Dry Slot

Wetness!

So far most of Lee's best rain has gone up west of the mountains.

At my parent's home a few miles from the Tennessee border the rain started last night.
Steady light rain continues during the day today.

Still waiting for significant precipitation in the northern Piedmont. Radar shows the leading edge of the rain reaching Greensboro. The local forecast for the Dry Slot touts an 80% chance of rain today and tonight, but it ain't rainin' yet. :o(

Katia looks healthy today. The model consensus is pretty healthy, too, which says Katia will be a fish storm.

Yet another scenario for the Gulf of Mexico floated to the surface today. Now it looks as though remnants of Lee may linger and fester in the Bay of Campeche, possibly resulting in the Return of Son of Lee. Or executive assistant secretary to Lee, or attack of zombie killer Lee Junior.

Probably be better if I leave the title to the marketing department.

Ahoy, Shore!

Yes, I know where that is. I can tell it's dry because of the exposed sandbars. I have never seen them so extensive.

I hope that Return of Son of Zombie Lee will put out the fires and fill up Lake Travis. That would be a good start for a cheesy sequel.

The rain appears to be over in western North Carolina. The day came up sunny. There are layered clouds shifting on a south wind. The forecast promised a cold front, but warm and muggy conditions persist.

Rain has finally come to Burlington, but it's a far cry from the general slow soaker I was hoping for. Instead there are thin ragged streamers of rain, very much hit or miss. Looks like the stream of tropical moisture will be training over the area for a while, so perhaps there'll be more rain for the Dry Slot before it's done.

Some weather models suggest that Katia may get into the act. The northward streaming air over North Carolina may draw oceanic moisture from Katia's vicinity as she spins by. If it produces more rain where it can do the most good, I'm all for it. Don't really care where it comes from.

The weather station at Alamance County airport reports about a quarter inch of rain out of the entire Lee episode. Whoopee.

It's too soon to make useful predictions concerning Lee Junior. The models are all over the place. Preliminary indications are that he will follow in his daddy's footsteps. That would be consistent with this summer's mantra, "Them that has, gets."

Howdy! Nice to find visitors after a day away from the console.

Ylee, I happened to be watching the radar on one occasion when Burlington demonstrated its talent for shooting the gap between storms. I was hoping that more storms would blow over, but the entire swath of northward moving air was shifting slowly eastward. The next batch of storms in the queue missed altogether.

DAM - What can I say? Orange and Durham counties are not in the occult rain denial zone. Folks over that way actually got rain out of Irene.

I like your map. It clearly shows Lee's streaky rainfall pattern. There's a spot of darker green up by Virgilina. If the map were zoomed in at higher resolution, it might show higher totals near Durham.

It also might show dryer spots in Alamance County. According to the map we should have gotten half an inch or more. I don't think so. Maybe a centimeter.

Hi, SP. I've been visiting my parents in the mountains of western NC this week. It was pleasantly cool up here today. I still wore shorts, but we were able to drive comfortably with the air conditioning turned off in the car. That's a big change.

It rained here for a couple of days. It was mostly light rain. A creek runs down this valley, and I could not tell that it rose much at all.

Down in the Piedmont the thermometer rose above eighty today. The front that grabbed Lee has a kink in it, and Burlington remained southeast of the front in moist tropical air throughout much of the day. As of 7 pm eastern time the temperature is 79° with 47% humidity. Tolerable but not exactly cool. The outlook for tomorrow is sunny, 83°.

I see the blob you're talking about approaching Puerto Rico. You can follow it on the MIMIC imagery up in the header. I guess the answer to your question is, that it's a regular tropical wave. It has no spin. It's just floating along looking for trouble. Maybe it can help Lee Jr. (Nate?) do battle with that dry Texas air.

Now that we have a hurricane named Maria, it's surely only a matter of time until someone posts a YouTube video from The Sound of Music or West Side Story.

Not me. Nope. I'm determined to resist the temptation.

SP - And they call the wind Marya...
...but does she come when you call her?

We have a cat named Margaret, but, when you call her, she either ignores you or runs away.

I have heard a couple of professional meteorologists speak of that blob that's bothering you. In each case they spoke dismissively. Perhaps during some other part of the tropical season this wave would merit greater consideration. Right now, in the peak week, with no less than three named systems on the charts, I guess we're all hoping that this one will fall through the cracks. Sorry.

