All Things Weather

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So let's get this started with some incredible satellite imagery from hurricane Ian, which is nearing landfall near Captiva and Sanibel Islands.

 

Hurricanes aren't typically prolific lightning producers, but this one has nearly 1000 strikes in the eye-wall, which again shows the strength of this storm.

 

The Waffle House index is on red alert. All of them in the path of the storm have been closed.
 

They are saying this is the 5th largest hurricane in US history. Had friends of ours move to Cape Coral in January. They have evacuated and are in Dallas as they are flying back up here. Unfortunately Cape Coral is in the eye of the storm
 


Florida is a state I would never move to. It's too hot, has hurricanes, and will see water levels rise and eliminate part of the state.

How long until insuance makes owning a home too expensive down there?
 

TruthSeeker said:
Florida is a state I would never move to. It's too hot, has hurricanes, and will see water levels rise and eliminate part of the state.

How long until insuance makes owning a home too expensive down there?
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Throw in monitor 🦎, 🐊 and python 🐍 and it’s true what this comic once uttered.
“Florida is America’s basement. Humid , dank with all sorts of critters crawling around rest you don’t want in the rest of your house.”

I liked Miami when I was younger to party in, but it’s a hard pass for me now unless some work deal took me there again.
 

GopherWeatherGuy said:
Hurricanes aren't typically prolific lightning producers, but this one has nearly 1000 strikes in the eye-wall, which again shows the strength of this storm.

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I'd seen something about this on twitter last night. Lots of lightning around the eye wall and how unusual it is.

 
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As dangerous as this probably is, I'd love to see what it's like standing in something like this. I'm sure I would instantly regret it though.

 

GophersInIowa said:
As dangerous as this probably is, I'd love to see what it's like standing in something like this. I'm sure I would instantly regret it though.

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I used to feel the same way. I've seen dozens of tornadoes in my life, but now there's no part of me that wants to hurricane chase. Severe storms on the plains are close enough. They move quickly and don't last for hours like this does.

It's such a grind to get in the right position, then potentially go days without cleared roads to get out, limited food, water, gas, etc.
 

speaking of weather, I broke down and fired up the furnace Monday night. got down to 64 in my house and I said "bleep it." Hate to start cranking up the heating bill in September, but there is nothing noble about freezing just to save a couple of bucks.

overnight lows were in the low 30's in my area Tuesday night, with widespread frost warnings.

(ps - put in a new furnace filter. looked at the instructions on the package, and I think I have been putting them in backwards, because I think I had the "air flow" arrow pointing in the wrong direction........)
 



GopherWeatherGuy said:
I used to feel the same way. I've seen dozens of tornadoes in my life, but now there's no part of me that wants to hurricane chase. Severe storms on the plains are close enough. They move quickly and don't last for hours like this does.

It's such a grind to get in the right position, then potentially go days without cleared roads to get out, limited food, water, gas, etc.
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I imagine tornado chasing has to be both frustrating and exhilarating at the same time. I could never have the patience for it.

I'm kind of the type that wants to experience things once, then never again. Like I really want to experience an extreme lake-effect snow event but would never want to live there and deal with it every year.
 



Lee County Sheriff ""So far, confirmed in the hundreds, meaning, that we are responding to events: drownings, again, unsure of the exact details because we are just starting to scratch the surface on this assessment."

news.yahoo.com

Hurricane Ian: Lee sheriff says fatalities likely 'in the hundreds' on national TV show

"I do know this road is long. This is not something that's going to be taken care of in the next day or two," Lee County Sheriff Marceno said.
news.yahoo.com news.yahoo.com
 

I will never understand why people wouldn't evacuate if you're in the crosshairs of something like this. It's not like you're able to keep the water out of your home or are going to hold the house up.
 





GophersInIowa said:
I imagine tornado chasing has to be both frustrating and exhilarating at the same time. I could never have the patience for it.

I'm kind of the type that wants to experience things once, then never again. Like I really want to experience an extreme lake-effect snow event but would never want to live there and deal with it every year.
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a friend of mine has a son who is majoring in Meteorology at the U of Oklahoma. All of those students go out storm-chasing. Last year, 3 students were in a car accident and died while storm-chasing. driving in bad weather, their car hydro-planed and was hit by a semi.
 


GophersInIowa said:
@GopherWeatherGuy, do you do any winter predictions? What's this winter looking like for the midwest?
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found this from the Old Farmers Almanac:

Region 9: Upper Midwest
Winter temperatures will be below normal, with the coldest periods in late November, early December, early and late January, and mid-February. Precipitation and snowfall will be below normal in the east and above normal in the west. The snowiest periods will be in late November, early and late December, and early and late March.
 

GophersInIowa said:
@GopherWeatherGuy, do you do any winter predictions? What's this winter looking like for the midwest?
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Since we're going to see a triple dip La Nina, which is pretty rare, there's not a lot of data to go off of. The last two were snowier winters in the Upper Midwest, especially the last one in 00-01 with 76" of snow at MSP, and 100" where I was living in eastern SD. 75-76 saw around 55" at MSP. The only other one was 56-57 which was a little drier, with only 39" at MSP.

The most interesting thing to me is that the last two started early, with a lot of snow in Nov and Dec. We also had drier, warmer falls, until the switch flipped in Nov.

Overall I think we'll see below average temperatures with above average snowfall. I think we'll know where we are heading by the end of November though. If the pattern changes to more active in Nov and looks to continue into Dec, I think we'll see a lot of snow. If it says dry into Dec, I think we'll stay dry throughout the winter. We really need to start transitioning back to more neutral or El Nino conditions so that we can begin to chip away at the drought.
 




Full Speed Ahead said:
@GopherWeatherGuy Do you have any historical info w/rpt to the drought situation in Minnesota? Is this a "once in a decade" bad situation, or something more significant than that?

| U.S. Drought Monitor

droughtmonitor.unl.edu droughtmonitor.unl.edu
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There's a pretty good correlation to when we go into prolonged La Nina periods and drought. Our last big drought was 2012, and we were really close to having a triple dip La Nina from mid 2010 to early 2014, but we went neutral for a short amount of time in the middle of those years. We ended up in drought during the other triple dip years as well, then came out of it when we transitioned to neutral/El Nino conditions.

So on average this drought is similar to ones we see about once every 10-20 years. I'm not surprised we have seen several dry years in a row. 2018 and 2019 were the wettest years on record for many parts of the Upper Midwest. The atmosphere always attempts to reach equilibrium, so we were due to dry out especially with a long duration La Nina period.
 

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