The second big storm system of the week is over the US Midwest and Gulf today, with severe thunderstorms and a couple of tornado warnings in the south, and snow in the north. Here’s the radar as of 7am …
The storm is expected to move east throughout the day, the timing is a bit later for reaching the coast than expected earlier in the week. For coastal GA/SC, while there is still a chance for isolated severe weather, the potential is less than the longer range forecasts indicated. As the discussion from the Charleston WSFO states …
A challenging forecast through the near term period … The primary concern early this morning will be minor coastal flooding along portions of the SC coast … Scattered to isolated light showers should develop along the leading edge of the surging moisture this morning, greatest coverage over SE GA. … Late this afternoon, the primary forecast challenge will be the potential for severe thunderstorms. … The environment could support an organized line of thunderstorms, with damaging winds the primary threat. HREF indicates the greatest clustering of 2-5 km updraft helicity across SE GA. A storm or two along the cold front may develop a rotating updraft, possibly leading to a brief tornado.
Exerpts from WSFO Charleston Forecast Discussion (as of 7am ET, link)
By the way, I highly recommend checking these discussions. They are sometimes a bit technical, but usually technical terms have links to the glossary and it’s a good way to learn more about weather forecasting. 99% of my commentary is rephrasing these forecasts in simpler terms and adding some context, such as noting that the minor coastal flooding expected in SC is due to the onshore winds out of the south, and shouldn’t impact GA since it will be blowing more parallel to the Georgia coast.
As always your best source for weather forecasts is not some blog or social media post, even if by a world renowned and beloved expert in geophysical and geopolitical disaster management 😛 , it’s directly from the National Weather Service and their extensive network of weather alert radio stations.
The bottom line is that while we will likely see thunderstorms, they will probably be inland from the coast. Any tornadoes will hopefully be brief and weak. So while it’s certainly a day to make sure your weather radio is on, it’s not going to be anything like Tuesday was for most people, just some afternoon/evening thunderstorms like we get a dozen times a year. Don’t do anything stupid (kite flying is not recommended, no Ben Franklin re-enactments) and you’ll be ok.
The global geopolitical situation is deteriorating rapidly on multiple fronts. As expected the US and UK hit sites in Yemen last night. It’s hard to see how this will end well. For one thing, the strikes were telegraphed hours in advance, and a lot of these drone/missile launch sites are mobile. Another thing is this: while defense has to be lucky every time, offense only has to be lucky once. As has been seen in the Ukraine, where despite being pounded by Russia and by almost every metric losing the war badly, and up against world class air defenses, they are occasionally able to achieve a spectacular PR success by hitting mid, even high value targets.
The US public needs to be prepared for this, because it is likely Ansar Allah (the group in charge of a lot of Yemen, who are behind the closing of the Red Sea to maritime traffic) still has a lot of capacity, including drones, ballistic missiles, and antishipping missiles. They can probably overwhelm the defenses with a saturation attack and hit either a US or UK ship. Certainly the strategy of them forcing us to use $1 Million dollar missiles against $20,000 drones has merit and eventually our ships will exhaust their supplies and have to leave. A better strategy (for Ansar Allah) is to hit a US land base or, as they have done in the past, hit the Saudi oil fields (although I don’t expect that as so far the Kingdom has stayed more or less neutral, and the growing Saudi rapprochement with Iran means Ansar Allah might not want to disrupt that). Either way, I expect to see US casualties, and if they get lucky, even lose a ship. And given our reactionary politics, they won’t end well.
You’re the best! Thanks for sharing your gifts and humor with us mere humans. 😊
Good job calling this station out for its tactics. As a past employee of the local NBC affiliate, I can tell you I witnessed many time where the news department blew weather stories totally out of proportion in order to boost ratings. Leading questions such as “If it rains enough, will we see a possibility of street flooding?” and “What is the upper limits of rain we can expect to see if the storm is at its worst?” basically “forced” their on air meteorologist to admit that if the worst of the storm did pan out, there would be flooding among other possibilities. It was them off to the races with “Breaking News” and “weather alerts” , the constant drumbeat of scare tactics and “sever weather” leading stories were whipped up into a frenzy.
My time in the “news business” convinced me that reporters will do whatever is necessary to make a story compelling and worthy of a “resume tape” in their relentless climb to a top market station!
Who can’t forget the hilarious antics of the Weather Channel with one of their “on scene broadcasters” doing a live shot of a Hurricane arrival “leaning into the wind” claiming to barely be holding on. Yet in the background we see people leisurely strolling around the area not having nearly as hard a time as the “news personality” seams to be. Link to this incident included as well. I recall an adage that a news personality once said “If you cannot be good, be colorful”