July 8th – It was a popup shower kind of day!

A great sight to see after weeks with no rain!

Every so often all four ‘atmospheric players’ show up on the field to play their stormy games. Let me introduce each one to you:

Da Sun, da Sun! – A good storm needs lots of heat and that’s just what Old Sol provides in July. Today it was no problem to see it heat up to 100 in short order.

High Relative Humidity – This measure of the amount of moisture in the air really begins to count for something when it hits the 70 percentile range. That’s just what we had in store today as winds aloft brought in a good dose of moisture from the Gulf.

A weakening upper ridge – A strong ridge of high pressure overhead pretty much squashes any chance for a storm to develop. However, when it weakens, hot air can really rise up and bust through this invisible cap. When that happens, you’ll often see the rapid formation of cumulus nimbus clouds that can quickly punch up through the 30,000 foot mark. This action can start a tremendously powerful updraft that can suck an awesome amount of heated moisture high into the atmosphere where temperatures are far below zero. The end result – a snowstorm way up overhead. Eventually, all this refreshing coldness in the form of chilled water then descends onto the ground below. Blessed relief for all.

An approaching cool front – All frontal systems have one prominent feature, they like to stir up the atmosphere. And, when you do that, things can start happening in a much more organized way as the cool air slides underneath and then, in effect, pushes up the hot air from below. The end result, even more convection!

So, that is pretty much the setup for this date. This day (a Sunday), started out in the low seventies under clear blue skies. However, if you were to look out over a valley, you’d see a lot of haze – (that’d be all that moisture I was talking about). And, those clear skies were not to last very long, as moist and heated air packets began to rise ever higher into the atmosphere. Once they got up to about a mile high, the colder air at that level began to condense them into cumulus and other cloud formations. Things were becoming more and more unstable!

By 3:30 PM, the heat outside had built up to the 100 degree mark (this is becoming normal) and there were cumulus nimbus clouds all around Forsyth Missouri. Unfortunately, not a single rain producer was overhead. In the distance, I could occasionally hear thunder. Outside, the street by my house was becoming increasingly littered with dead leaves as water stressed trees shed their leaves. A kind of early fall was going on.

When the showers finally came at 6:30 PM it was the perfect deal. A long three hour fall that dropped .80 inches onto a parched and burned earth. And, while this day did not break the drought, at least it signaled a change. Now, let's see what tomorrow brings...

Is the weather getting more wacky?

Looking back on the weather of 2011, one would have to admit that things were rather strange (to say the least) as the United States experienced everything from extreme drought, heat waves and floods to unprecedented tornado outbreaks, hurricanes, wildfires and winter storms. All told the damage bill came to over twelve billion dollars spread over twelve separate events. This was an all time record, by far. According to a short video featuring Jack Hayes, Director of the National Weather Service, we can expect more of the same in 2012 as the world climate changes. “ The world must be prepared for more frequent weather extremes in the future”, Mr. Hayes was quoted as stating in the video.

That bring us to the winter of 2011-12. And yes, it has already been a little extreme in one regard. Only in this case, the extreme has been the warmth! It's been so warm that the average for the first week of January was a full eight degrees above the historical average for my location here in southwest Missouri. One has to wonder, however, just when the pendulum will swing over to the opposite side? Will the warmth of early January turn into a deep freeze by month's end? I don't know and neither does anyone else. What the experts are now warning everyone, is that increasingly the 'weather dice' are becoming more and more loaded in the direction of chaotic events.

So, keep an eye to the sky and make sure you are as prepared as you can be for whatever Mother Nature might decide to throw your way.