A very warm weekend on the way with afternoon highs in the 80s. An isolated afternoon shower or storm might pop in Southeast Ga. Sat. but a somewhat better chance for widely scattered showers & storms will move into Southeast Ga. Sat. night shifting from Southeast Ga. Sun. morning into Northeast Fl. through the day. Not everyone will get rain this weekend & long parts of the weekend will be dry & warm with a high to extreme burn time of 15 min. Sat. & 20-25 min. Sun.
The weak front moving into the area with a bit of rain this weekend is the same one wreaking havoc throughout much of the midwest & Tennessee Valley with numerous severe storm reports Thu.-Fri. An EF2-EF-3 tornado (still to be determined exactly) hit the suburbs of Kansas City, MO....tornadoes also occurred in Oklahoma, Arkanasas & Iowa. Tornadic storms in Mississippi, Alabama & Tennessee are ongoing as of late Fri. On the cold side of the storm, it's been a major spring blizzard. Click here to check out some of the snowfall (up to 48"!).
Speaking of severe weather, it will have been 1 yr. Sun. -- May 4th -- since a massive EF-5 tornado hit & destroyed virtually the entire town of Greensburg, KS. The rebuilding is underway & Greensburg is determined to become green -- literally. Click here for an excellent write-up on the tornado from the Dodge City N.W.S. & click here for a story from CNN.
"The Players" will get underway next week with activities Mon.-Wed. & the actual tourney beginning Thu. The weather looks warm & dry through Thu. but there could be a thunderstorm threat by Fri. I'll update Mon.
April numbers for Jax are in. Temps. averaged 0.4 degrees below avg. -- essentially average -- & rainfall was 0.80" below the avg. of 3.14". We're pretty dry going into what is the peak of our fire season.
Here are the May averages for Jax:
1st 31st
Low / High 58 / 81 66 / 87
Sunrise / Sunset 6:43am / 8:05pm 6:25am / 8:24pm .... increase of 37 min. of daylight
Rainfall: 3.48"
Earth Gauge: Water Well
From 1950 to 2000, population size in the U.S. nearly doubled, and during that same time period, demand for water tripled! The EPA estimates that typical surburban households use about 30 percent of their water for outdoor irrigation. Unfortunately, about half of the water used outdoors is wasted through evaporation on warm days or runoff from overwatering.
Tip: Save money and water by switching your irrigation system off when there is rain in the forecast. You can also add a rain sensor to your sprinkler system, which will automatically shut the system off when adequate rain has fallen. It's estimated that weather-based controls, such as rain sensors, can save up to 24 billion gallons of water per year in the U.S. - that's equivalent to 7,000 hoses running continuously for one year!
Thinking of installing a new irrigation system? Consider a drip watering system, which uses up to 50 percent less water than traditional sprinklers, and loses virtually no water through evaporation, wind, or runoff.
(Sources: US EPA. "WaterSense."; Consumer Reports. "Home and Garden: Water Wisely."
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Climate Fact: Strengthening Upwelling Patterns
Ocean currents transport heat from the Equator to the higher latitudes, as well as nutrient rich water from the depths of the ocean to the surface. The transport of cooler, nutrient rich water upward is a process known as upwelling. Upwelling feeds much of the life at the ocean’s surface, and 20 percent of the world’s fish catch occurs in areas where the upwelling is strong, although these areas account for only about one percent of the planet’s ocean surface area. The Canaries Current, a southward moving current that brings cold, nutrient rich water up to the Moroccan Coastline, feeds a valuable fishery there. In the past century, the Sahara Desert region has warmed faster than the adjacent ocean waters. This means that the low pressure zone over the Sahara desert has become lower and the high pressure zone that sits over the ocean has not changed that much, which has increased the pressure difference between these zones. Because the difference in pressure between the land and the ocean drives the winds that "pull" cold waters from the depths of the ocean to the surface, the winds have strengthened, and the upwelling has also strengthened. Over the Twentieth Century, the surface waters off the Moroccan coast have cooled by about 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit. Although other warm periods over the past 2,500 years have also corresponded to a strengthening of this current, the cooling that has happened over the past century is unprecedented.
(Source: McGregor, H.V. et at. "Rapid 20th-Century Increase in Coastal Upwelling off Northwest Africa." Science 315 (2007) 637-639)
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Climate in the News – “Scientists Reveal Presence Of Ocean Current 'Stripes'” – Science Daily, 26 April 2008
Several decades of data appear to confirm the existence of subtle crisscrossing patterns of ocean currents, or striations, that run perpendicular to major ocean currents.
