Monday, November 14, 2011

Warm November Rain

I can't steal the line from Guns and Roses, "Cold, November Rain." as temperatures won't cool down until we get rid of the rainfall.  We have a lot to talk about from heavy rain to record highs, but first....

The blog is about to reach a major milestone.  Within the next few days, we will hit 1,000,000 hits since our relaunch in July of 2010.  THANKS ARKANSAS!  In case you haven't noticed, this blog is more than just a part of my job, it's a passion of mine to keep it fun and interesting with new things all the time.

Speaking of new things, check out the model page by clicking on it above.  I'm working out some of the bugs still, but it's almost there.  Our exclusive "Futurecast" total accumulated rain and snow will update twice a day: at noon and midnight. 

Also, the WeatherNinja came up with the idea of "Deer-Cast".  Hunters can get the forecast as well as an animation showing wind direction over Arkansas for the next 60 hours.  This will update once a day at 1 AM.

The much anticipated winter contest will kick off later this week.  I have been in the process of gathering the best prize package we have ever had.  All of you "weather geeks" are going to love it!  We will once again have 2 contests which will run from December 1 through February 29th. (yes, next year is a leap year).

There will be more items added to the blog to give you weather enthusiasts, nuts, geeks, etc, the ultimate weather experience as we go into the active winter and spring months.

Now onto the wet weather on the way.

The models have been absolutely horrible lately pinning down the details of the upcoming rain.  Last week, most models pointed to Monday, now it's looking like Tuesday and Tuesday night will bring rain and it could be heavy at times.  The chance for rain today (Monday) is very small, but it's going to continue to be quite breezy.  We will also approach record highs in Little Rock.  We're forecasting 80 and the record is 83 set in 1999.  Not a long standing record, but this is unusually warm for November!

A frontal boundary will enter the state and this boundary will be the focus for the heaviest rain as an area of low pressure ejects out of the southwestern United States.  Where this boundary ends up is still a little bit in question.  Most modeling suggests the front will bring the heaviest rain Tuesday into early Wednesday morning in a corridor from southwestern Arkansas (I-30) through central areas and up the 67/167 corridor in northeastern areas.

There will be a chance for some flooding if the heavy rain verifies.  As far as severe weather is concerned, the threat looks very low at this time.  Check out the model data below.

Our overnight run of "Futurecast" shows a swath of 1-3''+ through southwestern, central, and northeastern Arkansas.
This is the overnight run of the NAM keeping the heaviest rain through west central into northern Arkansas.   This would bring about 1-3 inches for those locations.
This is the overnight run of the GFS showing that southwest to northeast corridor getting the heaviest rainfall.
This is the manual 5 day prog from HPC showing that southwest to northeast corridor getting 1-3 inches +

4 comments:

JasonBHampton said...

It was a cold October and everyone talk about how cold and snowy this Winter would be. Now we have a warm stormy November and everyone says we wont have a Winter this year. Cracks me up. This is Arkansas. This is Arkansas weather. We will have our Winter and on a Avg year it will around the last week or two or Decemeber and last threw most of Feb....No it wont be COLD and SNOW everyday, but we will have cold weather and we will have Winter weather, just not now, but it will come. Always does. Okay I am done. ;-)

Amy said...

Thanks, Jason!! Twitter was getting me pretty depressed today with everyone's "warm winter" comments. On another note....Todd, could you give me a quick tutorial on what causes the kind of windy weather we've had the past couple of days? It seems like we had this same kind of wind last year the week of Thanksgiving. Anyway, just wondering what causes such gusty wind in Autumn. Thanks!

Todd Yakoubian said...

Hey Amy. The wind is due to what's called a "pressure gradient". There is a strong area of high pressure located east of the state and strong area of low pressure to the west. The atmosphere is trying to equalize.

Here is a good explainer. http://www.srh.noaa.gov/jetstream/synoptic/wind.htm

Amy said...

Thanks, Todd! I was falling down on my job around the house of "Resident Weather Geek"! My husband, an avid hunter, has asked me several times where the wind was coming from because it was ruining his deer hunt, and I couldn't explain!! Now I can, and I just did, as a matter of fact! Great explanation and great link!! Thanks so much!!

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