Have the windshield scraper handy this morning for frost…temperatures are in the low to mid 20’s in most locations and near 30 in Nashville. Expect sunshine and light winds today, but highs will only hit the middle and upper 40s. Stay warm!
Follow temperatures through the day here.
Check this site out…it’s pretty amazing. It’s a series of images, beginning with a view of the Milky Way galaxy at a distance of 10 million light years from the Earth (10^ 23 meters away). The images zoom into the Earth in successive orders of magnitude until you reach a tall oak tree just outside the buildings of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee at Florida State University. After that, it takes you from the actual size of a leaf into a microscopic world that reveals leaf cell walls, the cell nucleus, chromatin, DNA and finally the subatomic universe of electrons and protons (10^ -16 meters). Cool stuff!
Thanks to local artist Ansley Black for the heads up.
The 26th named tropical storm has developed in the central Atlantic, far away from the United States (and anywhere else). We’re now up to the 5th letter in the Greek alphabet, Epsilon. In case you’re keeping score at home: 2005 has been the most active Atlantic tropical season since 1933, when 21 storms were named. Half of this year’s tropical storms (13) strengthened into hurricanes, the most since 1969 (12 hurricanes that year). There were 8 major hurricanes (Category 3+) in 1950, compared to 7 this season. I bring this up because hurricane season technically ends tomorrow, although the atmosphere and ocean don’t always follow such a strict schedule. We’ll be glad to send 2005 packing.
Epsilon’s winds are sustained at 45 mph and movement is west at 8 mph. The National Hurricane Center predicts that Epsilon will wander over the open Atlantic for the next five days, heading west before turning back to the northeast. Check out the infrared satellite loop from the Penn State e-Wall (it’s near latitude 30 north and longitude 50 west, parallel to the north Florida coast).
Expect partly cloudy weather today with highs in the upper 40s and lower 50s. A breeze at 10 to 15 mph will accentuate the chill this morning. It will be clear and chilly tonight with another cool, quiet day in Wednesday’s forecast. Have a great Tuesday!
Nashville picked up 1.13″ of some much-needed rain on Monday from midday through the afternoon. That brings our yearly rain total up to 36.85″ (about 6.40″ behind average for the year). You can check this list from the National Weather Service to search for rainfall totals in other towns (should be updated during the late morning). At this time last year Nashville had seen 51.17″ of wet weather. We monitored a handful of tornado warnings yesterday afternoon in the mid-state, but thankfully no tornadoes were spotted. There was some wind damage, especially in areas southeast of Nashville. Susan Ortner snapped this picture as her neighbor’s shed blew into her own yard. Winds gusted over 40 mph yesterday just about everywhere across Middle Tennessee, causing minor problems…but at least we avoided the seven tornadoes that were spotted in Alabama.
This post has nothing to do with Middle Tennessee’s weather…but when you’ve got pictures of a St. Bernard puppy on your hand you’ve got to use them, right? Many thanks to Davis and Lisa for covering my shifts while I headed back to Pennsylvania for Thanksgiving. I got to spend some time with my relatives from Louisiana who moved up north after Katrina battered their hometown. It was my Uncle Bernard from St. Bernard parish who adopted a St. Bernard puppy, and here’s a look at her. Twenty pounds at just eight weeks old!
After the storms we had a beautiful sunset in Nashville as seen by the News 2 City Cam
Although we had tornado warnings for Giles, Maury, and Marshall counties, no touchdowns were confirmed and no major damage occurred. The tornado watch is now expired, and we are looking for falling temps, into the low 40’s towards daybreak. Highs on Tuesday will be in the low 50’s.
Mark Rose from the Nashville NWS just e-mailed me to say that they’re live-blogging this afternoon’s storms over at their blog. Another great service from the guys (and gals) out at Old Hickory Lake, courtesy of your tax dollars. Money well-spent, in my opinion.
Davis and I have been covering several tornado warnings on the air. We’ll continue to crawl watches and warnings on the bottom of the screen on News 2 and you can also click the “Watches and Warnings” button at the top of the blog.
It looks like Alabama will be at the greatest risk for damaging weather this afternoon, but Middle Tennessee also runs the risk of severe thunderstorms later today. The line of showers moving slowly across West Tennessee this morning should pick up steam as it moves toward Nashville. If you’ve been outside today you know that there’s a lot of wind energy in the atmosphere. Southerly winds at the surface and southwesterly winds aloft may provide enough rotation for an isolated tornado, but I don’t believe we’ll repeat the severe weather outbreak of Tuesday November 15th. It’s more likely that we’ll all get some gusty wind ahead and along the leading edge of the t’storms as they roll through. We’ll be watching things closely all day long so rely on News 2 for the latest.
Mid-state radar loop is here.
Visit the Nashville NWS site and click on your county to check for active watches and warnings.
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| 7 Day | Current Temp | Regional |
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| Lisa Patton |
Davis Nolan |
Jeff Ray |
Justin Bruce |
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