The trip home . . .

We started out fairly early the morning of the trip home. Everyone was looking forward to getting home, but no one was looking forward to the extremely long drive. We would be heading from Oklahoma City all the way back to Starkville, Mississippi. The day didn't start out too well for me as I didn't wake up early enough to go grab some breakfast. I don't normally eat breakfast, but I had grown used to the continental breakfasts we had for most of the trip. This day, though, our hotel did not have a continental breakfast, so I couldn't just grab a cinnamon roll as I headed for the van.

Not only did I not get breakfast, but we had to make a van exchange. That doesn't sound too bad on the surface, but we were exchanging a fairly nice, new, and somewhat comfortable van for an older, extremely uncomfortable van. The reason we had to make the exchange was that a few of the group leaders were staying out on the Plains to take another group on a storm chase. So, they kept our vans we had been using, and a couple of people brought us two more vans to ride home in.

Now, when all was said and done, I had a good time on the storm chase. Even though we really didn't get to experience much, it was still a rewarding experience. Even so, I felt really bad for the leaders who were having to stay out there for several more weeks. You could see in their faces that they were just as ready to go home as we were. Not only had our storm chase been a bust, but the GFS didn't show the next two weeks looking much better.

We got on the road and everything was going smoothly to begin with. Although I was extremely uncomfortable, I was able to get into a position where I was able to start to doze off. I didn't quite make it to sleep, though, as all of the sudden I felt the van braking hard. Just as I popped my head up to see what was going on, we swerved just enough to avoid rear ending the car in front of us. If we would have hit the car, it would have been pretty ugly.

Needless to say, the combination of the uncomfortable seats and the near miss kept me from ever getting much sleep for the rest of the trip. I was awake as we passed through Fort Smith and Little Rock, Arkansas, through Memphis, and all the way to Starkville. Nothing out of the ordinary happened for the rest of the trip, and I never thought I would be so happy to see Starkville, Mississippi.

Next time . . . the epilogue

Drew McCombs
ABC 33/40 Weather Intern
abc3340wx2@gmail.com

The Wednesday afternoon map discussion is on the web, and also available via iTunes:

http://www.jamesspann.com/

John Oldshue is taking off for Colorado today... nice time to take a vacation. After all, there are only so any ways to say "hot and humid with widely scattered afternoon showers or storms"! Welcome to mid-summer in Alabama.

As expected, the radar is very quiet again today. We saw a few showers earlier this afternoon over Northeast Alabama, but nothing is out there as I write this update. Temperatures at 2:00 p.m. around here ranged from 91 at the Shelby County Airport to 95 at Tuscaloosa.

The upper heights might be a little lower tomorrow, and the cap might be a tad weaker, so we will mention a chance of widely scattered afternoon storms. Then, the upper ridge is forecast to get stronger by Friday and Saturday, so any afternoon storms on those days should be few and far between. High temperatures on a daily basis will remain in the 92 to 97 degree range.

By Sunday, the core of the upper ridge shifts a little to the west, and that might be a window of opportunity for a little better coverage of afternoon showers and storms. But, the general idea is that we will have your typical mid-summer weather around here for the next week... and probably for the rest of July.

TROPICS: The ULL (upper level low) in the southwest Gulf of Mexico continues to move to the west, and seems to be headed toward Mexico. A tropical wave is now now moving across South Florida, and will be in the southeast Gulf of Mexico tomorrow. And, another wave is near the Windward Islands. No sign of development with both of those waves, but we will keep an eye on them. The tropics will have to break loose at some point this summer, but that might be closer to the first of August.

SKYWATCHERS: Want to help our weather team as a volunteer severe storm spotter? Do you have some SKYWARN Training? We are looking for more people to join our Skywatcher Network, especially in rural Alabama counties. If you are interested, drop me a line and tell me about yourself:

jspann@abc3340.com

The Skywatchers report back to us in real time using instant messaging technology. We also will be using digital images and video from the team. A great way to get ground truth during severe weather, and more trained eyes on dangerous storms.

Thanks to everyone at B E & K for their hospitality... I spoke out there at a luncheon today and really enjoyed the visit. I will have the next map discussion video posted by 7:00 a.m. tomorrow!

* 81 is how many days until October

* 1,944 hours until October

* 116,640 minutes if you want to count down faster

* 120 was the hottest in the USA Tuesday, at Death Valley

* 43 was the lowest in the Lower 48 this am at Meacham, Ore., Alamosa, Colo., Big Piney, Wyo.

* 33 was the low in Alaska at Good Ole Deadhore where a polar bear was discovered once prowling on an upper floor of a local hotel. If I had been staying there, I would have been enroute south toward Havana Junction in mere seconds leaving all my stuff behind. Bears and gators rank almost as high as lightning on my FL (Fear List)

* 1.90 is how much rain fell on Tulsa in the last 24 hours. It was the second day in a row with well over one inch.

