THIS SYSTEM IS EXPECTED TO BECOME TROPICAL STORM “OPHELIA” SHORTLY

The 2023 Atlantic hurricane season’s 16th named storm

  • The system is clearly developing a circulation and doing so over the warm waters of the Gulf Stream which provide such system latent heat energy. It is expected to convert the currently “non-tropical storm” to a “tropical storm” as the system is infused with latent heat energy. Meteorologists call this a “warm-core” storm.
  • Whether the system is “tropical” or “non-tropical” is a bit of an academic point in terms of sensible weather it’s producing. A system like this one produces pounding, beach-eroding surf, a dangerous and submerging storm surge and drenching/flooding rains.
  • READ THE LATEST ADVISORY FROM THE NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER HERE: https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/text/refresh/MIATCPAT1+shtml/221451.shtml?fbclid=IwAR2_CXlzJZEn3n4NDmZYwlxeMBZsHt4nJYN_Ajb3raCyZeEnGpKcqOCFtQU
THE TRUE COLOR GOES EAST WEATHER SATELLITE ANIMATION YOU SEE HERE is courtesy of College of DuPage’s excellent GOES WEATHER SATELLITE SITE

FALL COLOR SEASON

We’re heading into one of the most beautiful periods of the year—FALL COLOR SEASON. Fall colors are already putting in an appearance in sections of the Midwest, and they’ll become more widespread in the weeks to come.

CANADIAN WILDFIRES CONTINUE TO BURN—AND ARE LIKELY TO DO SO INTO WINTER—SAY EXPERTS THERE

  • Are the Canadian wildfires we’ve covered for months still burning? They ARE. It was reported Wednesday that 900 fires were still burning—a good number of them out of control, and smoke continues to pour off those blazes. While not coming into Midwest/Chicago airspace as densely as at many points over the past summer, you can see in the National Weather Service RAP smoke graphic that there is still smoke circulating into the U.S. around the southern flank of a broad high pressure system building in Canada.
  • The smoke is predicted to be spreading westward into the Midwest around the southern flank of that mammoth high–and that high pressure isn’t likely to be going anywhere very fast. It’s getting tied up in a huge atmospheric blocking pattern which is coming together and likely to be part of the eastern and central North American weather scene over the coming week. For Chicago its means we’ll see easterly winds blowing without interruption over the coming week.
  • This has been Canada’s worst wildfire season on record, having produced 6,300 fires which have burned an area 43.4-million acres, reports Axios—an area roughly the size of Oklahoma.
  • AND THE GUARDIAN has an article out today on the record Canadian fire season stating, “..This summer, however, as flames devoured one of the largest contiguous stretches of woodland on the planet, 2bn tonnes (2.2bn tons) of carbon dioxide were released into the atmosphere.” The Guardian indicates the carbon dioxide returned to the atmosphere by these fires to date this year is likely THREE TIMES TO TYPICAL C02 PRODUCTION by wildfires in Canada.
  • Courtesy of NASA
  • Hot spots sensed by satellite indicating the location of current fires
  • Here’s a snapshot of smoke coverage midday Friday per the National Weather Service’s RAP smoke forecast model
  • From Environment Canada—a FIRE WEATHER INDEX over which hot spots have been superimposed. The brightly colored area are regions where conditions are most supportive of fire.
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