Welcome to the Daily Kos Weather Center, a group of volunteer amateur (and professional!) forecasters.
Weather? Here? On Great Orange? Yep. We hope to bring you a great diary about the weather, climate, earth science, and a forecast too. You can compare it to the professionals too, although we’re not trying to beat them or anything! Why? Because there’s a need here. When Dennis Mersereau, aka Weatherdude, moved on to other things, diaries that talked about the weather and extreme weather events became almost non-existent. I felt it was time to bring it back, with a volunteer group that I hope grows and grows. If you’re interested, send me a kosmail!
Our first forecast is of course, about Iowa, since the caucus is on Monday.
IOWA CAUCUS FORECAST
It’s pretty early yet but all signs point to yes, there will be a significant and intense winter storm blowing across the country. It will likely begin to impact Iowa late Monday evening (more likely Tuesday) and last until Wednesday, with heavy snow, high winds causing blizzard conditions, ice, and the like.
The snow should begin from south to north across the state late on Monday night, hopefully after most caucus activities have ended. How much snow, can’t say for certain yet other than “a lot”, perhaps as much as 18” in spots as the storm tracks from Arizona into the Great Lakes, but as the storm cranks up over Missouri it will put out some impressive winds. Blizzard conditions are possible on Tuesday, especially across southern Iowa.
For right now, it looks like the weather will be decent for going Caucusing. I really don’t care who the Democrats of Iowa choose to caucus for---I will be happy to vote for whoever wins the entire primary season--- but bad weather won’t really be an excuse to stay home. Go and do your thing, and take a friend or four.
LINKS WORTH READING
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A post-mortem for Jonas/Snowzilla last weekend and another one here. Very worth reading! Of interest is the intense band of snow that developed and rotated over northern Virginia, central Maryland, south-central and eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York City for most of the day on Saturday. It wasn’t really expected (except maybe by the NAM, which no one expected), although the rest of Jonas was more or less well-forecasted. It first appeared on models 13 days before it developed over Texas and it more or less followed the same track on most successive model runs.
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Are meteorologists overusing models? I say for some, especially the consultants and especially those meteorologists my age and younger, yes.
- What happened at National Airport? FWIW, I measured the snow with a tape measure, taking 6 readings in 6 different places, and then averaging them. I ended up with 25.1”. There really aren’t any good guidelines on measuring snow other than don’t do it the day after because it will compact and not be accurate. DCA also is an anomalous hotspot within the already warm heat-island of the “DMV” and the Capital Weather Gang last summer suggested the sensor is faulty. Here’s an idea, maybe we all could study it and compare it to personal weather stations within a mile of the airport?
SCHEDULING
This is the first week schedule so far. Some days need to still be filled. I would like to have one every day, but it’s okay if there aren’t. It’s also okay if there are a bunch on one day. Topics are also really quite open-ended. That said, the significant storm talked about above will move across the country and severe weather is very likely across the Southeast. Severe weather live blogs will be needed for both the 2nd and the 3rd. Just throw one up, it doesn't need to be fancy.
First Week Schedule
DATE |
Forecaster For the Day |
January 30, 2016
|
terrypinder |
January 31, 2016 |
skywrnchsr |
February 1, 2016 (IOWA CAUCUSes) |
terrypinder(tentative) |
February 2, 2016 (severe wx liveblog needed) |
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February 3, 2016 (severe wx liveblog needed) |
|
February 4, 2016 |
antitheist |
February 5, 2016 |
funphil |
WEATHER MAP GAME
Every so often I’ll put up a weather map that I draw myself or historical surface plot, and I’ll have y’all guess what’s going on with the weather in the picture. It’ll be a game with a poll, but leave a comment too. The purpose of the game is to get people to have fun with the weather but also to learn about it too.
This is the first one, from the US National Weather Service. What’s going on with the weather in this picture and for an added bonus, when is this?
I’ll give one hint: the blue dashed lines represent a certain temperature.
I’ll reveal the answer in a future diary.