Hurricane Harbor: El Nino? Severe Wxr in South 6 Weeks Before Hurricane Season. WRAL Aimee Wilmoth

Battle lines being drawn between a winter that does not want to go away and Gulf of Mexico heat streaming north feeding a giant cold front moving eastbound out to sea. The battle ground for today is in North Carolina and parts of the Appalachian Mountains and moves on towards the North East and Long Island in time.

See the cartoon like map that the NWS puts out for short term weather. Big system.

Looks so innocent when you look at it this way.

Lines and colors,

Greens and blues,

Arrows and isobars,

Nothing new.

Just another Spring like day in the Eastern Half of the Nation. Note...the Eastern Half of the Nation has been in play since before last winter. Note moisture from the Gulf of Mexico has been pumping up into the Deep South for months now. The map looks kind of easy and innocent. A bit of rain for parts of the South and the Mid-Atlantic moving up into New England.

Don't they look so innocent? An interesting time, not so innocent but it had a playful feel to it. Good song. Says a lot, yet we view the song through the framework of what it means to us and our messy minds. It was a political song. To me it's deeply personal and extremely meteorological.

Funny you look back at Middle School and remember being annoyed to death by some boy who pulled your hair or made fun of your frizzy curls when your hair wasn't limpy or wimpy and yet you can't remember the name of your math teacher or who sat next to you. You remember a note passed around the class or the taste of hot cinnamon toothpicks burning your tongue before you popped Sweet Tarts into your mouth. And, you remember which class you were in when the teacher was late and boys ran across the street to get sweet, spicy treats for the girls who sat neatly in short skirts awaiting their return. Times like that burn a memory into your brain.

And, I wonder why we never had weather classes in school as in retrospect from my perspective weather is way more important than learning the lyrics to "That's Amore" in music class.

It's all a matter of perspective I suppose.

Let's take El Nino for example.

The Hurricane Season is coming up in a little more than a month, yet everyone wants to make predictions on the El Nino instead. I've heard everything from "this is the biggest, baddest El Nino since.... " to "other indicators show that it may be moderating and we are flipping over to Neutral" but hey that's the way it goes with weather people. No two can ever agree on anything even when in theory they do agree, yet it's all about the details. Whether you are discussing the weather, global warming or El Nino no two meteorologists agree completely. End result is the same, but some variable in the mathematical equation differs and the rate vs the height vs the depth and size and ... let's change the analog years to better ones and redo the formula...

I like the maps on www.spaghettimodels.com as I can pick and choose from a meteorological buffett of what food I'm interested in on any particular day.

I'm worrying on the weather in my part of the world.

Right arrow.

I'm curious on the latent heat in the GOM for down the line.

Left arrow.

http://www.spaghettimodels.com/

Today I'm in Raleigh.

Stay tuned, won't be here in a few weeks.

Always on the move like the weather.

A woman died when a tree fell on her home in Georgia yesterday.

Storms. Spring Storms Gone Wrong.

Most people will never hear about this story today.

To her family and the children she taught it is their story.

http://www.ajc.com/news/news/nw-atlanta-woman-killed-by-falling-tree/nkyHc/

Weather is like that.

Hurricanes happen.

Where in any given year depends on temporary atmospheric patterns.

Let's look at El Nino a bit.

http://www.atmos.washington.edu/gcg/RTN/RTN.bib.html

A lot of talk on the early 1980s and 1984 in particular lately.

1984 Hurricane Season

1983 Hurricane Season

What you see from comparing the 3 years above is..

It's about WHERE they happen.

They always happen.

Where is the big money question...

We will have tropical weather somewhere...

Where?

To me that's more important than obsessing on El Nino...

Each El Nino is different, keep that in mind.

Like snowflakes .. no two are exactly the same.

Nuff said on El Nino.

You can read more on the following page.

Tampa Bay NWS

All you need to know on El Nino

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/tbw/?n=tampabayelninopage

(note historically Tampa gets hit by big hurricanes in slow seasons...)

Last night I enjoyed the Country Music Awards.

After the show was finally over...

Aimee Wilmoth came on and did a great job covering the weather in Raleigh.

The weather was the lead story and she covered it well!

She's one of my favorites on WRAL.

I wish she was on more.

Bachelor of Science in Meteorology, 2001, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas
Read more at http://www.wral.com/rs/bio/10783611/#1V1O1h0K30GlH7yL.99

Funny but before I started doing this I never noticed the details.

Note the women are in matching red dresses but the men don't match.

Not even their ties match... again emphasis on how women mets dress.

And, I like fashion... remember that, just hits me funny.