How low can you go???

My wonderful groom just called to ask if there was a cell just north of town. Well, a little one... nothing on relative velocity, but he observed a very low cloud, hovering perhaps 100 feet above the roof line. He was very impressed with it, and he actually sent me a pic.No folks, not a tornado. It is likely scud), which happens to be attached to the base of the baby thunderstorm cell or a shelf cloud (leading the gust front) He didn't observe any rotation. It does look a lot like a misshapen wall cloud, but given the lack of severity, I don't think so... plus no rotation, so not dangerous in that regard anyhow. It is very cool looking, and I am wondering how many reports came in for it. Thanks, wonderful groom, for sharing. He is shooting an east northeast moving cell from its southwest side.

~Dew

Colorful virga!

After a wonderfully relaxing weekend, full of cleaning, cleaning and more cleaning... I was surprised with a lovely sky-treat. As I went outside to sit and watch Mini-Dew at her bus stop, I looked up to see a dynamic and heavily textured sky. It was gorgeous with the rough underbelly of an altocumulus stratiformis blanket, but then, as the sun rose into it, it came alive with an amazing pink flair. If that had been all, it would have been enough, but that was far from all. As I looked up to take in the beautiful palette of color, I was struck by something I haven't quite seen in that light... falling from the clouds in my northeastern sky, were sheets of virga (rain that doesn't reach the ground), and it too was awash with the splash of pink, salmon, coral, orange, gold. It was brilliant... so you ]know me, I rushed back inside to grab the camera. :DAlmost like my own little Aurora Borealis show... except NOT! One of these days... probably when I'm old and allowing myself to grey.

Well, Tropical Storm Danny was the less than exciting story on Friday. We became slightly more interesting factor when he merged with an extratropical low pressure system off the coast of the Carolinas. Really, I think meteorologists will argue about whether or not Danny should have ever earned his title. No more reports are coming out about him, but another area, which looks slightly better is given a high chance of development. Stay tuned for ongoing coverage of the birth of Erika.

Have a stupendous day!!!
~Dewdrop

ROTATION!!!

Things are starting to spin!!!

Today's tornado outlook...

Update: Still rotating...~Dewdrop

P.S. Danny looks terrible!

My precious little rainbow cloud

SKY WATCH FRIDAY time! I might not have time to respond to you, but I will try my best to visit!!!

Our hosts: Klaus Sandy Ivar Wren Louise Fishing Guy

Thanks, also,to Dot and Tom, who were instrumental in the success of this blogging event. You should definitely come fly with us!

So... on Tuesday, I walked out of my office building to catch one of the most spectacular sky shows I have seen in a while. Most of you know by now that I am passionate about storms, so seeing a lovely cumulonimbus structure is very exciting and energizing for me. The boast instability and potential for all the things that fascinate me... not to mention, they are strikingly beautiful especially when contrasted against a crisp blue sky. In addition, I've shared before that I simply love rainbows. They fill me with a sense of deep peace, a tangible feeling of hope that I could almost touch. I can almost taste the hopefulness they offer me spirit. Rainbows are not just beautiful, but they are the symbol of God's covenant with all of us. Imagine though, just imagine... BOTH!

~Genesis 9:12-14
And God said, "This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth.

Well, in typical Dew fashion, when I walked out of my office and saw this peeking through the alleys of the buildings...I just about dropped everything on the ground trying to grab at my camera. I know how finicky rainbows can tend to be, so I wanted to grab my shots, while the shots were there to grab... As it turns out though, this very photogenic, hope-inspiring vision wasn't in all that much of a hurry. It not only stuck around for the photo shoot, but got more and more brilliant as time passed, and it actually followed me most of the way home. Dewdrop had a rainbow covered thunderhead, rainbow covered thunderhead, rainbow covered thunderhead... Dewdrop had a rainbow covered thunderhead, whose convection was white as snow, everywhere that Dewdrop went, that incredible vision was sure to go...

