Storm Chase Day 1
For all of you who do not know, I left this morning from Starkville to go on a two week storm chasing trip. I am with seven other students and two professors–packed in a 15 passenger van. We left this morning about 9 am and ended up in Fort Smith, Arkansas this evening. That’s one of the things I am most excited about on this trip: not knowing where I will be sleeping that night.
The plan for tomorrow is to get up early and drive west to Oklahoma City and then south to Wichita Falls, Texas. (Yes, that is quite a distance!) Notice the slight risk of severe weather in the green circle below. (This is issued by the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma.) That green circle is our target area.
SPC Day 2 Outlook
Yes, it would be nice to see tornadoes, but tomorrow’s setup doesn’t look overly impressive for that. We still may get some nice supercells. Hey, it just takes one good storm to make for a good chase day…and even the days where nothing happens when things are “supposed to,” you can learn the most, so I am very excited either way.
Saturday’s best locations for severe weather are roughly in the same area, so we won’t have to travel quite as much tomorrow night/Saturday.
I’m sure I won’t write every day, but I hope to update a good bit. You can constantly track our location be clicking here and looking at the image on the right. That site will also be routinely updated.
Driving west. Storms north of us.
Instead of getting up early to have a weather briefing about the chase-day setup (we have to drive a lot!), we got together in one of the hotel rooms to discuss.
Weather Briefing
And now I am going to the pool!
LIVE TV DEBUT!!
The video is posted below, but you should read this first…or not.
I have been interning at WCBI since January of 2010. Most times, I wake up at 3 in the morning (yes, apparently that hour does exist) to be there around 4 to prepare for the morning show with meteorologist Jason Dunning who does the show from 5-7. (Yes, most of this is before the sun rises.) WCBI has been allowing me to record webcasts (which, if you’re reading this, you’ve most likely seen before), but to culminate my semester there, the news director allowed me to go LIVE, and do a full-length weathercast for the noon show–WCBI Midday!
I really wasn’t nervous. You just can’t think about what you’re saying being broadcast to thousands of households stretching to the Mississippi/Tennesse border, on over to the Mississippi River, and portions of Western Alabama. (Wow, now that I see that written out, I can’t believe I did that yesterday. Ha.) Looking back at this, there are plenty of things I wish I would have done/said differently. But hey, for the first time on LIVE TV, and with it going out to thousands of people and knowing MANY friends and family were watching, I concluded it will not be perfect the first time. (Too bad I am a perfectionist.)
I’ll be storm chasing in the Great Plains the rest of May (yes, I am praying for severe weather!) and at the coast the first week of June for my older sister’s wedding, but I’ll be back at WCBI some in June and July as well as next school year. Be on the look-out for me as I have been promoted to fill-in meteorologist! The news director and general manager were both pleased with the show. I look forward to what I will be producing this time next year!
Click the pictures below to enlarge! Oh, and my tie is NOT pink.
Christian (the anchor) & Me
Take Two
This is the Board in the Weather Office
My Name on the Board!
Closer
Not From My Debut, But This Is What The Set Looks Like
As always, if this is your first time here OR if you have never written on my comment page, PLEASE leave me a comment letting me know you were at my website and what you think about everything! 
Warm and Dry
Don’t forget to look for me on the WCBI noon show today. Yes, LIVE! I’m just now starting to get a little nervous.
And here is the discussion I wrote for wcbi.com:
The cold front that came through earlier this week has left us with drier air and lower humidity. There just isn’t enough moisture in the air to sustain much cloud cover, and that will be the case for Wednesday as well.
Fortunately, all of this sunshine will help ease the flooding problems in our northern counties.
Daytime highs will continue to climb over the next few days, peaking at about 90 degress on Thursday. And as the wind shifts to more of a southerly direction, we’ll see those humidity values increase as well.
For the third weekend in a row, we have rain chances in the forecast. An approaching cold front will be at our doorstep Friday evening, and along with that, we’ll see slight chances of showers and thunderstorms both Saturday and Sunday. The good news is that this event will not be as widespread as the past couple of weekends’.
Expect a cool down Saturday and Sunday with temperatures topping off in the middle 70s.
Break From The Rain
Wow! We are inching ever closer to getting back to our “normal” amount of rainfall for the year…still a few inches below average, though. This past weekend’s event helped, but it would have been nice if it was more spread out (ie, not causing flooding issues!). I just saw that over the past two days, Nashville received 13.56 inches of rain–definitely a record!
But for today, we will stay dry and warm with daytime highs reaching about the mid 80s. We’ll get plenty of sunshine today through Thursday and watch temperatures climb to the upper 80s by later this week. And, are you ready for this? Thursday, we could potentially see a high of 90 degrees! Oh yes, summer is quickly approaching! The good news is that humidty won’t be too bad as the cold front that recently came through has left us with pretty dry air.
There is a chance for some showers Thursday, but my main focus is on the front moving through Friday evening that could cause some isolated showers and storms throughout the weekend. Unlike the past couple of weekends, precipitation coverage looks low as well as the intensity. (No severe weather anticipated.) Expect cooler temperatures in the 70s Saturday and Sunday.
Tomorrow, if all goes as planned, I will be the weatherman for WCBI News Midday. Tune into your CBS station to watch WCBI at noon! I should be doing the first look at weather, weather tease, main weather segment, and the last look. I am very excited!!
Rainfall from the weekend. By Tara Morgan.
This is a picture sent in by Miss Tara Morgan, MSU alumna, of her family’s pond. Heavy rainfall this weekend caused the water level to rise above the pier. I’d love to see YOUR pictures as well!
Click to enlarge.
Rainy Weekend
My khaki pants definitely turned a deeper shade of brown as they soaked up some rain while walking to and from my car this morning. Many places in Northeast Mississippi have already received over 2 inches of rain today and winds have gusted over 30 mph. That really remains the only threat for today…pretty gusty winds.
There is still a tornado watch in effect for counties spanning from Webster, Clay, and Monroe and southward to the coast until 3 PM. The threat of tornadoes is very small–really just focusing on the winds. North Mississippians are under a flash flood warning. Driving home this afternoon, I saw one car stalled out under a bridge here in town. Watch out for standing water covering the roadway and use good judgement!
Believe it or not, we could see a few peaks of sunshine today, and rain and storms look to exit our area by later tonight and into early tomorrow morning. Monday afternoon will begin a trend of mostly clear skies and daytime highs warming up throughout the week from the lower to upper 80s. For those of you who do the running thing in the mornings, morning lows look to fluctuate from the middle 50s to mid 60s throughout the week.
It’s still days away, but it looks like we’ll see rain for the third weekend in a row this coming weekend. A cold front is marching our way that will aid in the development of storms come Friday into Friday night. Stay tuned as the timing of this can change.
I plan on going to WCBI tomorrow and Tuesday, so be on the lookout for video forecasts. Oh, and Tuesday I should be doing the noon show LIVE, so be sure to turn on those TVs! It’s my debut! Ha.
Click the pictures below to enlarge.
I'm not sure why he is doing this, but I don't recommend it.
Policemen Playing Chicken. Actually, one car had just been pulled out of there. They're making sure no one else tries to drive through.
- It's really awkward when Mark Zuckerburg speaks.
Public Service Announcement
-
-
