Day 182: A Wet Holiday Weekend Across the Central US
Now that former Hurricane Alex has made landfall, focus now turns to what happens to the remains of Alex. This is important because the locations in the path of Alex’s remnants stand to see several inches of rain and potentially even more should the remains stall over any location. This is because during the life cycle of a tropical wave (particular tropical storms and hurricanes), vast amounts of water vapor was released into the troposphere. This results in a lot of moisture for sources of lift, such as the tropical wave itself, to interact with.
The Hydrometeorological Prediction Center’s (HPC) 120-hour (5-day) forecast for precipitation has a large swath of relatively high values of precipitation forecast. This forecast is based on the moisture associated with Alex’s remnants interacting with a slow moving cold front (another source of lift). If this forecast pans out, the Fourth of July holiday weekend will be a soggy one for people in the central United States.
About Patrick
Patrick Marsh is a Ph.D. student at the University of Oklahoma's School of Meteorology. He earned a Bachelors of Science in Mathematics and Physics (cum laude) from the University of Arkansas in 2005 and a Masters of Science in Meteorology in 2007. In addition to working on his doctorate, Patrick serves as the National Severe Storms Laboratory Liaison to the Hazardous Weather Testbed where his research interests lie in working with operational forecasters, data mining, data visualization, and all things high-impact weather. For more about Patrick's work, check out his complete CV!
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