Fires…Heat & Ernesto
Let’s start with the latter on this Monday night. Thanks for spending a few minutes on the weather blog tonight or perhaps if you’re reading this…on another Ozone Alert day for our Tuesday.
Ernesto has been chugging along and as of this writing is packing winds of close to 65 MPH. It looked better in the morning but this evening is looking rather ragged as most of the deep convection has disappeared. Here is the latest satellite picture of Ernesto.
It’s that obvious swirl towards the south of Cuba and east of Mexico. For those who have family or friends honeymooning in Cancun or Cozumel, aside from some rain and perhaps some wind gusts of 35 MPH+ at this point it looks like Ernesto will pass about 75-125 miles south of Cozumel.
Hurricane Warnings are in effect for the area south of Cozumel through the entire coastline of Belize. it’s possible that Ernesto could strengthen a bit more before making landfall sometime early Wednesday AM.
The heat continues to rage across Oklahoma. Although not to the extent of what happened for the past few days with highs 110-115°
This has been an ongoing process down there. While we’ve had about 15-20 days with highs 100° or above…look at what’s been going on down there…
So between all that heat and the drought…it’s a rough situation down there…hence the fires that have been going for the last week or so. Here is some video from Jeff Piotrowski showing one of the fires near Manning, OK. Jeff is normally a Tornado spotter/chaser but the weather over the weekend forced him to venture out again.
One of the fascinating things about these fires, and this has happened before, is when the heat from the fires is so intense that it can actually create clouds from what little moisture is in the lower part of the atmosphere. The clouds are called pyrocumulus clouds and sometimes they can actually grow tall enough and turn into rain/lightning producers. Check out this video from Cleveland County, OK on 8/3.
As far as our weather goes, no big changes have been made to the forecast with the exception of dropping the highs forecasted for the latter part of the week into the middle 80s! That’s some good news. There is also a chance of some rainfall in the region later tomorrow night into Wednesday as well. It will still be hot for a few more days with highs on Tuesday in the upper 90s and lower 100s depending on the clouds cover situation. Wednesday’s temperature forecast is dependent on the clouds. Then the true cold front will move into the region later on Thursday.
Check out the temperatures @ 5,000 for later in the week. A disturbance will be intensifying as it drops through the Great Lakes later in the week. It should tug a chunk of cool air southwards.
Notice how the sizzling heat is being shoved back to the west again. Have to admit that one wonders if we’re already seen our hottest air of the season. The EURO is showing another decent wave tugging more less hot air our way towards the 16th or so.
The models however are not very wet again…and that is a big concern for the next 10 days. There may be opportunities however for some activity every so often in the NW flow aloft.
Joe