In the tropics, Tropical Storm Danny is making his presence known as he rages across the western Atlantic. He's not the prettiest tropical cyclone I've ever seen, with his asymmetrical shape, showing almost all his convection only on the eastern side, which if he skirts the east coast, as is forecasted, shouldn't have much of a rain impact.Though he's packing winds not too far beneath hurricane force, his structure leaves much to be desired.

IT SHOULD BE NOTED THAT DANNY DOES NOT HAVE A TYPICAL TROPICAL CYCLONE STRUCTURE AND HAS MOST OF THE STRONG WINDS LOCATED WELL NORTH AND EAST OF THE CENTER

Danny keeps jumping around the Atlantic, vanishing and reappearing in various spots. It should be interesting to watch to see what happens with this one. The models are in good agreement, but only time will truly tell. Anyone along the coast should keep a watchful eye on this one.

Have a fantabulous day!
~Dewdrop

We have Tropical Storm Danny!!!

Tropical Storm Danny has formed in the Atlantic. As preddicted, he bypassed Tropical Depression and jumped straight to Tropical Storm. Currently, he packs 45mph winds and is destined for an engagement in northeast Maine as a hurricane, but anything can happen. For the current forecast trajectory, check out this link.

~Dew

The birth of a Tropical Storm??? ... and other adventures

It won't be long now before Invest 92L earns official tropical cyclone status, and as I mentioned yesterday, they expect this one to bypass Tropical Depression status and jump straight to named Tropical Storm Danny. This tropical disturbance

IS DEVELOPING A WELL-DEFINED CIRCULATION (By clicking on the graphic above, you can see the current loop). THE SYSTEM COULD DEVELOP INTO A TROPICAL DEPRESSION...OR MORE LIKELY A TROPICAL STORM...AT ANY TIME

Currently, there is a NOAA Hurricane Hunter en route to this wave to check things out, and as you can probably tell by this blog-post, I am not on it... sigh. Maybe next time...

What a wonderful lunch excursion my wonderful groom and I had yesterday. Every other Monday and Tuesday, my wonderful groom and I have the opportunity to have lunch together. With it being so hot lately, we have been enjoying the luxury of climate control, but with the heat backing off some, we took the opportunity to drop the top and hit the road for another one of our memorable lunchtime excursions. We can't seem to get enough of those things. The only request I had was a picnic by a river... My wonderful groom prepared a scrumptious lunch for us, and we hit the road. Well, unfortunately, in our exploration (and in fear of running out of time), we didn't find a river in time to eat, but we enjoyed a flavorful lunch under a canopy of trees in a shady alcove on a little known dirt road. After finishing our feast, we had plenty of time to continue our exploration. We stumbled upon a couple of deer stands in the middle of a very recently opened field. It appeared that our local lumber giant had robbed the area of deer hiding spots, so the deer stands looked sadly misplaced. I'm not a fan of hunting (and after last night's venison burgers, found I'm not a big fan of the meat either), so it made me chuckle to see their "hunting area" destroyed. As we continued to explore, we came to the end of the dirt road we were on... and lo and behold... river! What a pleasant surprise. We had no real idea where we were (as is usually the case on our little adventures), and we were so pleasantly surprised when we stumbled upon the Withlacoochee River in the middle of nowhere! Literally, the road ended into the river, so we were able to drive right up and explore.It was so beautiful, tranquil and still out there, except for the persistent pitter of a little waterfall (really little) and the flutter of butterflies everywhere!Aren't we cute??? We had a great time! I love our adventures!

Have a dewlicious day! (I'll share my awesome cloud shot from yesterday tomorrow... this post is full!)
~Dewdrop

Another tropical disturbance ready to roll...

