DocNDswamp's WunderBlog

SE LA obs Jan 3 2012... Short-lived arctic chill...

Posted by: DocNDswamp, 4:47 PM GMT on November 11, 2011

Latest W Atlantic Basin AVN / IR Satellite Image...

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(No comprehensive update or review of 2011 stats yet, but needed to change the header to "something" more recent... which of course will be outdated soon, lol... As usual, updated info can be found within comments section)...

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Wed Jan 4 2012, SE LA Wx...

Expected warm up underway today with incr SE winds / humidity / dewpoints... Big contrast from yesterday when had amazingly low dewpoints across SE LA down to single digits many locations - one of the lowest was Slidell, had 2F dewpoint temp at 1 PM! Cold remained entrenched overnight, clear skies / light to calm winds, good radiational cooling lead to my 3rd light freeze of season and 10th frost, which was very thick... Temps fell quickly after sunset, this morn KHUM was colder showing a 28.4F low (but is really a range between 28.4F to 30.2F since it only reads whole degrees celsius), while my home thermo refused to drop below 31.5F, which I am certain can be attributed to massive urbanization / land-use change / habitat destruction surrounding my Bayou Cane, LA location above Houma...

Rather than compare to KHUM airport, a better comparison of this drastic temp difference is between readings at our Gray LA location, just 6-7 miles N of Bayou Cane, and to this point is still a truly rural setting in North Terrebonne (but not for long!)... Prior to excessive development in Bayou Cane, these two locations physical topography, lay of the land with mix of woods / adjacent open fields and no immediate proximity to a waterbody were identical... Last night was a good example of distinct changes that have been wrought - by the time I left there at 9 PM the Gray thermo was already trending below 30F, frost had begun covering the roof of the car and house, ice forming... Drove home within 10 minutes to find my home thermo at 39F - a full 10F higher - no signs of frost and it clearly FELT warmer regardless of whatever might nit-pick over the two thermometers accuracy!

In that matter, I'm certain the Gray thermo has a cold bias of 2-3 degrees - this morns low showed 24F - but accounting for that still reveals it's become several degrees warmer where development is altering the microscale local climate to a warmer state... It's often more noticeable on Winter nights under such conditions of calm winds / ideal radiational cooling than like wx conditions we had the previous night / morning before (Tue 3rd) - with widespread CAA and mod strong NLY winds mixing the boundary layer more homogeneously over the area and the lowest temp on both thermometers read near 30F yesterday... Nothing new of course, we've KNOWN the UHI impact for decades, guess my point is just that it's now GROWN to alter MY LOCATION noticeably over the very short timescale of a decade or two... So much for UHI being an "island", as fast as human footprint is expanding a better descriptive is needed to reflect today's reality...

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Tue Jan 3 2012 greetings,

Nice seasonally cold early January day under severe-clear skies, as dome of arctic high pressure edges across our region - noted climbed to 30.61" for highest sfc pressure reading *this year*, lol... Daytime temps slow rising, now into mid-40's at noon hr...

Overnight temps were slow to fall off as the initial cold air advection with this system was rather weak by "arctic" standards, but did fall to 30.6F low on my Bayou Cane home thermo to declare my 2nd freeze of season, albeit brief duration of about 2 hrs, not enough time for ice to form in my buckets... Seems a secondary surge of cold air got here near sunrise as I reached my low after 7 AM, much like Slidell hit their low of 25F then... Of course had another "WTF? / WUWT?" moment viewing KHUM airport readings which showed it, sigh, once again, bottoming out at an even 32.0F... Thanks, but no thanks, I prefer more precise reading than the span of a whole degree celsius - will assume might have shown a 30F reading had they dropped to -1.0C / 30.2F... But such is the case with the only weather station in Houma being "not up to NWS standards", or as described here at WU - "Averages and records for this station are not official NWS values", besides having frequently sporadic reportage issues...

N winds also held the temps up overnight and that combined with very dry airmass eliminated any frost chances... May be some tomorrow morn and low temps should be close to today's as Freeze Warnings remain in effect, "might" have better rad cooling here "if" E / SE winds don't kick up with the sfc high sliding EWD... Forecasting the low temp tonight is a crap shoot and very location dependent over SE LA, as I'd agree with KLIX NWS assessment in this morn's discussion on factors - "THE URBAN HEAT ISLAND EFFECT...PROXIMITY TO WATER...AND LOCAL WINDS WILL CREATE QUITE A RANGE OF LOWS...SO THE DURATION OF FREEZING TEMPERATURES OVER A 20 MILE AREA COULD RANGE FROM 6 HOURS TO NONE."

