MWN Lightning Round: Meteors, an NWS outage, and our Memorial Day forecast

Time for another blog in the MWN Lightning Round series! First up... meteors!

Camelopardalids shower could become a meteor storm

I know your first question is "what in the heck is Camelopardalids?" It's a brand new meteor shower - one that Earth has never experienced before, and it's tonight! The Camelopardalids meteor shower is produced by the Comet 209P/LINEAR, which was discovered in 2004. Because this is the first time the meteor shower has been visible to us, scientists are unsure exactly what to expect. However, people much smarter than us have reason to believe that the number of meteors produced could be from 30 to hundreds per hour!

How to view the Camelopardalids meteor shower, courtesy The Washington Post

The best time to watch for them will be between 1-3am CDT tonight, but they could start appearing a couple of hours earlier and may be visible until the first peek of daylight Saturday morning. Though the meteors will appear to emanate from the constellation Camelopardalis (which is very near the North Star), you should be able to spot them nearly anywhere in the sky as long as you are in a place that is very dark. As for sky conditions, some high clouds may filter the sky a bit, but hopefully they won't be thick enough to obstruct the view completely. Temperatures overnight will be in the 70s. For more information, see this detailed article from the Capital Weather Gang or this piece from SpaceWeather.com.

NWS telecommunications fail nationwide during severe weather

In a fairly high-profile glitch, the National Weather Service data dissemination systems failed late yesterday afternoon for about 30 minutes while severe thunderstorms were ongoing in the Northeast, specifically in the D.C. area. Traditional internet delivery of watches and warnings, as well as internet-based radar data, was lost from about 3pm until about 3:35pm CDT. The NWS blamed a firewall upgrade for the issue, but the fact that this occurred while Tornado Warnings were being issued in a major metro area leaves us scratching our head.

The good news for our app users is that, while many of the typical internet-based delivery methods failed to receive critical NWS data, StormWatch+ continued with no downtime or lost data whatsoever. In other words, while many other warning systems failed to broadcast the ten Severe Thunderstorm Warnings and one Tornado Warning issued across the nation during the approximately 30 minute outage, StormWatch+ kept chugging along and never missed a one! (By the way, we're very close to moving our StormWatch+ data ingest and alert processing systems to a brand new server of our own with redundant power and internet feeds and a beefed up server and software package. This will ensure that our highly reliable systems stay current and are scalable in the future as our customer base grows!)

Memorial Day weekend forecast

The heat of this past week will continue right into the holiday weekend as high pressure over the southeast U.S. maintains a loose grip on our weather. The one fly in the ointment will be a "back door" cold front that slips down over the Mid-South by tomorrow, then washes out on Sunday. It's called a back door front because, rather than arriving from the typical west or northwest, it comes in the "back door" - from the northeast!

The weak front could be just enough to spark a few afternoon and evening thunderstorms Saturday and Sunday before high pressure strengthens again on Monday. We don't think you should call off any barbecues or parties, but just keep in mind that a storm or two could be in the area and could produce brief heavy downpours or gusty wind. Highs will be in the 87-90 range through Monday with lows in the upper 60s to near 70. Humidity will not be quite to mid-summer levels thankfully!

Click here (or here for mobile users) for the complete MWN Forecast and click here for the MWN Significant Weather Outlook outlining the thunderstorm threats for this weekend.

Finally, as you celebrate the holiday and end of the school year, we simply ask that you also remember this...

Erik Proseus
MWN Meteorologist

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Visit MemphisWeather.net on the web or m.memphisweather.net on your mobile phone.
Download our iPhone or Android apps, featuring StormWatch+ severe weather alerts!

Huge trough provides a pleasant weekend, then summer arrives

An unusually cool few days culminated in a record low this morning and it appears the unseasonably cool weather will stick with us through the weekend before our first good spell of summer weather arrives next week. Unfortunately, cool weather also means unsettled weather and a few rain chances for Memphis in May BBQ Fest.

First, I'd like to share a few pics I received last night as showers passed over the area around 5-6pm.  The high-based showers (meaning the base of the clouds was fairly high) with sun peeking through the clouds and a stable layer of air beneath the clouds made for some interesting sky-watching and even a double rainbow!  The clouds with round "nobules" or "sacks" below them were mammatus clouds, which are more commonly associated with severe weather, but which also form when falling precipitation encounters a stable layer of air, thus making the cool formations on the base of the clouds.

Mike H sent us these pics of the mammatus clouds on Twitter.

Joey Sulipeck took this great pic of the rainbows over Barbecue Fest

 

Posted by the Memphis Redbirds Twitter account right before the first pitch last night!

Looking ahead to the next 72 hours, the huge trough of low pressure at the mid and upper levels of the atmosphere will  slowly break down and move east, but until it does, it means continued cool air over the area. Clear skies and light wind this morning allowed temps to fall into the mid 40s across the area. Officially, the airport dropped to 46, which breaks the record low for the date of 47 set last in 1967.

Besides cool temps, the trough also has upper-level disturbances rotating around it. As we are in the base of that trough, the disturbances pass over and bring us rounds of precip, one of which occurred last evening. The next fairly strong one is due in tonight and will bring a better chance of showers overnight into the early morning Saturday. Though a shower is possible this evening, most rain will hold off until after midnight and end by mid-morning Saturday if not a bit quicker. one more, slightly weaker, disturbance arrives Saturday night, bringing another chance of rain late Saturday night into early Sunday.

That should be the last chance of rain for some time as the trough moves east and a summer-like ridge of high pressure build in behind it for next week. The transition from trough to ridge is shown in the animation below, which depicts forecast atmospheric pressure and wind at about 18,000' up every 24 hours from this morning through next Wednesday. The yellows/red over the center of the country are this morning and that is the huge trough (it looks like a dip, or trough, in the pressure pattern). You can see that that area of yellows/reds weakens and shifts north, while a hill, or "ridge," or light browns moves east across the southern U.S. The south-central and southeast U.S. is under that ridge by Tuesday and Wednesday as it strengthens (light brown becomes pink). As that happens, the ridge warms temperatures and suppresses precipitation. In other words, a hot and dry week is ahead!

Loop of 500mb (18,000') pressure pattern and wind, showing a significant trough being replaced by a large ridge.

You can find our complete MWN Forecast, including temps that bottom out in the 50s this weekend and rise to near 90 by week's end, on our mobile apps and website. (A side note about the apps - new features are nearly complete and ready to release, so if you don't have the app yet, now is a great time to get it!)  Enjoy this fine weather this weekend, keep an umbrella handy in the mornings especially, then get ready for an early taste of summer as schools let out and we head towards Memorial Day weekend!

Erik Proseus
MWN Meteorologist

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Follow MWN on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+
Visit MemphisWeather.net on the web or m.memphisweather.net on your mobile phone.
Download our iPhone or Android apps, featuring StormWatch+ severe weather alerts!