* 2.75 inches in Paducah yesterday--home of the Duke of Paducah of Grand Ole Opry fame.

* 4 to 6 inches of rain across parts of Kansas and Missouri in the last 24 hours.

* 3 to 5 inches across parts of Michigan.

* 0 is the number of inches of rain for Alabama where you cannot slip up on someone because your feet go crunch, crunch, crunch.

* 106 is the hottest it has ever been on this date in Birmingham and that was in 1930. We had a major heat wave that year which resulted in a high temperature of...

* 107 on July 29, 1930 and that still stands as the hottest ever recorded with Birmingham records going back to 1885, a few years before I was born.

* 51 is the coolest we can possibly expect in July because that is the all time low. It delighted us on July 16, 1967

* 1/10th of a person per square mile in the population density of Greenland. That means each person has 10 square miles. Little Miss Molly would absolutely love that. Just think, there is no U.S. 280 on Greenland, No I-459. Wonder how much five acres would cost me?

* 1 is how many cups of scrumptious, delectable, delicious and yummy sugar-free apple cider I have had this morning. Almost makes me want to quit coffee. I will delay that decision.

* 3,500 (almost) is how many wild fires California had had so far this year.

Just another plug for our cool new weather site:

http://www.weatherparty.com/

YOU determine what goes on the site, and it gives you a quick glance at all the latest weather news gathered by our readers. Drop by, register, submit links, and vote on links. You can link to any weather related story, NWS product, satellite image, simply anything that is interesting and related to weather. The most popular submissions make it to the front page.

It is a treasure trove of great weather information!

The Wednesday morning map discussion video is on the web, and also available on iTunes:

http://www.jamesspann.com/

Time to sing along....

"Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer
Those days of soda and pretzels and beer
Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer
Dust off the sun and moon and sing a song of cheer"

These lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer are somewhat challenging for those of us in the weather business; on the surface it seems like we can just say the same thing every day here and go away until September. But, there are indeed day to day weather differences that are discernible if you look hard enough, and that is a very difficult job. Quite frankly, the best way to predict the coverage of afternoon showers and storms on a summer day is to look at the early morning sounding (upper air data), but we don't get to see that data set until around 8:30 a.m. So, what you see here is based on upper air data from last night, and model data that often doesn't do a good job at picking out mesoscale features that are so important.

HAVING SAID ALL OF THAT: I don't think the atmospheric profile will be much different today, so the weather should pretty much be the same as yesterday. Very few afternoon showers; otherwise hot, hazy, and humid with highs in the 92 to 96 degree range. We are watching the ULL (upper level low) in the southern Gulf of Mexico with interest; not for tropical storm formation, but simply for the deep plume of tropical moisture on the eastern side of the circulation. Maybe some of that will slip up in here from the south tomorrow.

TOMORROW/FRIDAY: Heights seem to be a tad lower tomorrow, which might suggest a little increase in the number of afternoon showers or storms, but they go up again Friday meaning showers by then will be fewer in number. We will just broad brush the forecast with a chance of widely scattered afternoon storms on both days. No real change in temperatures.

WEEKEND: An upper ridge slowly builds overhead, so no real reason to depart from the routine summer forecast for now.

TROPICS: Weak wave are near the Bahamas, and just east of the Windward Islands. Both look pretty puny this morning, and the rest of the Atlantic basin is very quiet. We do note that the NAM/WRF has been trying to push the wave over the Bahamas across Florida and into the Gulf, with a closed surface circulation over the northern Gulf by the end of the week. Guess that is not totally out of the question, so we will sure keep an eye on it.

TODAY: I will be speaking to the BE&K Secretarial and Office Support Organization at midday... I don't do quite as many speeches and weather programs in the summer months since school is out, but I stay busy working with a number of ministries and other civic organizations. I enjoyed a great lunch yesterday at Richard's BBQ on Action Road (near Briarwood)... that is one of my favorite hang-outs. I am a trustee of the Alabama Baptist Children's Home; our administrative headquarters is just down the road from Richard's, and I also spend lots of time at the Hoover East Ball Park in the same general area. Thanks to Jennifer and everyone at Richard's for the great service and food yesterday.

FIREFOX 2.0: I did download the new Firefox 2.0 beta yesterday... by the way Mozilla is NOT recommending this just yet for widespread public use. I love the new spell checker in the browser... for people like me with a third grade vocabulary level and no spelling skill, this is a real blessing. Here is the Mozilla download site:

http://www.mozilla.org/download.html

The new 2.0 Firefox browser will be posted there when it is stable enough for everyone to use.

I will have the afternoon map discussion video posted by 3:30 this afternoon!