course planning and weather central woes

yesterday the 4 of us met to discuss how the course will go. i'm very excited about it--of course, the mere mention fo the words "storm chasing" send shivers up my spine.

so you may or may not have seen that about half of weather central's links are broken. the website i was using to grab much of the information shut down. so now i have to find alternate sources fro said information. eze and i will work on this over the next little while. the links i think are most important (the focn45, and things like that) will be fixed first, while some of the model links will take more time.

if you have any favourite links that you want reinstated or refound, email me at my email adress.

oh yeah, i almost forgot. a storm chaser from southern ontario, laura duchesne, now has a chase blog. wow, every chaser is getting a blog now.

gee, wonder where they got that idea? ;)

college of dupage

the guys are setting out tomorrow for trip #2.

they've changed addresses now, so that just about all their info is up-to-date, including their pics and their chase blog. (i'm glad to say we thought of this before they did! a small victory, perhaps....)

;)

anyhow, the new address for following them--they set out tomorrow, may 19, is http://weather.cod.edu/chasing/tracker/

grrrrrrrr....

well, it looks like the cis website has had the rug pulled out from under it.

this isn't good news for weather central.

see, a huge amount of our information is derived from this site. if the site doesn't work, we need to redesign.

and that's a task i've passed onto eze for now. but don't expect it to be fixed quickly. it'll take a long time--perhaps until winter--before it all gets rectified.

sorry, folks. :(

season starting ... when?

the severe weather season has officially started. sort of.

last sunday (when i was out of town, naturally) a severe thunderstorm hit winnipeg with up to quarter-sized hail.

on thursday, a near-severe storm popped up east of edmonton. (i'll have the visible satellite imagery on weather central from that event sooner rather than later.)

but we're right now stuck in this blocky pattern that has a monster upper low over the great lakes, spinning cloud and precipitation toward us.

the good news is that it looks like this "meteorological constipation", as i like to call it, will be ex-laxed out of here soon enough. what that means is that the farmers will be able to finish seeding, the northward transport of moisture should begin in earnest, and severe storms are around the corner. indeed, the forecast for thursday (the analog, at least) has a slight chance of showers or thunderstorms in southern saskatchewan and highs in the mid to upper 20s.

speaking of warm temperatures, this analog forecast is also calling for 33 degrees in the west kootenay district of bc. that would be areas like castlegar and nelson.

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on a totally different note, i keep getting asked about how the summer will turn out. will it be good for severe storms, will it be hot, will it be dry, will it be this or that? the answer is, i don't know. i don't have much experience at forecasting seasonally, nor do i have much skill. the official ec forecasts are out there, calling for a hot, dry summer. take that how you will. i personally won't say anything about it. what i will do, however, is a) just take whatever summer comes, and b) assume it won't be as dead after july 2 as is was last year.

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on yet another note, the much-touted webmaster, eze, is in the office. he's currently learning more html, so it may be a few months yet before he's into prime time. until then, it'll be mainly yours truly doing the maintenance on the website. and i'm pretty busy these days, so the maintenance may be more sporadic than i'd like.

eze says hi. i'll see if he wants to join the blogging game on this--if he does, you'll soon see a post or two from him.

college of dupage

the cod people are out chasing now. follow their movements here. as well, you can read their storm chase blog along with pictures each day.