Pam Knox

  • At 11 am today, Tropical Storm Francine formed in the western Gulf as it became more developed over the warm water there. Francine is expected to slowly move north and gain hurricane strength before it makes landfall along the Louisiana coast sometime Wednesday afternoon according to the current predictions. It will continue to move north…

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  • Women’s Health posted an interesting story this week about how heat waves affect the health of pregnant women, especially in the time period close to their due date. If the heat lasts for several days, the women become more likely to experience contractions and may even go into early labor due the heat and dehydration…

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  • After a long quiet spell, the Atlantic tropical season is starting to pick up, with three disturbances of at least 40 percent chance of developing in the next week. The one we have to watch is the most western one, currently identified as Investigation 91, which has an 80 percent chance of developing into a…

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  • The rainfall that is expected over the next week has increased slightly as the area of low pressure in the western Gulf becomes more organized. The low, now dubbed Investigation 91 (see related post for more on this), has a 70% chance of developing into a named storm over the next week as it moves…

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  • A pesky low (not a tropical storm, just a mass of moist air below TS levels) in the western Gulf of Mexico is expected to move towards the east over the next few days, bringing abundant moisture to the southern portions of Alabama and Georgia along with South Carolina and eastern North Carolina. Georgia is…

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  • The latest Drought Monitor map, released earlier today, shows that severe drought (D2) now covers over a quarter of Alabama. Moderate drought (D1) and a small spot of severe drought are now present in western parts of Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. The eastern parts of the region are still free of dry conditions…

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  • I’ve been getting a lot of questions about why the Atlantic hurricane season recently has been strangely inactive considering we are currently near the climatological peak of activity. It is even more puzzling because all of the forecasts for the season were for well-above-normal activity, with the possibility of 17-25 named storms, and we started…

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