From all of us in the KSFY Action Weather Center: Good riddance October, we’ll see you next year. Could you have a better attitude next time. 

I don’t know about you, but I’m looking forward to a much better month in November than what we saw in October. From the look of my 7-Day planner on Sunday and Phil’s on Monday, we’re going to be off to a good start. Want some better news? Look at these forecasts from the Climate Prediction Center (CPC).  

Last week on the History Channel they had something about the Kennedy family every day.  This obviously included a few hits about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.  I don't know why, but when a documentary, or a history investigation, or anything about November 22, 1963, I can't stop watching.  I've actually read books, watched JFK many times, and listened to many disscussions about the event.  It even lead to me taking a class in college about the event. 

This class forced me to read things that I never thought I would read, like the Warren Commision report (not the whole thing, but the findings).  One of the most facinating books I read was Kennedy's Wars, which talked about the wars that happened, partiallly because he was no longer president.  I also read books about many types of conspiracy theories, and ones that supported lone-gunman theories too.  I went into the class looking for a conspiracy theory that I would believe in fully and would be able to argue backwards and forwards.  However, I found the opposite. 

 As much as I wanted to say that Kennedy was killed by the mafia, multiple shooters, or the CIA, I just always came across evidence that said otherwise.  So, my OPINION is that Lee Harvey Oswald was the only person involved, a crazed man who wanted to make his name known.  Jack Ruby had nothing to do with the assassination, and was someone that let the assassination get to him a bit too much.  No, I don't accept the Warren Commision's finds as fact, because it has it's flaws.  The book that I find closest to reality is Case Closed by Gerald Posner.

In the book, Posner builds a legal case against Oswald, who never really faced a trail.  He talks about Oswalds travel, his family issues, and his upbringing.  After reading the book, I can't help but accept that Oswald was the only killer.  So go ahead, send me your opinion of the matter, we'll see if I can prove my point to you!

I can be reached at dfabert@ksfy.com, or you can leave me an comment in the comment section. 

No, this is not an advice column about how to avoid typhoons (get it, TIP).  I had never heard of the event that took place just about 30 years ago.  Everything I've looked at calls this the most intense storm on record, and possibly produced the highest wind of a tropical storm ever.

Typhoons are in the Pacific Ocean, west of the International Date Line, and this one was especially strong and in the far west Pacific.  On October 12th, 1979, the typhoon registered a measured minimum pressure of 870 mb and gusts as high as 190 mph.  The storm was so large, that it had a circulation that would have covered 1350 miles.  That's a little more than the distance (as a crow flies) from Sioux Falls to San Fransico.  At its peak the eye was 9.3 miles wide, which is further than I can run, in a day.

Luckily the Typhoon didn't stay strong as it approached land.  While it was very strong it did effect ships and air traffic, and killed 44 fisherman.  As it made landfall, the winds had calmed to 80 mph on October 19th, 7 days after it's peak intensity.  However, intense rains fell on a mountainous area of Japan and caused mudslides and flooding that damaged or destoryed bridges and caused damage to the fishing industry.  Sadly 42 were killed and 71 were missing, but it could have been much worse.

Here's some links for more information on Typhoon Tip (my referenses for this post)

According to NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), September ranked as the 2^nd warmest September for global surface temperature. Global is the combination of both land and sea surface. On average, the global surface temperature was 1.12 degrees F warmer than the 20^th century average.  

The thing about climate forcasting is this, its a generalization to what "normal" is.  Let's say (for example) that 40 inches of snow is normal and we see 25 inches of snow in that year.  That would be a below normal year, but what if 21 inches of that snow fell in one day.  I bet you'd remember that winter forever, and a year with 20 snowfalls all averaging 3 inches, you might forget, dispite that it's an above normal year.

With that said, here's what normal is for our area, for the months of December, January, and February (the meteorlogical winter).

Here's the good news.  The Climate Prediction Center is calling for an above normal winter for our area.  This is all because of El Nino still being strong in the western Pacific.  So how does something thousands of miles away affect our weather?  Apparantly the warmer water changes the patterns of tropical rainfall that then changes the location of stregth of  the jet stream over the northern Pacific.  That then affects the patterns that move into the United States.

As of today (Monday, October 3rd, 2009), El Nino is still going strong, nearly 0.75 degrees celcius warmer than normal, and is forecasted to get stronger.  You can follow El Nino at the Climate Prediction Center's Southern Oscillation webpage.

Here's the report.

You may have noticed that I haven’t updated the blog recently and I missed the end of August/beginning of September blogs. I was on vacation for nearly two weeks and did a lot of things including being in a wedding. What I didn’t do was pay attention to the weather. 

The other day I got to thinking that we haven't had one hurricane.  While I'm happy that the gulf coast hasn't had to board up windows (especially in this tough economy), we've got some really cool tools to use.  I won't mind if we can't do it until next year.  You may remember this blog about things being near normal for this year, but that has changed.  I'm guessing the biggest reason might be the fact that we haven't had a named storm yet.

I was going to do some research myself, until I cam across the updated forecast, which did it all for me!  There's now a 50% of a near normal season and a 40% of a below normal season.  Add to that there's a 70% chance of 7 to 11 named storms, 3 to 6 of which are expected to be hurricanes, and 1 or 2 are expected to be major hurricanes.  However, it doesn't matter how many hurricanes we see in the Atlantic, what we really care about is the number that make landfall.  That will depend on the pattern over the Atlantic when they do form. 

I looked for reasoning behind the drop off and the biggest might just be El Nino.  Unlike our bad storms (supercells, squal lines, and tornadoes) hurricanes are not fans of shear.  While I'm not sure of the exact reason why there is more shear, but there is, which is tearing disturbances apart before they can get organized into a larger storm.  That doesn't mean they'll never form, because some big storms have formed during El Nino. 

I was surprised to find that Hurricane Andrew (the first named storm of 1992) didn't form until August.  That shows that slow starts don't' mean we're completely out of the woods.  If storms do form, we'll get to bust out those new toys, but I'm hoping we can save those until next year.  However, next year might be a stretch as well given that El Nino will probably still be around. 

This summer has been well below normal and July didn't buck that trend.  I was just looking at the data from the month as well as some of the reports from the National Weather Service Offices.  All three of the major cities had one of the top 5 coolest July's on record.

Wow, its been a while since I've got to the blog.  This was supposed to go up before August, but I guess better late than never!

As we're heading into the last month of the Meteorological summer, we're not going to find a big heat wave it seems.  Here's what we normally expect for the month of August.

I didn't realize the difference in precipitation from Sioux Falls to Pierre during this month as the capital city will get just more than half of the amount Sioux Falls does.  Also, as a person who doesn't like the heat, it's nice to see the average creep back down to around 80 and those lows get into the lower 50s.

Here's the monthly forecast from the Climate Prediction Center as of the 4th of August for the month of August: