Friday, March 11, 2005

Breaking news: March temperatures today in DC area!

Currently
With no precipitation so far and therefore more sun than expected, temperatures are warming up more than we originally forecast. National was at 53 with a high overcast by 1pm, and it was in the lower 50's in most other places. Further south, it was 57 in Fredericksburg. With continued sun and a southwest wind ahead of a low-pressure area that was moving into western Pennsylvania at mid-morning, we will be close to the normal high for the date of 54, an unusual event this March. Around midnight last night, radar showed scattered areas of snow showers in the mountains of West Virginia and about as far east as Hagerstown in Maryland, but very little was reaching the ground. Hagerstown did report a trace of precipitation overnight. (This must be one of those "Discount Snow Storms" eBay was advertising over to the right last night.) Today, the nearest activity around 1pm is widely scattered rain showers in central Maryland and a bit east of I-81 in northern Virginia. The model forecasts have been consistently over-predicting precipitation for the DC area from this situation, but we still can't rule out the possibility of a shower of flurry later in the day. The most likely time for this would be late this afternoon or early evening.

The weekend
For the weekend, a mixture of clouds and sun with a slight chance of rain or snow showers should continue with colder temperatures, as described by Jason below.

The Weather Channel
I was living in Woodstock, NY in the early 80's when our local community antenna with about 10 channels was upgraded to a "real" cable system. The TV's and VCR's in those days didn't have digital tuners, so you had to manually tune in a channel to a particular button. I remember my excitement when I twisted the tiny knob to find all weather, all the time. Now, I have to agree with Jason that it's a lot less appealing. I hope I don't sound like I have stock in the company since this is my second mention of it here, but the answer to this (besides the Web, of course) is TiVo. (I don't; they have a great product but terrible financial performance.) By leaving the box tuned to that channel, you always have the most recent 30 minutes of content available. You can use fast-forward to get the approximately 5 minutes of useful content out of that in 5 minutes or less, and you can use pause on the radar loop if necessary. I find that this technique works quite well with CNBC also, if you don't care about the conventional wisdom regarding the latest oil price blip.

Editorial note: If you need basketball coverage and want to look more productive at work, the Post is running a blog from the MCI center. You can get to it here

No comments:

Seasonal Outlook

Latest seasonal forecast: Click here.


Latest 3-month temperature outlook from Climate Prediction Center/NWS/NOAA.