Thursday 8/26 10 am
A little better chance of storms today. While I do not expect any big precipitation totals, we may see some thunderstorms develop. The storms will favor the higher terrain, but I can’t rule out a few pop-up storms over the mid-elevation areas and even the lower elevation areas. There are a couple of weather makers to our west that are going to try to shake things up a bit.
Here is the current surface map of our region.
I circled two short wave troughs in Utah. The dashed line is what indicates it is a trough. The size of them makes them short waves. They are both entrenched in small closed areas of low pressure. They will add some instability today and help draw in some subtropical moisture from the southwest.
We have been dry lately and it is going to be difficult to saturate the atmosphere. Precipitable water values look decent for this time of year. They will range from 120% to 140% of normal today, that is the good news. Here are those PWAT values between 9 am and midnight.
The CAPE values today are just OK. Nothing to get too excited about. Here they are from 11 am to 11 pm.
The bottom line, we are looking at a chance of isolated storms developing today. Friday will be similar to today, with maybe a little lower chances than today. Saturday should be similar to Friday. A lot will depend on today. If a few storms fire up and deliver some rain to the ground, the moisture could recycle for Friday, and so on.
If I don’t seem too disappointed, it is because I have my eyes on next week. I mentioned yesterday that we are approaching the season when we see remnants of tropical storms or depressions drift into our area. I talked about the mid-September to mid-October time frame because sometimes those remnant lows meet up with early-season cold fronts. Minus the cold front, we could see remnants drift across our area mid to late next week.
There is a storm in early development off Mexico’s southern coast. The models had been sniffing out what looked like a pattern change for the middle of next week. In my last couple of posts, I have talked about that occurring around or just after September 1 st. I now believe the models were seeing that tropical development and subsequent recurving of that storm into the Southwest. Here is the latest guidance on that.
Yes, it is a week plus out. A lot could go wrong, but it is encouraging and it will be fun to track.
Hurricane Ida?
Speaking of tropical storms, I have not had a lot of storms to track. We have yet to have a Hurricane hit the US. You may have not realized that, but so far we have only had tropical storms and tropical depressions make landfall in the US. Overall, we are well below normal for ACE index. ACE stands for Accumulated Cyclonic Energy.
It looks like that is about to change. Meet Tropical Depression 9, which may become Hurrican Ida.
TD 9 was recently upgraded from a Tropical Wave. It is currently just south of central Cuba. The recent model spread for landfall has been from Galveston to New Orleans. The landfall has been indicated between Sunday and Tuesday. I am confident that this is going to develop into a strong category 2 or weak to moderate category 3 hurricane as it makes landfall. This will be a dangerous hurricane because it could be strengthening right before it makes landfall.
As I said the models have shown this making landfall anywhere from Galveston to New Orleans over the last couple of days. For the last 24 hours or so, the models are converging on a solution that would have it making landfall west of New Orleans maintaining its strength well into Lousiana.
I want to preface this by once again saying that this path could change dramatically. I would not at all be surprised for the models to flip back to Texas, but here is where the latest operational run is showing landfall early Monday morning.
Here is a more detailed map of that affected area.
If you are new over the last couple of years and are wondering why I am covering this, it is because I have followers from Brownsville, Texas to Jacksonville, Florida. It is not unusual for me to cover what could be major landfalling hurricanes, I have been doing it for 4 years now. I will be watching this very closely and posting all weekend on it.
Locally, I would appreciate any storm reports over the next 72 hours. Thanks for following and supporting the site!