So far in our look at severe thunderstorms we’ve looked at the three main severe weather threats: heavy rain, hail, and wind or tornadoes. What we haven’t discussed or looked at is why do some thunderstorms become severe while others do not, and how can you tell if a thunderstorm moving towards you is going
Severe versus air mass thunderstorms
Southern ridge pattern developing
Weekly weather forecast for July 15, 2013
The only thing that prevented us from climbing into the low 30s last week was the extra cloud sticking around, along with the fairly high humidities. For this forecast period it looks like summer wants to stick around. The ridge of high pressure that has been periodically building and weakening over the western U.S. is
Expect more heavy summer rainfalls
When we think about severe summer weather we almost always think of damaging winds and hail. While these two features can result in severe damage, the kind of damage is often highly localized. One thing about severe summer weather that we tend not to think about, until it creeps up on us, is heavy or
Dry, hot weather expected
Weekly weather forecast
The biggest problem with last week’s forecast was that the low pressure system expected to zip through the region over the weekend ended up moving much slower. This allowed for several rounds of rain to form and rotate through our region, bringing too much rain to some areas and some much-needed rain to others. This
Big storms should stay away this week
While the weather across our region was relatively quiet last week, the weather pattern as a whole was not behaving quite like I predicted it would. Last week I pointed out that we were now into a summer pattern with weaker weather systems and more thunderstorms. We definitely saw more thunderstorms last week, along with
The ingredients of a tornado
After a fairly cool spring with few if any thunderstorms, summer has started to make headway into the Prairies over the last few weeks. In some years summers come and go with only the odd thundershower and maybe one big thunderstorm, but in other years every storm that comes along seems to bring severe weather.
Record CO2: What does it mean?
It’s amazing what a little cold weather can do to people’s minds. Even after studies have come out indicating that, among active climate scientists, 97 per cent agree the current global warming we are seeing is human induced, and that these basic conclusions have been endorsed by more than 40 scientific societies and academies of
Is the jet stream getting stuck more often?
It’s best to hope these ‘blocking patterns’ don’t become the norm This is one of those weeks when I’m just not sure what to write about, so I thought I’d discuss some ongoing weather research that just might help us understand how we could go from a record-warm March to a record-cold April in just
Models continue to bring in warm weather
After several weeks of seeing the warmer weather only a week or so away, it finally looks like it will arrive! Is this going to spell an end to our record spring cold snap? I’m not totally convinced of that yet. On Wednesday it looks like there will be another area of low pressure pushing
A new look at radiational cooling
If long-wave radiation can easily escape the area, we could see net cooling even if the sun is shining
I came across a weather article last week that was a purely academic discussion about radiational cooling. It was one of those articles that at first glance seemed to be purely a discussion for true weather geeks, meteorologists and university professors, with very little if anything to do with an everyday understanding of the weather,