Since you last heard from me, I’ve been in Austin, TX. It was hot…afternoon temps in the mid 90s with a heat index of 105-110 each day! Fortunately, I was indoors at the American Meteorological Society’s 44th Annual Conference on Broadcast Meteorology. I could write pages and pages on the things we learned at the conference, but here are some highlights that even the non-weather geeks might appreciate, and some links for the real weather geeks…
- Much of the conference was spent covering the mounting evidence that humans are having a profound impact on the global climate. One of the most astounding stats…approximately 26,500 indicators of a warming planet have been discovered. Coincidentally, during the conference, NOAA announced that the global monthly temperature record was broken once again in May, making that the 13th consecutive month of record global temperatures. Here’s a good summary of that report from Climate Central.
- On a related note, there was a broadcast meteorologist from Hong Kong there. He came to share ideas and in general see how we do things in the USA. The group asked him what he learned on the trip. He said he was was most surprised by the prevalence of doubt and misinformation regarding climate change in the USA. One common misconception in the USA is that China is doing nothing to combat climate change. In reality, China has installed more renewable energy sources than the rest of the world combined.
- There was a lot of excitement surrounding GOES-R, the next generation of weather satellites. At the conference we learned that the launch date has been set for November 4. This satellite will revolutionize how we detect and predict all types of weather and will make for some really pretty pictures on TV. Look for the first images in early 2017. We got some sneak peeks. The animation on the right shows Hurricane Igor with our weather satellite at the time, the animation on the left shows what GOES-R will look like…
- The director of the National Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) was there. That’s the agency responsible for operating the computer models that do a lot of the weather forecasting in the USA. He said he is well aware that the European model has a reputation for being much more accurate than the NCEP models but they are working on that. He outlined all of the exciting improvements coming to the NCEP models soon. So look for more accurate weather forecasts in the future…hopefully!
How about the current forecast…looks great for Father’s Day!! High temps will warm well into the 80s for most of the area. The humidity stays low by summer standards so it will be comfortably warm. There are some exceptions. Winds will be out of the south and water temps are only in the low 60s. So, any south facing beach along the Cape, the south coast and the islands will only warm to the upper 60s and low 70s. Everyone gets sunny skies though.
Monday will be similar. Our next chance of rain comes with a cold front that will arrive on Tuesday. IF the front were to arrive late in the day, temps at that point would be well in the 80s and the front would be moving into a warm, unstable atmosphere. That would lead to some strong, possibly severe thunderstorms. It now looks more likely that the front will arrive in the first half of the day, the cooler part of the day. That reduces the chance for strong thunderstorms but the chance for showers remains.
Behind the cold front, temps will be a bit cooler, but closer to average for the middle to end of the week. There is some uncertainty in the forecast for Thursday and Friday. The GFS model, one of those NCEP models, indicates that a strong storm will move up from the south bringing tropical moisture with it leading to a soaking rain Thursday-Friday. The European model indicates that storm will stay south of us. Which one will be correct this time?!?
Many thanks to the National Science Foundation for being generous enough to cover my travel expenses to the conference in exchange for giving a short presentation.