Yesterday, the little area of clustered storms off the Leeward Islands was given a low probability of development into anything significant. This morning, all that has changed. That area ow has a high probability of developing into a tropical cyclone during the next 48 hours.If this system develops into a named storm, he would earn the name Danny. As the current shear environment settles some, the environment will become much more favorable still for the development of this tropical wave. As such, Air Force Reconnaissance will investigate things this afternoon. I bet they find him "depressed". Incidentally, he does have great satellite presentation and appears to be at the spot where major Hurricane Bill just past by less than a week ago. Looking at the graphic, you may have noticed the other area highlighted off the coast of Nicaragua and Costa Rica. There is little chance that that area of disturbed weather will gather sufficient organization to earn an official title before it moves inland today.

I was just looking at the reports for yesterday, which were less than exciting, when another graphic caught my eye... check out the cumulative severe weather reports so far for 2009...Red dots represent tornado report, blue signify wind reports and green dots are hail reports. The 2009 map seems rather blue, wouldn't you say (perhaps a little "depressed", like 92L. Incidentally, I think 92L might skip TD 5 and go straight to TS Danny)??? Well, here is the 2008 graphic for comparison (remember 2008 was a wild tornado ravaged year)...You can click on the various tabs for specific reports.

Have an effervescent day!
~Dewdrop

Hurricane Bill left his mark...

It's so incredibly unfortunate to me that despite ample warnings, plenty of media coverage... that someone, let alone an innocent child, had their life taken by Hurricane Bill. As it turns out, a small group of people were gathered for a party at Acadia National Park, gathered on the rock cliffs that hug the coastline in Maine. Well, despite knowledge of a close passing hurricane, despite tropical storm warning, heavy surf warning, dangerous rip current warnings, these people thought they were safe picnicing atop the cliff. Well, when you combine a nearby passing large hurricane, dangerous swells, and high tide, you have a potentially life-threatening situation. Reports indicate that waves were between 12 and 18' high, that they were crashing over the cliff and actually pulled several of the people there into the water.

LARGE SWELLS WILL BEGIN TO AFFECT MUCH OF THE REMAINDER OF THE U.S. EAST COAST AND THE ATLANTIC MARITIMES OF CANADA LATER TODAY AND SUNDAY. THESE SWELLS WILL LIKELY CAUSE EXTREMELY DANGEROUS SURF AND LIFE-THREATENING RIP CURRENTS.

NBC is referring to it as a rogue wave, but I don't see how it can be considered rogue... there was a doggone hurricane off the coast! It was a dangerous and very likely wave. The hurricane passed within 200 miles of the coast, a hurricane with tropical storm force winds extending out 300+ miles. In my opinion, the party should have been rescheduled or relocated. My heart goes out to the family and friends of the small child whose life was taken.The extratropical storm Bill is now moving out into the open waters of the Atlantic, after making landfall in Newfoundland.

My wonderful groom and I had a wonderful weekend, visiting our dear friends and his old college campus. What an incredible visit we had! First, we drove up Georgia, into Alabama and stopped in at my wonderful groom's university...My wonderful groom loves the feel of the grass there... I can see why!!Leave it to me to find a weathervane in all that...Then, we visited some friends over lunch at Milo's Hamburgers (which was causing my wonderful groom to drool all week long), where they have famous tea and bbq sauce smothered burgers... messy, but very yummy. We had some great conversation with 3 of my wonderful groom's college friends and one of my middle and high school friends (she left before I remembered to take pics-- sad face... no worries, I'll catch her next month on our girls weekend!). It was really terrific catching up and sharing stories with our friends... a true outpouring of love. Splendid. Before leaving town, we picked up a treat for our Jasper, AL hosts (we weren't guests, we were family)... the man of the house has a sweet spot for a specific coconut cream pie from a particular establishment. I must admit, it was pretty rockin... In Birmingham, we got some unknown-to-GPS directions to the house via Corridor X, the future I-22. It was a fast, easy straight shot. We arrived in the late afternoon, and I made fast friends with my wonderful groom's dear college pals. Honestly, it was like I had known R's wife A, all my life. We must be kindred spirits. It was wonderful. We had such deep and meaningful conversations, and I felt so comfortable and welcome in their beautiful home! They fed us wonderful meals, so we treated them to a wonderful yummy Italian outing, complete with dough-nadoes (thanks, B!!!) Then, the grown ups had a wonderful time enjoying the Wii. My wonderful groom and I, with the help of the charming children made Mii's for one another. My dear kindred spirit and I had a blast racing cows and other such things, while the men made excuses for less than desired golf scores. LOL! We introduced the whole family to the joys of jeep riding. What a blast! After a brief and non-lethal encounter with a "cow killer ant".

