Quick Update

May 25, 2011
5:58 P.M.

Hi everybody, I actually wrote a segment on tornadoes a while back, but it is on my Garfield High School account at school and I keep spacing on bringing it home, but I'll be sure to get it tomorrow. Expect a long lengthy segment on tornadoes this season tomorrow. I will give a quick forecast... there really is not that much to talk about, except we will have a dry day on Sunday but other than that we will continue this cool and wet weather. Not surprisingly, this weather is very connected to the tornadoes the rest of the country has seen. We've had the coldest spring on record or at least one of the coldest and this tornado season is on record pace and has already broken many records. The jet stream is coming down from the northwest and dipping fairly far south, allowing cool Canadian air to sink down into the plains, before rising up again after it gets near Arkansas or so. The jet stream is also very strong there. This position allows for weak disturbances coming off the Pacific Northwest to get renenergized by the jet stream and feed off of huge differences in the different air masses... cold and dry north of the jet stream, and warm south of it, getting more humid as you move east from the desert. The air has also been very unstable due to these differences in temperature and humidity, but it has been just stable enough to have what is called a "capping inversion," which basically acts as a pressure cooker for storms, preventing small cumulus from forming in the afternoon and dissipating energy until huge thunderheads burst through the inversion in the afternoon.

All in all, the conditions have been perfect for tornado formation for most of the season. Let us pray that there are no more deaths, but unfortunately we will probably see more destructive outbreaks this year, and some lives will probably be lost. If you have any relatives that live east of the Rockies and you hear about a possible tornado outbreak in the future, either from this blog or somewhere else, let them know. Much of my family lives in Kansas City, which got directly struck by multiple, albeit weak, tornadoes today.

I'll try to keep you posted as much as possible on the tornado season, with occasional updates on the weather here.

Have a nice day,
Charlie