We shall see and regardless, the moderating return flow warming trend will be underway tomorrow, some chance of shwrs Fri-Sat with next feature coming across...

Work calls, hey it's too clear / sunny to be inside... ;)
G'day!

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SE LA obs Dec 7 2011, coldest wx yet on 70th anniversary Pearl Harbor...

Wed Dec 7 2011... Cold, with Freeze Warnings...

70th anniversary Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
...a scant dozen years before I's born, us post-WWII baby-boomers are getting old!

Cold weather arrived / well-entrenched across our region... Actually the outlook mentioned last Friday - with couple days of highs struggling to get outta the 40's / widespread freezing across TX by this morn - appears close... Here yesterday, temp fell from 50's at midnight, stayed into 40's, windy and raw with cold rain shwrs / drzl, nasty overcast / overrunning conditions... And about par for course, minimal rain amts near 3/10ths" locally... (Sat: .02", Sun: none, Mon: .13", Tue: .28")...

Dipped to 37 between 8-9 AM at KHUM with clearing skies / strong but shallow-layered arctic CAA underway, slow rising into 40's now, might touch L 50's... but expecting a fast fall-off tonight, feeling a high confidence will see 1st actual light freeze tomorrow morn for coldest yet, mod-hard farther N portions... Earlier KLIX forecast had that low pegged at 35F (still saying that on TWC), latest from KLIX NWS now forecasting "low 30's" for Houma - Bayou Cane and I'll predict lower, expect to see near 29-30F at KHUM and my home thermo, and a colder temp reading would be less surprise than warmer... possibly with another frost, wind-moisture dependent - have observed 5 frosts so far this season... Unlike KLIX, KLCH forecasters are on the ball in posting hard and light freeze warnings across the SW / S Cen LA area...

Nice cool stretch of below avg temps ahead, reinforcing shot Fri, slow moderating warm-up into next week... and milder pattern might prevail going into Christmas... But overall, think December temps here likely to avg near normal, with equal chance of being slightly below or above... Rainfall amts? LOL...

Local November 2011 rainfall continued the overall dry trend - amts from 1.3" to near 1 3/4" from my 2 locations yielded about 3" deficit of the 4.55" November mean... Year to Date amts still running near 10" deficit locally... while Nov temps averaged within 1 degree range of normal.

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SE LA obs 11-11-11 - 1st Frost...

Fri Nov 11 2011 - Happy TGIF and cool wx Veterans Day greetings...

Hello!
Yeah, been a while... sorry to close the last blog abruptly but duties called, and remain far too busy to blog much, so just popping in to add a note or two here on our triple numeral date "11-11-11", Veterans Day... Nope, nothing much to report lately in local weather other than been stable, cool and nice, no earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, blizzardcanes, or subtropical storms here, and hardly any rainfall (no surprise), however that may change as slightly better rain chances appear possible over next week or so, and temps trend warmer...

Like it's been most of year, still well-entrenched in long-term drought conditions that quickly resumed as TS Lee departed early September... In fact, our typically dry October was even farther below average as only had a single rain day entire month when 1/4" to half inch amt fell locally on Oct 28 (.39" home gauge)... Probably one of the top 5 driest on record, but who knows since official records are no longer being maintained for Houma... So we're still sharing the regional dry misery with Texas and likely will continue for some time given the unfavorable long-term climate influences causing this - the warm AMO / cool PDO again combining with returning La Nina, although some short-term relief is possible for our region... Not an encouraging outlook ahead is it? IMHO, I see plenty evidence this pattern has more than less ruled since the AMO switched to it's warm phase in the 90's in how it's affected the usually wet immediate N Gulf coast region... Sadly, our pecan trees suffered badly from 2011's terrible drought as nearly all failed to produce any viable nuts (and now reflected at the grocery with bags selling near 10 bucks a pound!)... Lot of veggie crops were miserable failures, although have managed to get some local citrus - a bit smaller but still delicious satsumas and naval oranges... Only got a few of our Tamopan persimmons after discovering an unusual scoundrel was rapidly stealing them - nope, not the typical raccoon, deer, possom or birds might expect, but of all things never thought I'd see - a dang coyote! Guess he wanted something sweet to go with the rabbits, the coyote was able to climb a low limb to reach fruit above, unreal... Harvested the remaining dozen or less early before he cleaned 'em all! LOL, next year gonna hang water-filled orange balloons from the branches to thwart him... or offer him same fate as da cottonmouths got...!

