What a difference a year or two makes!

With rain back in the forecast, I decided to take a look at where we stood in the drought department.  It sure is amazing the difference a year or two makes.  I'm sure many of us remember how bad the drought was last year, the year before and back in 2007 - especially into the southern states.  Slowly that has been improving over the past couple of years with the Pacific storms coming onshore in the west, the rain thanks to more of an El Nino weather pattern in the south and a wet fall and winter in Texas.  Looking at the drought monitor now we notice a big difference across the south and even into the west.  Hopefully this trend will continue into the spring and summer, although we don't want to see as much rain across the Midwest as we saw last year! 

Wednesday Evening North Central Illinois Weather Summary

A high pressure ridge has taken control of Stateline weather. It stretches ffrom Hudson Bay in Canada through Minnesota, far western Iowa southward through eastern Texas into the Gulf of Mexico.  Skies have been sunny to mostly sunny all day across the area with mostly clear skies lasting through the night. The air is relatively dry as evidenced by the large temperature/dewpoint(36/17) spread at the Rockford airport at 5 pm.  With the mostly clear skies, and winds becoming light after dark, the temperature will drop quite quickly this evening with moderate radiational cooling. There has been some low level moisture added to the lowest level of atmosphere because of recent snowmelt. That limited amount of moisture will probably contribute to some patchy fog in low lying rural areas after midnight, and promote heavy frost formation on automoble windshields of parked cars. The ridge of high pressure to our west will shift slowly to the east Thursday and Friday with more sunny days and mostly clear nights, and slowly warming temperatures that will reach above 40 degrees for the first time since January 24 on Friday. Temperatures will continue to hold in the 40's for afternoon high's from Saturday through Wednesday of next week.  There goes the snow....finally.  With some rain on the weekend, and again early next week, there may be some rises of  local rivers because of runoff.   Be sure to stop by the First Warn Weather Blog for more information!

Video of Tsunami Surge in California

Video from Crescent City, California from the tsunami surge from the Chile Earthquake. Pretty neat to see the discoloration of the water and then about two and a half minutes in, you can see the water really begin to surge in. The video is about 9 minutes long, FYI.

Thunderstorm and Tornado Safety

February 28th - March 6th is Severe Weather Preparedness week in Illinois.  It's never too early to develop a safety plan for your family, home or business in the event severe weather were to strike.  Yesterday and today we talked a little about the difference between watches and warnings for both thunderstorms and tornadoes and what you need to do to stay aware of the weather.  A watch means that conditions are favorable for either a severe thunderstorm or tornado and to stay alert of changing weather conditions.  A warning means that either a trained spotter or radar has detected a severe thunderstorm or tornado, either by report or through rotation, and necessary precautions need to be taken to ensure yours, and others, safety.  If a tornado warning were to be issued; In a home - go to the basement and under the stairs or heavy piece of furniture.  If you don't have a basement, get to the lowest level of the home in an interior closet or bathroom.  Stay away from windows.  School or work - go to a small interior room or hall on the lowest level and avoid large open areas. 

Lack of Tornadoes

February 2010 will go down in the record books not only for the snow it brought to some locations, but also for the lack of severe weather in parts of the south.  There were no tornadoes reported in the United States and assuming that there will be no late reports, it will be the first time since 1950 that February has gone by without seeing a tornado.  So what does this tell us about the upcoming severe weather season and long-term trends?  According to Harold Brooks, research meteorologist with the NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory, "Somewhere between little and nothing at all."  Even though years that have started off on the slow side have ended up with average or below tornadoes, there have been exceptions and people still need to be aware.

A look back at February

February is a month that many of us will remember as being cold and, in a lot of locations, very snowy.  Now that we're moving into March, let's take a look back and see what caused such a crazy month.  First, the southern jet stream was a very active one thanks to El Nino and the North Atlantic Oscillation.  As a result, the majority of storms stayed down to the south and produced snow, record breaking for many, for the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast.  Meanwhile, the northern branch of the jet helped to keep temperatures over much of the Great Lakes and Midwest below average through the majority of February.  We'll slowly begin to see this weather pattern change over the next couple of days as a ridge of high pressure begins to build across the central US not only moderating our temperatures, but slowly break down this stagnant weather pattern.

Are my eyes playing tricks on me?!?

Whenever I forecast, I always look at what's going on above to get an idea of what will happen at the surface.  Last week there was some indication that the weather pattern would begin to change and temperatures would begin to moderate a little within the next week or two.  The image on the left are temperatures into the weekend at 850mb.  I got a little excited this morning because for the first time in awhile the 0° actually made it north of the Stateline with southerly winds.  We've been stuck in the northwest flow for some time now and to see southerly winds begin towards the end of the week and temperatures to get above freezing in the upper levels of the atmosphere made me pretty happy this morning!  While we'll still deal with a little chill over the next couple of days - dust bunnies beware, spring cleaning is right around the corner!!