The Western States are currently experiencing a wide variety of weather due to a developing and deepening area of low pressure to the lee of the Rockies. This is in response to an intense 500mb shortwave trough digging through the inter-mountain west. Below are the current warnings/watches provided by the NWS.

As you can see, a plethora of watches and warnings are out for the aforementioned areas.

On the northern side of the system, strong winds and heavy snows will combine to make blizzard conditions for portions of the Dakota’s, Wyoming, and Eastern Montana. Many ski resorts, from Utah to Colorado are forecast to receive around a foot of snowfall from this storm.

The southern flank of this storm seems to be quiet as of right now in the precipitation department. Those pink warnings you see in the Southwest States and Western Texas are red flag warnings. A red flag warning means that critical fire conditions are either occurring, or will be shortly. Dry conditions already present combined with low relative humidity and gusty winds from the deepening low pressure system set the stage for dangerous fire conditions. A new facet of the storm will show itself tomorrow afternoon through Tuesday evening in the form of showers and thuderstorms. Conditions seem to be favorable for large scale thunderstorm activity across the Plain States. The map below shows which areas are most likely at risk for experiencing severe weather tomorrow (Created by SPC), gusty winds and hail are likely and isolated tornadoes cannot be ruled out.

Does your Bufkit do this? Mine does!       

(Note: you can drag the scroll bar to make the animation faster…)

The fourth Bufkit Tutorial shows you step by step how to download and install the comet module and integrate it into Bufkit. This makes your CONRAD tab in Bufkit FULLY functional. This program is sweet and it comes with its own tutorial that is very user friendly. Bufkit integrates its summary into the program so you don’t need to understand all the workings behind the program to start using it.

You know you want to use the Convective Storm Matrix this Sping/Summer so Click Me and go to the fourth tutorial! Click the Bufkit button on the right or use the “Models” tab above to get to the rest of the tutorials.

Happy 4casting,

Vincent Sapone

The Pacific Northwest holds on to another cloudy day with mountain snows and valley showers as a frontal boundary is stalled offshore. The forecast doesn’t call for any improvement in the weather department as a stronger cold front will make it’s way onshore during the day Friday and bring with it an increased chance for valley rain and heavier mountain snows. The rest of the westcoast will get into the action later Saturday and through the day Sunday as a sharp upper-level trough really digs south through the  Westcoast States and into the desert Southwest.

The map below  illustrates where the cold front is currently situated (Coastal New England southwest to Northern Texas) and it’s associated cloudiness and anafrontal showers.

National Satellite/Radar Composite (13Z)

Showers along the cold front are generally light through New England and the Mid-Atlantic States. Heavier shower/t-storm activity may be found from Oklahoma to Tennessee where there are increased levels of instability.

Behind the cold front, northerly winds accompanied by a large area of high pressure building in from Canada will dry out the atmosphere under mostly sunny skies. Temperatures behind the front are running 10 to 20 degrees cooler today than this time yesterday across the Great Lakes and Mid-West.

The general pattern through the weekend will call for pleasant weather with a large ridge across the eastern third of the nation while the Western States will continue to be unsettled with below average temperatures, plenty of cloud cover, valley rain, and a lowering elevation for mountain snows.

Anyone who lives in the Baltimore metro area watches them every day. Today we’ll face chief meteorologists from each local station off against each other. We’ll rank Vytas Reid from WBFF, Tom Tasselmyer from WBAL, Marty Bass from WJZ, and Norm Lewis from WMAR. You like them when they’re right, you hate them when they’re wrong… now lets see where they rank.

The meteorologists were ranked in three categories: delivery, credibility, and personality. An overall score was calculated by averaging the three scores. The scores are on a scale from 1-10, 10 being the best score possible. Without wasting anymore time…

Credibility
I think this is one of the most important categories. It is of great importance for a meteorologist to know what they are talking about when they are delivering their weathercast. Without a weather background, a weather anchor is nothing more than a news anchor doing the weather.

Marty Bass has been at WJZ for a long time, however he doesn’t have a weather degree. Vytas received his certification from Mississippi State after getting his Broadcast Communication degree from Indiana University. Tom is a graduated from North Carolina State with a B.S. in meteorology.

The nod has to go to Norm Lewis though. He got his training through the US Navy and was part of the Hurricane Hunter Squadron. He then went on to work at the National Hurricane Center.

Delivery
Enthusiasm for the weather is important when delivering a weathercast. Nothing is worse than a boring weather report. I don’t care if it’s sunny for the next five days, spruce it up and make it exciting.

Vytas adds some excitement to weathercasts with his personality, however holding back on the 7-day forecast loses some points. It’s probably not even his fault, but ‘teasing’ the 7-day is outdated (at least I think).

Tom Tasselmyer relays a very informative and interesting forecast each night. No matter what the weather, Tom is calm and collected and gives me exactly what I want: a good forecast.

Personality
Being comfortable in front of the camera will let you personality shine through. The audience is able to relate and get to know you even more. It is important for meteorologists to not talk down to their audience. That is something that would be hard to recover from.

Marty is able to show more personality since he is a morning guy. However, his “here, there, and everywhere” personality makes me watch him rather than his forecast.

Vytas shows off his smile each and every time he does a forecast. He allows the audience to step into his life by mentioning his family and friends. You can tell he is a fun guy simply how he acts on camera.

Overall
This was a tough decision. I tried to rate each meteorologist as fair as possible. Norm Lewis barely squeaked past Tom Tasselmyer as Baltimore’s Best Meteorologist.

Now we want to hear what you think.