On the bright side, temps have been very pleasant as Fall wx set in early this year - temperature data from CPC shows SE LA being 3-5 degrees cooler than average for both Sep / Oct... Notably on Oct 20 - and very early for such - Houma KHUM airport recorded 39F low and actually saw evidence of frost trying to form on a few roofs (not enough to call) that morn, certainly colder locations on the Northshore had frost that early date (with today likely being their 3rd)... The cool trend has continued into November up to this point - up to 5-9 degrees colder than typical across SE LA, although milder / more moist wx pattern appears developing, perhaps into Thanksgiving week if to believe recent GFS runs keeping colder air bottled up north...

Anyhow, was a beautiful Winter-like feel and view this "11-11-11" morn as confirmed our 1st widespread frost of season, rather light-moderate in crystal growth / thickness but full coverage... Low temp at Houma's KHUM fell to 32F (37F at home) for coldest yet, while some colder stations above also recorded their 1st light freeze (i.e. - 30 @ Slidell, 29 @ Tallulah in NE LA)... Alas, upper trough lifting out (and ripping STS / TS Sean out away from Bermuda), milder ridging to rebuild some as moderating zonal flow pattern takes hold...

Gotta run...
Happy TGIF and in honor of all our armed forces vets, a big Thank you!

Updated: 6:45 PM GMT on January 04, 2012

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Posted by: DocNDswamp, 6:15 PM GMT on August 30, 2011

Latest W Atlantic Basin AVN / IR Satellite Image... *********Latest Cen Atlantic AVN / IR Satellite Image...*********National Hurricane CenterSSD NOAA Tropical Satellite Imagery & Products PageNASA Tropical Atlantic Satellite ImageryRAMSDIS Tropical Satellite ImageryEUMETSAT Imagery************************************************* *********************LOL, okay... had to put up new entry, stale predecessor nearly year old! No promises when I'll update ...

Updated: 4:51 PM GMT on November 11, 2011

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Posted by: DocNDswamp, 6:48 PM GMT on September 21, 2010

Note: Sorry... Hope to update soon... Hello visitors!For observations, commentary and additional updated information please refer to the comments section within...*********Latest W Atlantic Basin AVN / IR Satellite Image... *********Latest Cen Atlantic AVN / IR Satellite Image...*********National Hurricane CenterSSD NOAA Tropical Satellite Imagery & Products PageNASA Tropical Atlantic Satellite ImageryRAMSDIS Tropical Satellite ImageryEUMETSAT Imagery***************...

Updated: 8:53 PM GMT on June 08, 2011

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SE LA obs: into September we go!

Posted by: DocNDswamp, 7:09 PM GMT on June 28, 2010

Hello visitors!For observations, commentary and additional updated information please refer to the comments section within...*********Latest W Atlantic Basin AVN / IR Satellite Image... *********Latest Cen Atlantic AVN / IR Satellite Image...*********National Hurricane CenterSSD NOAA Tropical Satellite Imagery & Products PageNASA Tropical Atlantic Satellite ImageryRAMSDIS Tropical Satellite ImageryEUMETSAT imagery*********Deepwater Horizon Disaster / Oil Spill Links...

Updated: 8:15 PM GMT on September 04, 2010

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SE LA obs...

Posted by: DocNDswamp, 7:05 PM GMT on April 02, 2010

Latest W Atlantic Basin AVN / IR Satellite Image... ******************Louisiana's State Wildflower reaches peak bloom in April...Louisiana Irises on Lake Verret, at Magazille Point on April 15 2005... A refreshing late March to mid April view common across SE LA's freshwater wetlands / waterways as irises bloom with Spring's arrival...*********Note: As always, please check the comments section for any additional updated information... ;)*********Monday May 3 2010 ...

Updated: 6:37 PM GMT on May 03, 2010

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