The August heat wave looks like it will go on through Thursday, but at least here at my house, today was the warmest day so far in 2008. It got up to 99 degrees (well, 98.7) at 2:10 PM, topping the 97.1 reached on both June 8 and July 10. It could have been worse though: with the dew point in the low 60s, the heat index was only 102 degrees.

Temperatures reached the century mark today in Augusta, Milledgeville, Savannah, Athens and Vidalia. For whatever reason, it stayed a bit cooler in Atlanta today, with highs only in the low 90s. Tomorrow, the humidity goes back up, and by tomorrow afternoon, the approaching front will bring a chance of rainfall, and at least a temporary end to the excessive heat we’ve been seeing recently.

Hurricane Forecast Update

We’re about ready to get into the strongest part of the hurricane season, from mid-August through the end of October.  The folks at Colorado State University have updated their tropical forecast and are now calling for more storms than they predicted back in April and repeated in June.

Instead of 15 named storms, the predicted total has been upped to 17, with nine hurricanes, instead of eight. Five of those should be intense, compared to four predicted previously.  Part of the reason for upping the predictions is the number of storms we’ve seen through July, with four named storms, two hurricanes and one intense hurricane. That doesn’t count Edouard, which was the first storm in August.  According to the forecast, only 2005 (the year of Katrina) and 1916 have had more active pre-August tropical activity.

There’s a 2/3 chance of a major hurricane making landfall somewhere in the US during the rest of the season, with a better than 40% chance of a storm striking either the east coast or the gulf coast.  Overall, the forecasters are predicting a tropical season that is 190% as active than the average season from 1950-2000.

In addition to providing forecasts for the rest of the season, the Dr. Gray and his team are providing a forecast for August tropical activity. If they are right, we will have four storms, three of which will become hurricanes, and one intense hurricane this month. With Edouard already occuring, that’s the non-hurricane storm, if their forecast is correct. They will also issue forecasts for September and October at the beginning of those months.

Dolly is getting ready to land on the US coastline at the Texas/Mexico border, near the mouth of the Rio Grande. The image below, taken at 9:15 on Wednesday clearly shows the hurricane’s eye:

She will be the first hurricane to affect the US coastline this year, and is likely to cause intense flooding along the Rio Grande valley. Maximum winds have reached 95 MPH, and the storm is likely to be border Category 2 when landfall occurs late this morning. Most areas will get 6-10 inches of rain with over a foot of precipitation in some locations.

Moist tropical air from Dolly is affecting Georgia, and was responsible for many of yesterday’s thunderstorms. As usual, amounts varied widely, with 1.19 inches in Marietta, .29 inches at Peachtree DeKalb, .28 inches at my Lawrenceville weather station and only .16 inches at Hartsfield airport. Athens remained dry.

Even though the rain amounts were less than what one might have hoped for in a drought, the sudden drop in temperatures–eight degrees in 11 minutes here–very gusty winds and at least five tornado warnings issued in Gwinnett County made it an interesting evening. Look for more of the same this afternoon as a cold front passes through.

Dolly has become the fourth named tropical system of 2008. Hurricane Center forecasters have been tracking this as a low pressure system since it was out in the Atlantic Ocean, and it recently caused heavy rainfall in Cuba and Jamaica.

Now located in the Caribbean Sea between Cuba and Honduras, Dolly is expected to cross the Yucatan Peninsula Sunday night before entering the Gulf of Mexico early Monday. By early Thursday, the storm is expected to make landfall somewhere near the Texas/Mexico border.

While it looks unlikely that Dolly will directly affect Georgia, she will tend to drive tropical moisture into the state, increasing the chance of thunderstorms as the week goes on. And, with landfall more than three days away, there’s still some potential for changes in the forecast path.

It’s the third Thursday of the month, when the Weather Service releases plenty of data, both forecasts for the next month and a look at the previous one. So, let’s take a look.

The National Climate Data Center reports that last month was the eighth warmest June globally this century, and the 27th warmest June in the US since 1895. Is it global warming? The NCDC also reports that Arctic sea ice was the at third lowest level since record keeping began in 1979, while Antarctic sea ice was at the second highest level recorded.

A lot of the US warmth last month was concentrated in the Southeast, which had the ninth warmest June in the last 114 years. All but the northern third of the country was warmer than normal, as you can see in the following chart:

On the precipitation side, it’s not hard to guess that the upper Midwest was much wetter than normal, with poor Iowa having its second wettest June ever, and much more than normal precipitation in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana. The drought kept its hold on Georgia (11th driest) and California (4th driest), the Carolinas and Tennessee all being much drier than normal:

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The first tropical storm that could pose a threat to the United States got a name yesterday, and her name is Bertha. With wind speeds of 50 MPH, she is moving north-northwest at about 18 MPH. While still located about 500 miles west of the Cape Verde islands, she is expected to approach the US sometime next week:

Bertha’s exact track will be determined by a high pressure ridge in the mid-Atlantic. While there is a possibility that the storm will curve north and miss the US coastline, there’s also the possibility that the storm could act more like Hurricane Bertha did back in 1996. That storm, also in July, passed over the Virgin Islands, and eventually made landfall in North Carolina, causing about $400 million worth of damage (in 2008 dollars).

While the first Bertha didn’t bring much rain to Georgia, depending on what the current one does, we could see some drought relief…or not. Stay tuned.