Windy, windy day!

Well it was a bit breezy yesterday, but today it will be even more so. Sustained winds around 15 to 25 miles per hour with wind gusts up to 30 miles per hour from the south... look at some of those wind barbs!

Now the reason we're seeing these breezy conditions is because we're somewhat sandwiched between two areas of different pressures. A low pressure to our NW, and a high pressure to our SE with the winds circling around them as noted below.So now imagine that our state is like a tube of toothpaste except instead of toothpaste in the tube, it's air. We've got high pressure pushing on the right side of the tube and low pressure pushing on the the left side of the tube... so with 2 pressure systems pushing on our "toothpaste tube" what else could happen but the toothpaste being squeezed out - or in our case today... the air being pushed out, resulting in some strong winds.

Good thing the temperatures are still warm for this time of the year, otherwise wind chill values could be downright cold.

~KDLT Meteorologist Jesse Ritka

Look At This!!!!!

If you thought the month of October was cold and wet, that just might be the understatement of the century! The final numbers are in for October across the entire country and even I was astonished at the results. All of this data comes from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Its a bit lengthy but you will want to read it because you may never see this again in your lifetime.

The October 2009 average temperature for the contiguous United States was the third coolest on record for that month according to NOAA’s State of the Climate report issued today. Based on data going back to 1895, the monthly National Climatic Data Center analysis is part of the suite of climate services provided by NOAA.
The average October temperature of 50.8 degrees F was 4.0 degrees F below the 20th Century average. Preliminary data also reveals this was the wettest October on record with average precipitation across the contiguous United States reaching 4.15 inches, 2.04 inches above the 1901-2000 average.

U.S. Temperature Highlights:

- October 2009 was marked by an active weather pattern that reinforced unseasonably cold air behind a series of cold fronts. Temperatures were below normal in all regions with the exception of the Southeast which had near normal temperatures for the month.
- Oklahoma recorded its coldest October on record while the month ranked in the top five for Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Wyoming.
- Florida was the only state to record an above normal temperature average in October. It was the sixth consecutive month that Florida’s temperature was above normal.

U.S. Precipitation Highlights:

- The nationwide average precipitation of 4.15 inches nearly doubled the long-term average. This was the first month since December 2007 that no region in the United States recorded below normal precipitation.
- Iowa, Arkansas, and Louisiana recorded their wettest October while only Florida, Utah, and Arizona had below normal precipitation.
- Moderate-to-exceptional drought covered 12 percent of the contiguous United States, the second-smallest drought footprint of the decade, based on the U.S. Drought Monitor. Major drought episodes in California and South Texas improved significantly. Drought conditions, however, emerged across much of Arizona.
- About 45 percent of the contiguous United States had moderately-to-extremely wet conditions at the end of October, according to the Palmer Index. This is the largest such footprint since February 2005.

Other Facts:

- Two major snow storms hit the Upper Midwest and the western Plains states. By month’s end, 13.6 percent of the nation was under snow cover, according to NOAA’s National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center.
- Cheyenne, Wyo., tallied 28 inches of snow in October, making this the city’s snowiest October on record. North Platte, Neb., recorded 30.3 inches of snow, making October 2009 the snowiest month ever for the city.
- October saw below-normal fire activity, with a total of 3,207 fires that burned about 158,000 acres, according to the National Interagency Coordination Center.

~KDLT Meteorologist Cody Matz

Here Comes Our Next Storm!

Now that you are all weather experts, I shouldn't have to explain anything anymore. Anybody wanna tell me when it's going to rain next?? Just kidding!! Let me help you out with that one. Looks like Friday will be our next substantial storm system. Right now, looks like pretty good chances that many of us will see a quarter inch of rain or maybe even more. One of the models, the one I'm showing below, has many areas picking up close to an inch of rain. Here is what the model is spitting out for accumulating rainfall on six hour periods.

6 Hour Rainfall Totals from 6pm Thursday Night through 12am Friday Morning:

6 Hour Rainfall Totals from 12am Friday Morning through 6am Friday Morning:6 Hour Rainfall Totals from 6am Friday Morning through 12pm Friday Afternoon:6 Hour Rainfall Totals from 12pm Friday Afternoon through 6pm Friday Night:If you are a farmer and are trying to get those crops out of the fields, this isn't the best news. However, we have had a decent stretch of dry weather and the good news that I can give you right now is that the later in the year it goes, typically the dryer we become. So I'm hoping after this storm, we can get another long stretch of dry and reasonably mild weather.

~KDLT Meteorologist Cody Matz

Skew-Ts

As promised... here's a brief intro on how to read soundings or "Skew-Ts".
Every Skew-T diagram has 2 "curves" the one on the left (green) is always the dew point temperature. The one on the right is always the actual temperature (red) with respect to height.
The circles with lines coming out of them on the right side of the diagram show us what direction the wind is coming from at each height and how strong the winds are at that height. The longer the line and closer to purple on the rainbow spectrum... the stronger the wind.
We can use the dew point and temperature "curves" to determine cloud cover and rain if we use forecast soundings... so "Skew-Ts" of what some models think the atmosphere will look like in the future. On a day like today, the temperature and dew point "curves" are very far apart at the surface (or the bottom of the plot) and the two stay decently apart from each other as you go up in height. That means that we have a very dry and stable atmosphere so we should expect sunshine with no clouds.
But we take a look at a sounding for Friday (this is the forecast sounding for 1pm on Friday) when our next BIG system is expected to bring rain showers and the profile looks incredibly different. The dew point and temperatures "curves" coincide which means that they are the same temperature. (I circled them in yellow) When that happens, it's indicating that there's 100% humidity at that level, which means clouds and rain showers are likely to occur at that time. And Bufkit (which is the program I use to get these forecast soundings) lets you know on the left side that it's going to rain as indicated by the 2 green dots with the letter "R". One dot means a little rain, 2 dots is moderate rain, three dots is heavier rain, and four dots is the heaviest rain.

