Eye On Weather

First of all, the blog should be back on-track.  I just came off vacation, and it will now be updated regularly again.  On to the weather...

There are some great things to come out of Canada:  Hockey players, William Shatner (though that album he did with Leonard Nimoy was a little questionable), and lots of cooler air.  In the winter we hate the cooler air, but this time of year, it feels pretty great!

We will have a cold front dropping across us on Tuesday.  It will not bring a ton of cool air, but it will be a touch cooler.  The big story will be the wind from the front.  It will move across Lake Michigan.  That will tap into the somewhat cooler air above the lake water and push it onshore and into downtown.  It won't make it to the suburbs, but it still won't be hot.  Expect temps downtown to be in the 70s, but mid 80s as you head out.

As we go into the the weekend, we give some of that warmer air back to the Canada.  Temps by Saturday could be flirting with the 90s.  Until next time...

Our friends in Canada have done it again.  They sent us some of their finest air today.  Lower humidity and cooler temps will dominate this Friday.   We do have a bit of a disturbance moving through on Saturday.  There's less than a 30% chance of rain, but I threw it in just in case in rains on somebody's picnic.  Sunday we're back to the nice weather and warmer weather returns on Monday.  That's about it.

It's Friday and I'm off for a week, but the blog will return Monday the 18th, and we'll start to talk about some of the changes coming in our weather department.  We have new HD graphics coming and it's bringing about some interesting things.   We start to give you an inside look at what's happening when I get back!  Have a great weekend.  Until next time...

The weather over the next several days will be dry.  Canadian high pressure moves across us and keeps us dry for the weekend.  So, because the weather is quiet, I wanted to go in a different direction.  With the bears kicking their season off tonight, do you have a favorite tailgating recipe? 

We showed some great food previewing the game tonight on our morning show.  I love to eat and I love to tailgate, just wondering if anybody out there has a good one.  I have a beer can chicken that's really good, but thought I would see what you had.  Just send them my way.  If I get some good ones, I'll pass them along!

I got a phone call yesterday from a viewer asking what August  would be like.  When you start forecasting more than a few days out, you start to look at a lot of different factors.  It really is a specialized kind of forecasting.  That's why I want to introduce you to the great folks at the Climate Prediction Center.

They actually will look at weather trends from the next few weeks through the next few seasons.  They will go out as far as is technically possible with forecasting.  You can link directly to their site by clicking here.

As far as August goes here's what the CPC is saying.  First, the temperature:

The orange-ish areas are place that should be above normal, the blue-ish areas are below.  You'll notice that the EC over Chicago.  That means "Equal Chances" for above or below.  In other words, it should be an average August.  Now, lets look at the precipitation prediction:

You'll notice there's a big above normal right over us, that means more rain than normal in the month of August.

A note about these forecasts, they are NOT absolute.  But they are a great tool to see what the trends will be over the next 30 days.  Until next time...

Forest Fires.  Remember the old saying from Smokey the Bear.  Well, click here a look at some of the fires burning North of Saskatoon in Canada.  And they are causing changes in our weather down here in Chicago-land.  At times we should've seen Cobalt blue skies this weekend, instead there was a definite haze in the air.

Now, usually when it's hazy around here, that means it's humid.  Not this weekend.  The haze was actually coming from ash and the forest fires of Canada.  The National Weather Service in Chicago has a really nice explanation of it.  You can read it by clicking here.  It's pretty amazing.

Speaking of amazing, that picture from NASA was pretty cool.  It comes from one of my favorite websites when it comes to pictures.  The NASA MODIS site has a different hi-res picture everyday.  You can check it out by clicking here. 

If you see a great site and want to pass it along, just add it to the comments.  Until next time...

We had a tragedy in Lake Michigan recently.  A 14 year old boy was swept away by a rip current.  And people getting caught in rip currents probably happen more than ever gets reported.  Plus, most olks think they only happen in the ocean, but they can happen in a lake too.

I was asked to talk about rip currents on the 5pm newscast on Tuesday.  How do they work and what you can do if you are caught in one.  Here's a link to the video.

I know, I called it a riptide. That term is not correct, but the information on how to get out of one is.  I hope you took time to read it and passed it along.  If you would like more info on rip currents you can check out the NOAA site by clicking here.  Until next time... 

 

I love to hear from you, the viewer/blog reader.  I got a great note last night along with this picture.  Here the email:

First, a big thank you to you, the blog reader.  Since we started this lil' old weather blog, we've had almost 8,000 hits.  Who cares if 6,000 of those hits were from my mom!  Anyway, lets talk about Monday evening's weather.

We had some showers move through earlier today, some of them were even severe.  One storm in particular caused some damage on the NIU campus over in DeKalb.  You can see all of the days storm reports from around the U.S by clicking here.  Even if the rain earlier today helped your brown lawn, it also had another positive aspect. 

The clouds left over from the storm actually worked to stabilize the air.  We had all of the ingredients in place to see a very busy and dangerous afternoon.  Hot air and lots of moisture in the atmosphere are bad things, especially  with other factors that were present today.  But the clouds left over from the rain kept the temps from getting too high and kept the atmosphere from moving vertically and firing off big & nastys.

That may change tonight through the overnight hours.  We have a front coming through, and that will force the air to start moving vertically.  When air moves vertically, bad things can happen.  So expect some storms overnight, mainly toward the morning daylight hours.  There are already a few watches out and storms firing through central Iowa.  You can see them by heading to my favorite severe weather website, the Storm Prediction Center, by clicking here. 

We'll keep an eye on it in CBS2 Weather Control and have a complete update tonight at 10pm.  Until next time...

First of all, everytime I work this shift I remember how much I respect anyone who makes morning television happen.  Waking up at 2:30pm, driving in, pounding the coffee, and trying to look awake for four hours of TV takes a lot of energy and a patient family.  Sorry, just tired ramblings...  let's talk weather.

We are in a very sticky airmass.  A couple of problems with this. 

One, the humidity will combine with the heat to run the heat index up into the mid-90s.  You can learn more about how a heat index is calculated by scrolling down.  We covered it earlier in the blog.

Two, there is ample moisture available for any t-storms that start to fire.  Because of that we are in a slight risk for severe weather today.  You can read the Storm Prediction Center's discussion here.

Tomorrow is more of the same.  I think the energy will be a little more focused and that will give us a better chance at t-storms.  We'll keep an eye on it and update you tomorrow.  Hopefully, I'll be a little more focused.  Until next time...