Quiet Atlantic; police blow up weather station

There's not much to talk about in the Atlantic today. A tropical wave we were watching (97L), east of Bermuda, has moved north over colder waters and is no longer a threat to develop. A large area of Saharan dust and dry air is present between Africa and the Lesser Antilles Islands, which will discourage any development in this region over the next few days. Later in the week, the UKMET and ECMWF models are hinting that conditions may moisten enough for something to develop off the coast of Africa. However, tropical storm formation in this region is unusual in July, and I'd be surprised if something did develop.

The long range GFS model shows that the steering pattern for the next two weeks will be much different than what we saw in 2006 and so far in 2007. We will no longer have a dominant trough of low pressure over the Eastern U.S. that will act recurve storms out to sea. Instead, an alternating series of weak ridges and weak troughs rippling along the jet stream is expected. No particular region of the Atlantic will be at higher risk of being hit with such a pattern.

Police robot blows up weather station
If you've never seen one before, familiarize yourself with what a weather stations looks like. State Police in Virginia had apparently never seen one before, and sent a police robot in to blow up a "suspicious object" hanging from a tree near a hospital in Virginia. The object turned out to be a home weather station. A tree is not a very good place to put a weather station--how can you measure accurate precipitation and winds there? Perhaps that's what the police were wondering, too, and this made them suspicious enough to terminate the threatening weather station.

In case you missed it, here's my analysis of the QuikSCAT science presented at Thursday's Congressional hearing.

Jeff Masters