I have to tell you, I adore satellite Radio. I read with great incredulousness and sadness last week that the Recording Industry of America was keeping their lawyers in business with a silly lawsuit that wants to charge XM $150,000 per song recorded on the new genre of portable satellite radio receivers.

I have a problem with that. We are already paying $12.95 per month to listen to radio that is not determined by formula. It’s all about the music. You can’t copy or transfer the songs to someone else’s player.

Hey RIA XM actually sells songs for your members. I hear songs nearly every day that I like. I can press the memory button and the player remembers the song. Then, when I get on iTunes, I can PURCHASE the song and download it to my iPod. Then I can enjoy it anytime.

What the players do is just let us do what we have been doing with VCRs and DVRs for decades. It lets us time shift.

I have the original Delphi XM2GO. I couldn’t wait for it to come out when it was released two Christmases ago. The new portable receiver/recorders are smaller, have more memory and pack more features. Each day, I use my XM 2 Go to record two of my favorite programs on XM. At 11 a.m., there is a show devoted to fantasy baseball, called fantasy focus. It is an hour of nirvana. That show is followed immediately by Baseball Beat. Charley Steiner, the LA Dodgers announcer as well as ESPN and Yankee alum, hosts the two hour show of baseball columnists from all around the country. For the baseball fan, it truly is heaven.

By time shifting, I get to listen to those programs while I was driving to the airport Thursday morning and while I was in the air flying to Baltimore. Time to get off my soapbox. I want composers and artists to receive compensation for their intellectual property. I agree that the original Napster model was wrong. I have paid for many hundreds of dollars of music on iTunes and the new Napster. I just think that the RIA is a heavy handed organization that is using Draconian methods to maintain its position.

A few showers and storms are starting to fire hear this afternoon, apparently along an outflow boundary leftover from the Tennessee storms last night. The airmass is unstable and the cap is breaking enough to allow the storms to form.

The activity currently extends across Cullman, Blount and Etowah Counties. The storms are scattered and small for the time being, and will probably intensify and expand in coverage for the next few hours.

The storms will be of the pulse variety for the most part. With limited wind shear, the storms will form and then quickly choke on their own downdrafts. Some may form into clusters of multiple updrafts. There could be some reports of hail and even a chance of a few damagin wind reports in some of the stronger storms.

And with everyone getting involved in outdoor activities on this holiday weekend...lightning has to be considered. Remember the 30-30 rule. When you hear thunder within 30 seconds of seeing a lightning strike, you have to take shelter. And stay there until 30 minutes after you hear the last thunder.

At 2 o'clock this afternoon, Alabama time, the temperature in Colorado Springs was 85 with 31 mph winds and the relative humidity a very low 3%.

It was also 3% at the nearby Air Force Academy.

Denver also reports sunny, windy weather, 90 degrees, and humidity 4%.

In the north edge of Arizona, Page was reporting 11% humidity with winds gusting to 40 mph. Page is the town that was formed when the Glen Canyon Dam was constructed staring in the late 1950s. Take my word for it, weather conditions like that can make your throat feel like leather quickly.

At the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, winds were gusting to 48 mph with 16% humidity.

All of these reports are with sunny weather and no showers or thunderstorms at all.

Which means, this is very bad weather for a large section of the country that has a high risk of wild fires.

OPPOSITE EXTREME
In contrast to all that hot, dry weather, a heavy snow is ahead for the Western Montana mountains. Also, in Yellowstone National Park, up to 9 inches of snow is expected between now and early Monday and some roads will likely be closed.

The Saturday map discussion video is on the server at:

http://beta.abc3340.com/weather/video.hrb

May has certainly been a month of contrasts. The first half of May was unseasonably cool while the latter half of May has been warmer than normal. Rainfall was plentiful during the first half to two-thirds of the month while the latter third has been somewhat dry. And as we usher May out the door, another change may be coming about plus we usher in the 2006 hurricane season.

A boundary from convection over the last several days to the north of Alabama is likely to remain a focus for isolated thunderstorms for the next couple of days as it settles southward. Not everyone will see rain but if you should get under one of the isolated storms, you could see some briefly heavy rain as well as lightning. We're also getting into the lightning season across the United States.

Our weather remains hot and muggy for the next several days, but by mid-week, the GFS is advertising a change in our weather pattern. The ridge over us now will slowly move eastward. By mid-week, a developing trough in the central US will return the Southeast to a northwesterly flow pattern by next Friday and Saturday. This should mean a reduction in high temperatures by 4 or 5 degrees as well as some less humid air by next Saturday. I'm ready for less humid air. Always fun to imagine living here with humidity values running in the 30 percent range. Summer could be quite pleasant IF that were to happen - but humidity is one of the, er, benefits of living in Alabama.

Memorial Day weekend always kicks off the summer vacation time as school lets out and people hit the roadways for some off time. As I mentioned, though, this is the lightning season, and we all need to give lightning the respect it deserves. On average, somewhere between 80 and 120 Americans will be killed by lightning primarily in the months from May to September as we spend lots of time outside. The best safety I can advice is to move inside whenever you hear thunder. I don't want to see any of us on the statistic list adding to those lightning death figures.

I hope your Memorial Day weekend is a good one. I'm headed out to the Hoover Met once again for the SEC Baseball Tournament - I sell tickets there - so I get to enjoy The Met from an air-conditioned perspective!! Then I'm filling in for John Oldshue this afternoon and evening. You can catch ABC 33/40 news, weather, and sports at 6 and 10 pm today.

-Brian-