Dean AND the future Erin... :-)

When those tropics come to life, they really come to life!!! Wow! We have Tropical Storm Dean, churning in the Atlantic racing toward the US at 18mph. (Click on the picture of Dean for the looping satellite image.) He strengthened some late yesterday, and is now packing sustained winds at 50mph. 74mph winds are required for the hurricane designation. He is looking mighty nice sailing across the Atlantic, really getting his act together, looking like a real tropical cyclone. Alabama Mike posted a fun contest on our team blog encouraging everyone to try and guess US landfall location, wind speed and pressure. It's just for fun, so don't be expecting a prize or anything, but be sure to check it out. Everyone is invited to participate. You can follow the underlined hyperlinked text to get there... Where is Dean headed...? Anyone's guess at this point... models are all over the place. I have for the sake of the contest offered a Florida panhandle landfall, but I am actually still thinking that there will be two landfalls... one on the southeastern side of the Floridian peninsula, and the other in the Pensacola/Mobile area. I have had that gut feeling from the start for some reason...

Then, there is the future Miss Erin...(Again, the picture should link to the loop.) She earned tropical status last night when she was defined as tropical depression 5. She is expected to strengthen over the course of today, and is actually gathering considerable convection, and pulling it all together nicely. She won't have much of an opportunity to get all that impressive as she is just off the coast of Texas/Mexico... but she should at least be a tropical storm at landfall offering Texas/Mexico a shot at more rain... just what they needed, huh? I am keeping an eye on both of them, as is most of the weather enthusiast community. Looking at probably a Corpus Cristi landfall.

Tallashassee has a nice site dedicated to tropical activity, compiling information in a nice fashion. Check it out.

Locally... as if anything local could compare to any of the tropical action we are seeing right now... we had some subtle lightning last night. I could not tell where it was coming from... too tired to check it on radar... There were stars filling my sky, but occassionally, the sky would light up with a flash. It was nice. Today, we are expecting another hot one with heat indices just under heat advisory level at 105-110 degrees, still very hot and dangerous. As if that's not bad enough, we are also dealing with an upper level ridge so typical convective activity will be limited to isolated cases, and we will most likely have a dry afternoon, which will offer us no relief from the heat. Oh well... can't win them all. At least we've got tropical action to watch, right?

Have a lovely day!
~Dewdrop