rest of the country missed out on ...a little show put on right over our heads by the folks at NASA. Did you here the booms?  Where are you located? It is always interesting to see how far away they can be heard.

Spring starts tomorrow morning at 1:48am but it sure seems like it started here a couple weeks ago. Everywhere I go people are complaining about the pollen. The oak trees are going crazy. I know my yard is covered in pollen from the oaks at my house. Luckily I have been fortunate to have escaped another season of pollen with no sinus problems. I noticed for the first time last week that "summer like" heat in my garage when you walk out to your car in the afternoon, so I got to looking at the extended outlooks to see what is expected for the summer. It calls for above normal temperatures this summer and near average rainfall. So we say goodbye to winter and hello to spring and warming temperatures, hopefully not to hot too soon.

If you just look at the numbers and the stats on whether you get hit or not hit by a tropical storm or hurricane...yeah you can say we dodged another. But all things considered this is not a big deal for Florida. Just some rain and coastal erosion and really we will be lucky to see any rain with Noel. We have drought conditions over us and much of the southeast...we could really use the rain! How many times have we said on-air what we really need is a tropical storm to come dump some rain on us. Well with this storm all the rain is on the east and northeast side of the storm with only sporadic showers passing over the state. So yes we dodged another storm...but we also missed out on some much needed rain.

More information has come out in the past week or so indicating that la Niña has returned for this upcoming winter. We have been watching this here at FOX 13 very closely. La Niña is characterized by the cooling of equatorial Pacific waters which is the opposite of an El Niño. It appears that it will be a week one this winter, but it is a good indicator of the type of winter we could expect. When we have a La Niña we typically see the cold fronts stay further to the north as the jetstream does not make as much progress southward. For our area we typically see drier conditions and temperatures during the day run slightly above normal with cool nights. Our rainfall over the past year in many places was well below normal, so with the expectation of a drier winter due to La Niña could cause some serious concerns over the winter into next spring. Many states in the southeast including, Georgia and Alabama have seen extreme drought conditions this year so they too will be affected by the upcoming La Niña.

The rainy season has come to an end and the rainfall amounts were all over the place. Some areas were way below normal. Here is a list of some places in our area:

           Town                                Actual Rainfall          Departure from Normal

• Ft. Myers                               34.24"                                -2.25"
• Lakeland                              32.12"                               +3.95"
• Tampa                                  32.08"                               +5.95"
• St. Petersburg                     25.80"                                -2.80"
• Brooksville                           28.30"                                -0.23"
• Sarasota                              19.35"                              -13.45"

Sarasota really sticks out with over a foot below normal. Then you look at Tampa which was nearly 6 inches above normal and then go across the bay and St. Petersburg was nearly 3 inches below. Although you notice as a whole most areas were below normal for the rainy season and now that we are heading into the drier months of the year we will all have to watch our water usage as drought conditions could become quite severe by spring.

Wow...we have had some big storms so far this week. Over the weekend I was talking about the southeast winds bringing a better chance of late afternoon thunderstorms and the last couple of days have been very active with some hail, gusty winds, and even a funnel cloud over in Pinellas county this afternoon. Thanks to all the viewers who called it in and were all very accurate in their description. We even had some viewers grab their cameras and snap some pictures to send in. It looks like this pattern will probably switch around by the weekend and those southwest winds will start to take hold again....that means the storms will shift to the other side of the state and our overnight lows will be very warm and muggy (yes more than now!). It just seems like we have not been able to get that long stretch of southeast winds for days on end to keep those storms coming our way during the late afternoon. That is what we all know as our typical Florida thunderstorms.

So it is the 4th of July...and the tropics have been pretty quiet. We do have one area we are watching way out in the Atlantic, but other than that there have not even been many tropical waves that we have had to monitor. This season we have had a fairly steady pattern of east coast troughs which would help to recurve storms mostly likely before they got to us. So does this mean this will end up being a quiet year?  Well I don't want to be Mr. Negative...but we don't want to relax too much just yet.  Just take recent history...the 2004 hurricane season was one of the worst we had in quite a long time and we did not get our first named storm that year until July 31st...so that year started very quiet as well. Then by the middle of August we were had Charley moving right over the top of the state. There is still is still a long ways to go in this hurricane season so keep those fingers crossed....but for now there is nothing to worry about just enjoy the holiday!

Over the past few days we have seen more showers and thunderstorms around...still not everyone has seen the rain. This is always the way the rainy season seems to start with our inland counties getting good afternoon storms and then eventually the rest of of see the afternoon storms. A little energy in the upper levels of the atmosphere is moving just to our north over the next couple of days so that will atleast keep our rain chances up so we may all get some showers. Lets all keep our fingers crossed that the rainy season gets into full swing here soon. Also don't forget summer begins tomorrow at 2:06pm.

After days of smoky skies it was great to see the blue skies again and just look up and see plain old clouds in the sky. We had that "back door" cold front move thru the other day which means it came from he northeast and that has switched our winds around towards the east. That has moved all the smoke to our west and has it helped! Last Friday I was out around town and saw people walking around wearing mask to keep from breathing in so much of the smoke. It just did not really improve alot until that front came thru....but now we have another front heading our way for Thursday night into Friday morning...so by Friday  we will see our winds turning towards the north which could carry some of that smoke our way again. Lets hope it does not end up being anything like last week!

The last few days have been pretty hazy infact we have seen Air Polution Advisorys issued on Monday and again today. This is because we have had a stagnate High Pressure located over us for the past few days and also an inversion in the atmosphere has helped to hold alot of the pollution right over us and close to the ground. You can really see it when you look out over the horizon...it is that milky, hazy look to the sky. It looks like things will be hazy the next couple of days, but a cold front this weekend could help to mix up the atmosphere just enough to clean out some of this haze. That and some showers will do wonders for the air quality. So lets keep our fingers crossed and if you are someone who normally has respiratory problems...then take it easy the next couple of days.

Things are getting pretty exciting around the weather office...you may have seen some of the pictures posted of the new set. Well they just really got down to business building the new weather center this week and it is really looking sharp. This will certainly be a great addition to our coverage during severe weather events. The crews and all of our engineers are working their tails off to make all of this come together. So make sure you check it all out. They certainly have worked hard to not only bring us a great set to work with, but to ensure all of the Tampa Bay area gets the best from FOX 13.