Velvet ants are not aggressive and will try to escape from you. The females have a very painful sting if handled. The name "Cow Killer Ant" was given to the velvet ant because of the reputation of the female's sting. It is said that the sting is so painful that it could kill a cow. This handsome insect does make a sound (especially when stepped on) but the squeaks of the cow killer ant would hardly be heard over the painful screams, if the person stepping on the wasp was barefoot.
~source

We hated to leave this wonderful visit, but all weekends must come to an end, so we headed out, fortunately, taking an adventurous route back, which allowed my wonderful groom a visit with his kids.

Have a fantabulous day!!!
~Dewdrop

Tornadoes ravage the plains... in August??

SKY WATCH FRIDAY time! I might not have time to respond to you, but I will try my best to visit!!!
Our hosts: Klaus Sandy Ivar Wren Louise Fishing Guy

Thanks, also,to Dot and Tom, who were instrumental in the success of this blogging event. You should definitely come fly with us!This is a capture of what our skies are generally looking like by early to mid afternoon here these days... We have had some amazingly brilliant blue skies with splatterings of clouds that build and boil to generate those late afternoon boomers that are so common in south Georgia summers.

Well, though it was pretty mild and normal summer-like thunderstorms here, yesterday was a banner severe weather day, especially for an August day!! As a cold front creeps its way across the CONUS, we watched as severe weather became the top story throughout the plains (especially Minnesota, Illinois and Iowa), with the big story coming out of Minnesota, specifically downtown Minneapolis, where an apparent tornado ravaged its way through downtown, destroying structures, downing trees... insanity. All in all, we saw 18 tornado reports and a total of 195 severe weather reports. My weather radio actually went off one time, alerting us of a severe storm to our east, which appears to have generated some severe wind reports in north Florida. Our company (Mini-Dew's friend), heard the blaring EAS tone and asked, "WHAT IS THAT?!" sigh... you have no weather radio?? All we got out of that was a bit of rain and some gorgeous lightning, which I was too busy with company to shoot. So, what does this whole tornado outbreak mean...? Well, this year has actually been a below average year for storm reports and tornadoes. Last year, an exceptionally active year, most likely raised the average quite a bit, so we are probably on target for "normal".I love the site that the image above links to... it's a great tornado trend resource. Unfortunately for the people over a large part of the eastern US, it looks like things might get severely active again today. If you fall within the green outlined area, be especially mindful of rapidly changing conditions.

Now, looking at the Tropics, we see that Hurricane Bill (the only show in town), actually lost some of his oomph. Now, downgraded to a category 3, still powerful, yet slightly less symmetrical, Hurricane Bill is a major hurricane most likely destined for a life at sea. He ran into a bit of westerly shear overnight, which slowed his winds down a bit, but as the shear settles, and with a maintained pressure, we could expect to see him ramp up speed again, through the course of today. He has begun a slight turn to the northwest, which is falling in line with what the models have consistently boasted about Hurricane Bill's course. In fact, a great degree of uncertainty arises with the expected trajectory of Bill after 72 hours...

IT SHOULD BE NOTED THAT BILL WILL PROBABLY NOT TURN AS SHARPLY BETWEEN 72-96 HR AS IMPLIED BY THE TRACK GRAPHIC...AND THUS IS LIKELY TO PASS CLOSER TO NEW ENGLAND THAN THE GRAPHIC WOULD SUGGEST.

Have a stupendous day!!
~Dewdrop