Ah, Weaverville. I ate lunch in Weaverville today. My wife has relatives in Weaverville. How is it that such a wee town has such wide and various connections?

BF - Aaaugh!

Oh, well, I guess somebody had to do it. :o)

BF - I liked the video. It is a good version. (Same for SP's "proper version" of Mariah.) It has been a long time since I watched West Side Story.

Never been to Weaverville, CA. That's one connection I missed.

Ylee - It's possible that we're calling Margaret by the wrong name. My wife named her Margaret. I call her Spook, but she doesn't answer to that either.

We have one cat who comes whether you call him or not. He's just happy to be there.

Well, it's TGIF day, and it seems as good a time as any to attempt a synoptic inventory of all the tropical critters out there. The main question was whether to add another dateline to the header. Since there's nothing particularly momentous afoot (at least from the myopic vantage afforded by the Dry Slot), I decided to do it in a comment.

Katia is history. She's outta here. A classic fish storm all the way, suitable for meteorological research, rocking the boat, amplifying the surf. I doubt anyone laments her passing.

The upper level low formerly known as Lee menaces the midwest. We can blame Lee for ongoing flooding in the Northeast. Could be Katia contributed a little extra tropical juice as Lee fades. Lee is nearing the end of his run. He'll be packing up and shuffling along this weekend.

Maria has had a rough passage across the Atlantic, but now she has reached the promised land (figuratively speaking) of warmer water at the gates of the Caribbean. There was a flare of convection around Maria last night, which should help improve her spirits. Maria seems to be following the same path blazed by Irene.

Nate continues to putter around the Bay of Campeche. The dry air to his northwest has moderated somewhat. His swirl has firmed up, so that we may imagine he is ready for action. Whither will he wander? Beats me. So far he seems content to huddle quietly in the corner.

Hi, DAM. There I go being myopic again. I generally confine my forecasting to this side of the big pond.

I'm sure interests in and around the British Isles, such as insideuk and sandiquiz, would be quick to agree with you.

Aw, DAM, you're sucking all the fun out!

Here we have a hurricane that comes as close to being harmless as a hurricane possibly could. Yes, Katia is still deadly if you try to sail your Hobie cat though the eye. I get that. People who try a stunt like that are bucking for a Darwin Award. Evolution in action!

Alas, most people who are affected by hurricanes don't do it on purpose. The hurricane comes to them. I get that, too. Despite all our technology we still can't stop a hurricane or even turn it aside.

The best we can do is try to get out of the way. The great thing about a fish storm is that most of us don't have to.

It occurs to me that perhaps I should take a moment to speak about motivation.

I come to Weather Underground because I enjoy a dilettante's interest in meteorology. I get a kick out of watching giant killer storms buzzsawing around the planet. Never for a second do I imagine that I can out compete my fellow WUsers on the basis of my sensitivity to the breadth and depth of human suffering.

Especially not on Friday night.

Hi, UK. You stole into our midst unnoticed.

Ah, the pint of ale would be most welcome. Thank you.

I believe you remarked that the UK doesn't get hurricanes, it just gets weather. Well, here comes some weather comprised of a used hurricane. It's a low mileage hurricane, a real keeper, that was only driven to church on Sunday by a little old lady from Pasadena.

UK, if Katia blows across your patch of the green and pleasant land, I hope you'll batten down the hatches and grab hold of a flag pole. Don't let go, or you might wake up among the Walloons.

Home again. Slept in my own bed last night. It feels great to be back. Wife, Spooky Margaret and Thai Beau acted glad to see me.

This morning I found about an inch of water standing in the rain gauge. I don't know how it got there, but the simplest theory is that we got more rain here than I thought we did. If so, that's a good thing. I'll gladly take the heat for needless sour grapes grousing in earlier comments.

SP, your unnamed tropical wave has pushed Nate out of his cozy nest and into Veracruz, Mexico. The residual cloudy patch is drifting westward into Puebla.

I thought Maria might defy predictions and track straight westward into the central Caribbean. She appeared to defy physics instead by making a three hundred mile lateral move. If I didn't know better, I might think that this massive process, operating at balmy tropical temperatures, was exhibiting quantum behavior. She vanished here and reappeared there, neatly (for a hurricane, anyhow) sidestepping the Lesser Antilles. Now those track predictions don't look so bad.