That's pretty much what you need to know when it comes to soundings... of course we can go way more in depth with these but that's more along the lines of college meteorology courses. At Iowa State, we spent two plus weeks just on Skew-T plots, that's how much information we can get from these diagrams. Pretty neat! If you want to know more, here's a decent site to check out.

Enjoy the dew point and temperature curves being so far apart today!
~KDLT Meteorologist Jesse Ritka

Weather Ballons

Looks like we'll have a near carbon copy forecast for today and Tuesday for the most part. Mostly sunny and warm, the above normal trend continues and so will the dry weather. This is the Bufkit program and a look at future forecast soundings. Now these "soundings" are a picture of what the entire atmosphere looks like from the ground all the way up into the stratosphere. The red line is a typical plot of average global temperatures and where they are in relation to every layer of the atmosphere. The way meteorologists know all this information is from weather balloons...And not the type associated with the Balloon Boy fiasco. The National Weather Service launches weather balloons twice a day from many different locations around the US.
See that little package at the bottom of the balloon that I circled? That's actually a pretty technologically advance parcel, fully equip with temperature, pressure and wind speed and direction sensors along with a device to send the information back to the National Weather Service station that released the balloon. The data from this balloon gives us a snapshot of what the atmosphere looks like at the time the balloon was released. This leads us back to that idea of a "sounding" or a "Skew-T diagram"(it's called a Skew-T because temperatures are actually plotted skewed or along a diagonal instead of plotted vertically) Here's the one from the Aberdeen office that was launched this morning:

There's a whole lot of information on this picture and all of it was gathered from the balloon they launched this morning, some of the data has been manipulated with calculations based on the data, but overall, a very useful item in forecasting. Only 2 NWS sites in South Dakota launch these balloons: the Aberdeen and Rapid City offices, you can check other sites around the country here. Here's a quick overview, from Unisys of what some of the lines on these diagrams show:

"A Skew T plot is a standard plot used by meteorologists to analyze data from a balloon sounding. This is a plot of temperature with height as denoted by pressure. The pressure lines are plotted horizontally in blue and are also on an inverse log scale. The concept of Skew T means that the temperature is not plotted vertically but angles off to the right at a 45 degree angle. The temperature lines of the Skew T are in blue. The green lines are called dry adiabats. The light blue dashed lines are saturation adiabats. The yellow dashed lines are lines of constant mixing ratio. The sounding is plotted as two white lines. The right line is the temperature profile. The left line is the dewpoint profile. The winds are plotted as wind barbs with height (see below) on the right edge of the plot. "

I'll go into detail on how these soundings can help us forecast tomorrow... that is unless Cody steals that from me ;)

Enjoy the warm weather... sorry snow lovers, Mother Nature won't be helping you out much for some time.

~KDLT Meteorologist Jesse Ritka

Heads Up!!

OK, so I realize that this is a little far away but it can have tremendous indirect impacts to local economies. A hurricane has now entered the Gulf of Mexico and is now imminent in making landfall in the southeast U.S. in the next 36 hours. Looks like it will likely make landfall in the panhandle of Florida sometime Tuesday morning. Its not expected to be a major hurricane however, any hurricane making landfall is a pretty big deal and can have impacts on what we pay for food, gas, and other commodities. So hopefully you don't have plans to head that direction in the near future!!

Wow did it get warm all of a sudden. Temperatures sky rocketed on your Thursday with highs some 5-20 degrees above normal. And I have more good news for those that don't like the cold, it will likely be even warm on Friday! Shorts and a t-shirt will do just fine Friday afternoon so get out and enjoy!

~KDLT Meteorologist Cody Matz

Taurid Meteor Shower

I know I said I would probably talk about different cloud types today, but I forgot the Taurid Meteor Shower starts tonight! Around this time of the year, every year, we (the Earth) enter into a debris stream from Comet 2P/Encke. So the left over meteoroids (what they're called when they're in outerspace) from the Comet scrape across the Earth's atmosphere - that's when the meteoroids become meteors and then if they make it through our atmosphere, they become meteorites. This meteor shower lasts all the way until November12th! Check out the sky around midnight in the next upcoming nights for the meteors!
There is a little bummer about this shower however, there are only going to be roughly 5 meteors in the sky per hour, but they are going to be incredibly visible. According to SpaceWeather.com, Taurid meteors tend to be fireballs, very bright and slow. So it'll be a cool sight! Best place to look is away from city lights... look for the big dipper and then enjoy the show!

~KDLT Meteorologist Jesse Ritka