"One Fine Day"

Behind a cold front which passed through the Washington DC metro area last night, high pressure dominates the entire country east of the Rockies, except for the Gulf Coast and Florida. Bright, sunny skies have pushed temperatures near or a little above 80 by mid afternoon. Humidity is comfortable with dewpoints mainly in the mid 40s.

Tonight and Tomorrow

Temperatures tonight will drop to around 60 downtown, in the 50s in the outlying areas. Tomorrow will be sunny and dry with high temperatures in the upper 70s.

Tropical Beat: Go S!

Once again, no tropical advisories are being issued today. However, there is an area of low pressure in the central Caribbean, south of Jamaica and Haiti, which shows "the potential to become a tropical cyclone within the next 36 hours", according to the National Hurricane Center. Air Force reconnaissance is scheduled for tomorrow.

We're a little partial to the letter "S" here at Afternoon Blog Central, so we should be excused if we're rooting for this one to develop. If it becomes "Stan", it will be the first time in history that an 18th "named" Atlantic storm has formed before October. The 18th storm in 1933 occurred on October 1, and the only storm ever to have an actual "S" name was Sebastien in 1995.

The Palm Beach Post has an extensive Storm 2005 multimedia collection (flash/audio/video), including recaps of Rita, Katrina, and friends, as well as the Greatest Hits of 2004. Many of the features need more bandwidth than Verizon provides with its tin-can-and-string service here within shouting distance of I-270, the Technology Highway, but they look interesting.

For some spectacular super high-res (250 m) images of Rita, as well as some other items from the last 4 years, point your high-bandwidth connection to the MODIS Image Gallery at the University of Wisconsin Space Science and Engineering Center.

Hurricane Preparedness

The American Meteorological Society and the Weather Channel sponsored a workshop over 5 years ago to discuss the U.S. hurricane preparedness system. One of the principal findings was that

Overall, the nation pays insufficient attention to hurricane preparedness and response. In particular, there is a lack of attention, dialogue, and planning among the affected parties and insufficient investments to develop and implement response strategies.