Nate is gone, which leaves Maria as the only game in town. Maria's zigzag seems to have taken a lot out of her. She hasn't moved much since yesterday. She shows signs of devolving into an open wave. And take away the neatness points; she is slobbering on the Virgin Islands.

After Maria we have a lull. There's no support in the Atlantic basin from the MJO. The wave behind Maria lacks spin and convection. Unless something pops up closer to home, we'll have to look to the next blob coming off of Africa.

Here in the Dry Slot high temperatures are running in the mid eighties with lows near sixty. There is no sign of rain in the forecast until Friday.

Hope everyone got their fill of 9/11 documentaries yesterday. It will be a whole year until we have another excuse for a binge. Wife had those running on the teevee all day long. I mostly didn't watch. It was bad enough the first time.

Maria has been dragging her feet, trying to get her spin reorganized. She may not have the time. While she fumbles and stumbles over Puerto Rico, the wave behind her is catching up. It appears to be supplying motivation, urging Maria forward. It's a squeeze play. Ahead of Maria there is a front, a wall of air which will block Maria's passage westward. She is about to be swept up and carried away.

In a couple of days a cool dome of high pressure will shoulder its way into the Dry Slot. The front will drop our temperatures twenty degrees, and it will bring us our next chance of rain. The local forecast gives us 40%, but that chance looks ludicrously slim on this morning's NAM. The 0Z ECMWF offers more hope in about four days.

Two more ninety degree days before the regime changes. The forecast high for tomorrow is actually only 87°, but that's close enough. On Sunday it will be sunny with a high of 71°. That's what I'm talking about. I want to Be There.

Local weather is already nicer than it was in August and WAY better than July. One can venture outside during the morning or evening without major discomfort. Even at midday it's tolerable in the shade.

Tropical storm Maria has started wrapping up heat and moisture from the trailing tropical wave that overtook her yesterday. The ad hoc combination of two tropical waves will be quite a bolus for the jet stream to ingest, but like a python slowly fitting itself around a rabbit, the east coast front will eventually get the job done. Maria is going north.

After that there's nothing else on the radar. The MJO has been stuck in octant 3 of the phase diagram for many days now. There's no clear signal that it's about to get unstuck. Maybe we can take a break from worrying about the tropics.

Maria's spin looks better organized this morning on the MIMIC imagery, as she trails her skirts over Bermuda. It's Maria's last hurrah. There's a chance she will visit Newfoundland's Avalon Peninsula tomorrow, but by then she'll be changing into extratropical guise.

At noontime it's sunny and 87° in Burlington, NC. The first scattered light showers associated with a cold front are creeping onto my local WunderMap from the northwest. The eastern sky is clear blue. To the west and north clouds are massing.

This time tomorrow I expect a much cooler and damper scenario. Frankly, it's a little hard to imagine. I look forward to experiencing the reality.

Good morning, Ylee.

So far the prediction for cooler weather has come true. We have the windows open. At 7:54 am the local temperature is 56°. That in itself is not particularly significant, because our dewpoints and morning lows have been running only a few degrees warmer than that. The difference is that it's cloudy with a chance of rain, and the forecast high today is only 58°.

NOAA's forecast includes a high probability (80%) of rain tonight. That would be great, but I'm not seeing it on the models, not on any of 'em. The rain is all down east, where it has fallen all along, every time we get a rain prediction. So I'm not buying it. I'll believe it when I see water gushing from the downspouts and puddles standing in the low places.

Hey, Skye.

Fleeting? Maybe compared to Florida. I would say that Mills River gets an honest four seasons, each one about ninety days in duration. It's possible that I'm biased; I was born not far from there.

The weather has been quiet lately, and so has the blog.

Local weather was rainish Saturday. All day long it was cloudy and damp. I checked the rain gauge three times. I got a tenth of an inch once and trace amounts the other two times.

The rain looked good after a hot dry summer, but it was so light and diffuse that it had hardly any effect. I thought maybe I could skip watering for a day or two, but no. Sunday morning the plants on the back deck looked wilted and thirsty, as if to say, "What rain?".

The NWS forecast promises more precipitation chances throughout the week. I reckon that if they keep practicing, maybe one of these days a storm will actually wet the ground.

Rain! Two centimeters in the rain gauge so far, with more on the radar. This time I know I can take a break from watering.

Thanks to a lingering upper level low over the Ohio valley, our local forecast remains rainy through the end of the week.

Huh-oh, this is going to make the grass grow! The mower has been on hiatus while the ground parched in the sun.