Some rain (better than dust); still windy

Good Tuesday morning! I don't know how many dusty pictures we've received in the last 3 days, but with drought and wind, it's no wonder our soil is taking off. While this giant storm system creates destructive storms, we are putting up with the crazy wind. We get the benefit of some rainy weather today, although our Future Track model shows how little the amounts will be. Maybe enough to wash some of the dust out of the air today, but that's really about it.

wind forecast - Wednesday

Wind forecast - Tuesday

As far as the wind is concerned, we still see some very gusty conditions today and tomorrow, but then we should have a little less wind to deal with by Thursday. This giant low pressure system will finally get far enough away from us that our wind will back down. There is a good side of the windy weather in the early morning hours though. It will keep us from seeing frost in Kansas. As long as the wind stirs up the atmosphere, it will keep frost from killing off some our plants, and for the farmers, the wheat crop. Sure, if we don't get rain, the wheat won't do much anyway, but frost is absolutely what we don't want right now.

I stayed at work late Monday night watching the severe weather close in on the Birmingham, AL area. I'm posting a radar image as the storm went over the Bessemer. You just can't miss the hook on the back of the storm, and the red circular icons near the tail end of the storm are debris signatures. Honestly, I hardly ever watch much of the Weather Channel, but it was interesting listening to Dr. Greg Forbes and Jim Cantore do live radar analysis as the new images arrived. We spend so much time in school learning about the different features and characteristics of what the radar is showing, but each storm behaves differently and when you are in continuous coverage mode, you have to figure out what you are seeing right there in front of your entire audience. From a science standpoint, it's very fascinating, but if your home is hit by one of those storms, it's very sad and unfortunate. So keep the people hit by storms the last few days in our thoughts... and for us in Kansas, keeping hoping for rain!!