At 2 p.m. EDT on Thursday, August 7, 1980, powerful Hurricane Allen was located 85 miles north northeast of Cozumel, Mexico. The advisory from the National Hurricane Center said it all: ...EXTREMELY SEVERE HURRICANE ALLEN CONTINUES TO STRENGTHEN... I found a copy of the actual teletype copy of the detailed vortex data message that was transmitted from the NOAA aircraft at 12:42 pm CDT. The central pressure in the hurricane had dropped to 899 millibars! This made it the second strongest hurricane observed in the Atlantic up until that time.

It was a storm worthy of the headlines. The Houston Post screamed “Hurricane Allen roars into Gulf” in 48 point type. The Birmingham News said “Allen rivals 1935 storm in intensity.” The News also said, “’Frederic Fever’ has Mobile on edge.” Along the Alabama Gulf Coast, it had been less than a year since Hurricane Frederic roared ashore on September 12, 1979. As early as Wednesday, civil defense officials along the Alabama coast had been making preparations in case the dangerous hurricane started to come north. In Mobile, residents were stocking up on plywood, flashlights, batteries, bottled water and canned goods. On Dauphin Island, where the 3.2 mile bridge off the island was still out after Frederic, a flotilla of boats was being marshaled in case an evacuation became necessary. Officials said that an evacuation of the island's 800 permanent residents and 1,000 summer visitors by boat would take sixteen hours under ideal conditions, and conditions were already becoming less than ideal over the Gulf of Mexico. On Wednesday night, a chopper ferrying oil workers to safety off Houma, Louisiana crashed in the storm tossed Gulf. Twelve people perished.

The official forecast called for the monstrous hurricane to move west northwestward across the Gulf of Mexico, eventually to impact the Texas coast. That is what happened, with the hurricane moving inland early on Sunday the 10th.

You can see why I like to take as much time off in the summer as possible. The weather in Alabama stays hot and humid without much excitement in the weather office June through August most years, unless the tropics get active.

I am in the process of wrapping up a nice vacation week; this post comes from Tampa where I took our just-turned nine year old to see his favorite team, the Boston Red Sox, take on the Tampa Bay Devil Rays on his birthday... Here are a few pictures:


The Devil Rays play in a domed stadium called Tropicana Field, which is in St. Petersburg. I thought I was watching a Mississippi State football game at Scott Field in Starkville for a while, the home fans ring cowbells. And, it was interesting to note that Boston fans seems to outnumber Tampa Bay fans at the game.


The game was a good one; Tampa Bay won but the Red Sox had a chance to pull ahead in the top of the ninth with the bases loaded and one out. Javy Lopez hit into a double play to end the game.


Kevin Youkilis getting a nice hit for the Red Sox. Not bad for a relatively cheap digital camera from our seats behind the Red Sox dugout.


Tropicana Field was built on the site of the old Al Lang stadium. The last time I was at this site was in 1972 when I was 15 years old in the 10th grade at Tuscaloosa High School. I was in the marching band, and we were in the "Festival of States'  competition, which was I recalled featured one or two bands from every state in the nation. I think that was the longest band trip of my high school career, and we had a ton of fun. Being back at that site brought back some great memories, and I hope our nine year old made some memories he won't soon forget.

We fly back today and I will be back in service early tomorrow morning with a full post and map discussion video by 7:00 a.m. For many systems, school begins this week and it is time to back into the regular routine!

The Sunday map discussion video is on the web, and available on iTunes:

http://www.jamesspann.com/

Wow, was it hot yesterday or what? I wasn't hot since I was in the cool seat at the dunking booth at Kidfest in Old Town Helena. But unfortunately I'm a little croaky this morning, so please overlook the voice in the web video.

I thought we'd do something a bit different this morning, so I start out with a look at some weather around the world. The US is not the only place where weather can prove dangerous. Flooding from the monsoons have caused the death toll to lcimb to 62 in India. The monsoons began in mid-May and the death toll now stands at 432 for the season. In China, Typhoon Prapiroon - a name which means "God of rain" in Thai - was responsible for 57 deaths. The storm packed winds of 75 mph when it came ashore. And in the US, heavy rains have lead to flooding in New Mexico and extreme West Texas. El Paso which normally gets about 10 inches of rain a year has received 15 inches this year, most of the coming in the last week or so. El Paso has seen rain everyday since July 27th.

Tropics remain relatively quiet. The remnants of Chris were located just east of Havanna this morning. There is some possibility that Chris might regenerate when it reaches the warm water of the Gulf of Mexico, so we'll be keeping an eye on that area. Right now, though, there is very little convection associated with the remnants of Chris. Further east in the Atlantic, an area of disturbed weather was located about 550 miles southwest of the Cape Verde Islands. This area is showing some signs of organization and conditions seem favorable for slow development.

Back home the weather is just about the same. We saw a few more thunderstorms yesterday than I really thought we would see. I even got 0.03" of rain plus about two tons of thunder! Enough rain to settle the dust and that's about it. Storms persisted into the evening hours but most storms had died out by midnight.

After all those three-digit readings on Friday, none of the regular observing stations in Alabama got to 100. Most, though, did reach the upper 90s with a few of the climatological stations hitting 100 degrees.

The ridge aloft will build stronger today through Tuesday peaking in strength on Tuesday. After Tuesday the upper ridge retrogrades or moves west and it weakens. As that happens, a trough will develop along the east coast of the United States promising some relief to the Southeast US from the oppressive heat. We may even see a front approach the area on Friday though the timing may hedge more to Saturday. The GFS has remained pretty consistent in forecasting the trough, and past forecasts over the last several months have been pretty good with this pattern. So some relief may be forthcoming by next weekend.

The GFS MOS numbers for highs have been atrocious. This guidance does not do very well when we have relatively extreme events underway. MOS wants to work back toward climatology. But I did note that the GFS MOS was predicting a high of 88 next Sunday - now wouldn't that be nice?

I want to thank everyone for being patient as I migrated to the Mac for producing the web video. Took longer than I wanted it to, but I think I'm there now. Just give me an Internet connection and I can do map discussions from anywhere!

Stay cool and please take the heat seriously for a few more days. James Spann will be back in the saddle tomorrow morning with a fresh map discussion.

-Brian-