WEATHER MADE CLEAR FOR ALL TO HEAR

"But seeing they could not See; hearing they could not Hear"
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"From its chamber comes the whirlwind, and cold from the scattering winds." - Job 37:9.

"The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course".

Monday, December 6, 2010

Fe Fi Fo Fum, The Coldest Is Yet to Come


Image: Colorized depiction of surface temperatures at 7AM this Monday morning. Note the cold pocket over the barrier island near Cape Canaveral

TODAY: Cold air continues to filter in to Florida from the NW this morning. The process seemed to begin here locally around 5pm, Sunday when the wind picked up and the air took on a refreshed quality. Cold air advection will be fully underway all day today, and as such, believe afternoon high temperatures will be colder than what I last saw advertised on The Weather Channel or heard from local media.

At current time it is nearly 41F, colder than I thought it would be here this morning by a few degrees. Elsewhere, temperatures are running in the upper 20s along the panhandle to upper 30s will inland which is almost warmer than I thought it would be. That means, the winds are still up a notch, and that cold air advection has not completed its cycle. But in looking upstream combined with the latest forecast model depictions, they seem to be trending downward from previous guesses. The greatest impact of this 'progression' will be for the afternoon temperatures to be colder today than it was initially thought they would be, with a high along the Barrier Islands of around 54F and an irritating NW wind to add a chill to the air in any place open to the wind and in the shade. This was previously what I thought it would be Tuesday.

TUESDAY: Don't think the atmosphere will yet to completely decouple from the boundary layer winds aloft, as such we should still have some mixing and consequently not the unusual amount of cooling as one would expect under prime radiational cooling conditions, with surface winds maintaining a general NW wind component from sunrise to near sunset but lighter than those this morning.

WEDNESDAY: This might be the BIG day. A lower low, and a higher afternoon high temperature to be in order as the atmosphere completely decouples under clear skies Tuesday night. Very light to nil wind, clear skies, and the residual layer aloft will combine for peak drainage flow conditions. As such, the coldest temperatures over many areas will be not Tuesday but Wednesday morning; however, under these conditions the barrier islands will not be any colder than one will experience on Tuesday. Should this indeed be the case on Wednesday morning, we will see some big temperature extremes between morning coastal low temperatures to those west of I-95 from Orlando south to Kendall/Miami-Dade where the coldest of air drains down the spine of the state and pools near and south of Lake Okeechobee.

But every coin has a flip side. The end of the mixing winds is also an indicator that cold air advection has ceased. As such, under clear afternoon skies and lighter winds, the atmosphere will take an about face and warm just as formidably as it will have cooled the night before, with a high reaching in to the low-mid 60s by the 1-2pm time frame.

THURSDAY -SATURDAY: A less pervasive coldness to the air, but still very cool as temperatures trickle up the scale.

LATE-SATURDAY - ON: "Fe Fi Fo Fum...I smell the blood of colder air to come."

Say it isn't so, and we still have time for the crystal balls to re-evaluate. But, should proof come in the proverbial pudding, then it's going to be a nasty one. We see, oh great soothsayer, a squall line to form in the Gulf of Mexico followed by cold, near freezing winds by Monday as a resurgence of the omnipresent conditions of late are re-enforced.

Say it isn't so. We'll see.... Just a heads up. I hope not to have a final 'flip-out'...and will update the status of this foreboding event in subsequent posts. Last thing we need to be doing is ice-fishing in the Atlantic any time soon.

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