Zeta dying; Texas drought thriving
Tropical Storm Zeta is falling apart. Wind shear analysis from the University of Wisconsin shows 30 - 50 knots of shear over Zeta, and this shear has blown away nearly all the storm's deep convection. Zeta is a swirl of low clouds with just a few thunderstorms on the east and northeast side. With wind shear expected to remain high, Zeta will likely be dead within 24 hours. But before you believe this forecast, you might want to review some of the comments about Zeta in the official National Hurricane Center discussions the past few days:
10 PM EST SUN JAN 01 2006
I HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO FORECAST WEAKENING AGAIN AND AGAIN.
4 PM EST MON JAN 02 2006
THEREFORE I HAVE NOT BACKED OFF ON THE FORECAST OF WEAKENING. OF COURSE...ZETA MAY HAVE OTHER IDEAS.
4 PM EST TUE JAN 03 2006
SO...ALTHOUGH YOU'VE HEARD THIS FROM US BEFORE...WE EXPECT A WEAKENING TREND TO COMMENCE TOMORROW.
10 AM EST WED JAN 04 2006
AS YOU CAN SEE...I RAN OUT THINGS TO SAY.
Long-term tropical storm outlook for January
Today's model runs are still forecasting that a non-tropical low pressure system will form off the coast of Africa on Sunday, in a location similar to but farther east of where Delta, Epsilon, and Zeta all formed. This new low could make the transition to a tropical storm early next week. However, the latest model runs have the storm forming closer to the coast of Africa than before, and the cooler water temperatures there will probably keep it from forming into a tropical storm.
The Texas/Oklahoma drought
Wildfires aided by record high temperatures, low humidities, high winds, and persistent drought conditions continue to ravage Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. With no significant rains expected for at least a week, conditions will not improve in the forseeable future. Some of the record highs observed yesterday:
January 3 record highs:
-----------------------
Austin, TX 86
Abilene, TX 86
Del Rio, TX 86
San Antonio, TX 86
Wichita Falls, TX 85
Dallas, TX 84
Lubbock, TX 83
Midland, TX 83
Figure 1. Drought map for the U.S., released December 28. Severe drought conditions began over the Texas/Oklahoma area in April 2005, and have steadily worsened.
A cold front moving through the area today will bring an end to the record heat for at least a week, but strong winds--typical for this time of year--are expected to move in periodically during the week and fan any fires that may start. The jet stream is expected to stay well north of the area for the next 10 days, keeping any rain-producing storms to the north. The GFS model is suggesting that by January 18, this pattern may break down, allowing rains to return. However, a 2-week forecast is a bit of a stretch, and it would be no surprise if the more northerly jet stream pattern stays entrenched for the rest of January.
Drought and hurricane activity
Some researchers have suggested that upswings in hurricane activity like the one we've seen in the past ten years tend to be associated with more frequent drought conditions across the Western and Midwestern U.S. This was the case during the 1930s, when a period of very high hurricane activity coincided with the famed Dust Bowl drought that affected the Midwestern U.S. Much of the Western U.S. has suffered severe drought conditions for the past 5-7 years, coinciding with the recent upswing in Atlantic hurricane activity.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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I hope to for some rain, but, given the cirumstances I think we will have to wait until April or May for a more reasonable shot at some decent rain. Why April or May?, by then the fronts from the north should slow down enough (less frequency) to allow moisture to creep back in and hopefully interact with some appropriate triggers. I hope I'm way off and we get decent rain soon. But, we have down this way what you call 'feast or famine', so, when the rains return it might be way more than what we need (i.e. flooding).
For instance, as recently as 2004 we had 2 feet more rain than average for the year.
I think the most notable exception of the current weather pattern is the extreme dry air we have - in times past when it did not rain all that often we still had quite a bit of low level moisture just no mid level moisture. Right now our humidity is at 30% and that's only because night has fallen and the ambient temp is down, during the day our humidity today was as low as 18% (ouch). Feels like I moved to Tucson AZ!
-StormMan
I do believe there is some truth, and that the colder Gulf probable has some effect, but I do think it is more complex than that. Last spring (before the hurricanes) the gulf was warmer than average, but the drought was already underway early last spring. I know our own rainfall (NW Arkansas) has been below normal every month since Feb 2005. During our normal "severe" season before hurricane season, the moisture was slow to come out of the gulf to meet weather systems, and so our severe weather season was rather dry, and that has continued. In addition there have been times when we had rain forecast, with moisture just south of the Red River in north Tx, and forecast to come north to meet a weather systems (as would normally happen), and that moisture never moved north. Also I think there is another factor influencing the available latent heat in the gulf. There have been far colder drier air masses moving deeper into the gulf from the north in later November/December than last couple of years, which obviously removes latent heat as well.
So I agree the hurricanes removing heat has probable contributed, I also beleive that other factors have greatly contributed to the droughts as well.
RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN
RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN
RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN
RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAINRAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAINRAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAINRAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAINRAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAINRAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN
WILL COME!
Good points, I did not know that about your weather up there. Of interesting : this past May was the first on record where almost no tornados occurred, just did a web search and found this:
"
May
The first week of May 2005 was almost tornado free. The last two weeks were also almost tornado free. Mother's Day weekend, the 7th and 8th, did have somewhat of a pickup in activity. About a dozen small tornadoes occurred on the 7th. There is a definite possibility that May will record a new low in tornado activity. In addition, there have been no killer tornadoes in either April or May. This is only the second time since 1875 that April and May have been free of that kind of tragedy. Before 1875, records are not complete enough. There were no killer tornadoes in April or May of 1992.
"
from (http://www.tornadoproject.com/recent/recentts.htm)
So, something was definitely 'up' earlier this year. However, our rainfall down this way was more or less average until September, we were only down 12 inches at the end of year (from Sept - Dec we were off over 8 inches of those 12" from average) - looks like y'all were down 17 inches or so.
I'm looking forward to an 'average' spring with average rain.
-StormMan
Yeah it's been longer term here, but I think it started in much of the Arklatx area long before I noticed what was happening here. Here in Fayetteville Ar officially ended up ~15.5" down for the year (normal is 46"), but from Feb to year end it was ~18.5" (as I recall), and there are lots of places in the Arklatx that are far worse than that, even with Rita helping in some of those areas.
Yeah, I think an average spring would be nice. :-)
Forgot to add that I had forgotten about there being so few tornadoes last spring. That is a very telling point which would seem to strongly support that the moisture is not being as effectively transported out of the gulf for about the last year.
In wet years here in Southern California, I've noticed that 'spinners' from the Gulf of Alaska will have a tendency to slide down the coast, often to this area or lower before turning inland.
As they move east, the counter-clockwise circulation will tend to pull air in from the gulf over Texas.
So far this year we haven't seen much of anything make it down here from Alaska, even though northern Cal has been drenched.
So the failure of the low pressure systems in the Pacific to make it this far south could be a major contributing factor.
http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/PS/TROP/trop-atl.html
here she comes folks
http://hurricane.csc.noaa.gov/hurricanes/
- so a question I have is whether these very persistent and tenacious hybrid storms like Zeta, Vince, and Gamma (which seem to be a phenomenon not seen before this season) represent the shape of things to come with global climate change? Could we end up with hurricanes forming throughout the year, just more frequent and damaging storms in summer/fall?
You have got to be kidding me.
I fell out of my chair.
AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
*goes very reluctantly to issue advisory*
Sure wish Zeta would go away and the drought areas in the mid-west could get some gentel soaking rains very soon!
My brother lives in NE Arkansas and they have been dry for quite a while now; could use a little rain...
catch you all later.
Gamma
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