GaWx

It reached the upper 90s in this area before thunderstorms moved in and cooled it back a lot. Hope to get a decent dousing this afternoon though any is better than nothing. Edit: It has turned out to be a really nice dousing. Still raining. 2 very closeby CTG strikes caused power to blink. Still more nearby lightning strikes. Ended up with 0.90", which brings me to a nice 3.90" MTD and already the wettest month since November!

The extended portion of the GFS has gotten ridiculous with its numerous runs having hurricane threats over the last few weeks. It has for a number of years had a bias toward too strong activity in the Gulf and W Caribbean, especially during early and late season.

MBY got a very beneficial ~0.90" of rainfall yesterday evening (June 8th) from heavy thunderstorms, which included at least one close CTG strike. This was easily the heaviest rainfall here in 2.5 weeks and puts me near 1.5" MTD. I had irrigated my lawn a few days ago for the first time in a couple of weeks after a rather dry period. Yesterday's nice rain means I can hold off further irrigation at least through the weekend and then reassess early next week. Edit regarding the next day (June 9th): Getting slammed now with a heavy thunderstorm. I ended up with a big win with ~1.5" late afternoon getting me to 3" MTD, which suddenly gets me to wetter than normal MTD.

Chuck, The following subsurface animation suggests that the upper 100 m or so and especially the area east of 140W is cooler vs the TAO/TRITON based source that you posted. Thoughts about which is more accurate?

Ed, A thread starter can go to the first post and then choose the edit option (by clicking on the "..." on the upper right side). Once in edit, the title can be changed. Also, tags can be added or changed.

Also, as @WxWatcher007 requested, it would be good @Ed, snow and hurricane fan (or a staff member) to add Alex to the thread title for the benefit of those who look back at this thread down the road. Thanks in advance.

The dewpoints today never got below the upper 60s here. Since that 1.75" rain two weeks ago that stopped me from needing to irrigate my lawn, I've gotten no more than ~0.75". With no significant rains in the forecast anytime soon, I expect to resume irrigation very soon, maybe tonight.

This was upgraded to TS Alex with 50 mph winds at 2AM EDT.

The latest weekly as well as May, 2022, overall, were the coldest for their respective periods in Nino 3.4 since 1999: Weekly: https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/data/indices/wksst9120.for Monthly: https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/data/indices/ersst5.nino.mth.91-20.ascii Related to this, the met. spring SOI of +16.8 was the 2nd highest on record by a good margin going back to 1876. Only 1917's +18.3 was higher: https://data.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/SeasonalClimateOutlook/SouthernOscillationIndex/SOIDataFiles/MonthlySOIPhase1887-1989Base.txt

Don, Nice catch about this map's climo base! JB is notorious for these kinds of tricks. I also try to keep in mind biases/agenda of the messenger. I realize these could go either way depending on the messenger, but JB has over the decades pushed against GW and tends to be cold biased, regardless (example: his cold biased E US winter fcasts). Another thing to keep in mind is the strength of the current La Nina. The latest weekly as well as May, 2022, overall, were the coldest for their respective periods in Nino 3.4 since 1999: Weekly: https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/data/indices/wksst9120.for Monthly: https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/data/indices/ersst5.nino.mth.91-20.ascii Related to this, the met. spring SOI of +16.8 was the 2nd highest on record by a good margin going back to 1876. Only 1917's +18.3 was higher: https://data.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/SeasonalClimateOutlook/SouthernOscillationIndex/SOIDataFiles/MonthlySOIPhase1887-1989Base.txt Besides the obvious BN E and C Eq. Pac., La Nina in summer favors BN in W. S America, part of W Africa, and S Asia (per bottom right of maps below): So, JB is taking advantage of using very warm climo of 1991-2020 combined with La Nina climo favoring cool low latitudes this time of year. One more thing: this is merely a forecast of 46 days as opposed to actual. So, it may not even verify closely. Maybe there is a cold bias of the Euro weeklies in June/July at these low latitudes.

I ended up near 2.5" of rainfall for May IMBY. Whereas we had a nice ~2.2" 5/21-31, that still leaves us with only 8.75" since mid November and continued D3 (severe drought) conditions. If we don't get some decent rainfall by this weekend, I'll probably resume lawn irrigation early next week.

18/9/5

We received ~0.15" late last night. Whereas 0.15" isn't much, even that is close to how much one irrigation provides. Plus it happened late at night, a near ideal time for lawn benefits and near when I normally irrigate. The recent drought is making me appreciate more just getting modest amounts. We're getting more rain now. We were already near 2.25" month to date as of this morning. That's not too shabby considering we were only near 0.30" one week ago and that the 2.25" was enough to already make it the wettest month since January here. Edit: We got an additional ~0.15" this afternoon getting us to ~2.40" for the MTD.

I understand, especially with the drought. This evening's band of storms gave me only ~0.10". But the airport got 0.54". Below is the CoCoRaHS map of Chatham County that incorporates all of yesterday's rains. The largest amounts were over Skidaway Island with 2-2.5". The smallest amounts (~2/3") were over the NW part of the county, including the airport. Next lowest amounts of ~3/4-1" were from Dutch Island/Thunderbolt eastward through Wilmington/Tybee Islands. Mid county got ~1.25-1.75".

Welcome to summertime thunderstorms in the south! Admittedly, I got lucky with those two isolated storms. Hopefully you're getting more from this third more widespread storm.

That 2nd thunderstorm ended up giving me ~0.25" to get me to ~0.75" for the day. That will go up as I'm now I'm getting a 3rd storm, including a nearby CTG strike. Meanwhile, the more inland airport (KSAV) is finally getting some measurable rainfall as they got neither of the first two storms that I got. Edit: The 3rd storm ended up being the wettest at ~ 1"! The total rainfall from my area to Hunter ended up being in the ~1.6-1.75" range, which makes it slightly wetter than 1/16/22 and thus the heaviest since 11/5-7/2021. At KSAV, the total was much lighter at 0.64" but even that was the heaviest in 2 months.

Well, how about this, a 2nd heavy thunderstorm just developed within an hour! We already had ~1/2" from the first one. We may just get that long awaited 1"+ day after all!

We've been getting thunder/lightning, something I can't even recall anytime recently. And now it is actually raining heavily! Celebration!! Before this we had had only 0.30" this month and only 6-7" since mid November. We hadn't had 1"+ since mid January. Will this be the first since then? Edit: No because it lasted only ~15 minutes. But that was still enough to deposit a beautiful ~1/2", which is equivalent to 2-3 waterings. Radar shot as of 2:42 PM: beautiful!

Today was rather disappointing as there was no rain in this area despite the likelihood of rain. We're only near 0.30" for May to date and quite dry since mid November with a severe drought. But we still have good chances over the next few days.

The highs in the area have been 95-96 (96 here), the hottest so far this year. Tomorrow should be similar followed by slightly cooler (88-90 highs) along with daily chances of rain. The drought in this area has worsened since last week as expected with a larger area of D2. I continue to irrigate my lawns at night. Also, GA as a whole has worsened with increased drought coverage:

Further to the above, the severe drought (D2) continues here with no rain the next 4 days along with forecasts of near record highs in the middle 90s. Thu and Fri. That means that May 1-20th will have had no more than ~0.3". Since way back on 11/8/21, both KSVN and KSAV have had only one 1"+ rain and that was back on Jan 16th! Normal 1"+ events during that period would number ~5-6. The next chance for rain is this weekend. This time series chart of daily rainfall at KSVN over the last 12 months shows very well the stark contrast between the quite wet period 6-12 months ago and the sudden very dry period since: @gtg947h @Awesomesauce81

That's about how it looks down here, too, for this week. Going back 6 months, my area and nearby has been about the driest in the entire SE US thanks largely to La Nina. The closest official station to here, Hunter AAF (KSVN), has had a mere 6.2" of rainfall since 11/14/21 vs a normal of 21" meaning only 30% of normal! This followed an equally wet six month prior period. (see chart below). Our area is now in severe drought, the worst in GA (see below) and at least as bad as any location in the SE including E NC. I've been regularly irrigating at my house lately based on this and because some of the soil feels like concrete. KSAV, the more inland airport station, has also been similar though not as dry with near 45% of normal. May so far has had a mere fraction of an inch so far with no big rains forecasted anytime soon along with middle 90s for highs later this week. This will only make things worse.

It has been dry down here, too. For me, this dryness has been the proverbial double edged sword. I've been absolutely loving the good number of days with low dewpoints this spring for comfortable outdoor activities in advance of the almost guaranteed long summer doldrums of heat and humidity. Late last evening was the latest opportunity taken advantage of with a walk in the mid to upper 60s and dewpoints near 50 resulting in no sweating. But on the negative side, soils are dry due to rainfall being only near 50% of normal since 12/1/21 (40% of normal this month) thus necessitating irrigation of the grass just to keep it in halfway decent shape. (Temperatures this meteorological spring have averaged a hair warmer than normal.)

Despite the offshore low moving closer to land, there was an additional surge of drier air mid to late this afternoon coming in on steady N to NE winds flowing down E SC coast and into upper SE GA allowing for lower dewpoints into the evening even after the climo time for lowest dewpoints had passed. So, we enjoyed one more very comfy day by mid-May standards. What a nice week it has been to this point! Makes me look forward to October.

At 11 AM today at KSAV, the dewpoint had plunged to 34. It typically doesn't get lower than that in May (especially this late) there although it has done so earlier in the month per records: Lowest KSAV May dewpoints back to 1951 I've been able to find (all were between 10 AM and 4 PM): 27 F 5/2/1963 29 F 5/4/1971 30 F 5/8/1989 30 F 5/1/2006 34 F 5/19/1976 34 F 5/10/2022 34 F 5/9/1967 34 F 5/8/1960 35 F 5/27/1961: this one is the most notable for being so late in the month