Weekly Weather Report BRISTOL

well, I think its safe to say I totally whiffed on everything that wasn't the score last week. My bad, those of you in VA beach I hope you're not flooded and the storm wasnt to bad..

Euro 2 Eshiben 0

Now this summer I kind of blew off one of the readers regarding the MJO (specifically its impacts on hurricane genesis) mostly because I thought this would be a pretty cool write-up during the year. The MJO, aka the Madden Julian Oscillation, has absolutely nothing to do with John Madden. It was discovered by Roland Madden and Paul Julian when they noticed oh hey theres a pattern to this whole monsoon thing. During MJO events a giant atmospheric wave sweeps across the Pacific with a "wet phase" and a "dry phase" which...oh so aptly named, results in a ton of rain in one area and a lot of dryness in the other region. The MJO basically organizes convection and storms in the wet region and really balloons up these big storms in the pacific where its warm enough creating susceptible regions for hurricanes. Since its discovery there's been a lot of research into its impacts onto hurricanes and there is undoubtedly a tie between the wet phase and hurricane intensity and formation.

Meteorologists globally when discovering the ties between hurricanes and the MJO

Unfortunately the formation is not completely understood yet but there are three different theories as to what might get this bad boy started up. One prevailing theory is that monsoon formation in the region requires a nice balance in radiation, evaporation, and convection; which creates a stationary oscillating monsoon, which ultimately creates a bunch of convection...enough to fire off a wave that would propagate eastward. Unfortunately no research has been able to prove this yet. The other theory that team shibe is on assumes that small short lived convection repeatedly forming in the region essentially powers the wave eventually. However the problem with this theory is that most models indicate that the convection only excites the MJO and doesnt actually form it. Basically the answer in this case is I have no freaking clue

and neither does anybody else so dont worry

What i do know however is why there is this wet and dry phase. For starters lets review basics, warm air rises, cool air falls. The atmosphere gets colder with height (IN THE TROPOSPHERE) and big enough storms can puncture the troposphere (IE air gets really really high up). So once this wave gets fired off and starts forming a large region of convection and floating east the storms within it are pumping a lot of air up where it cools (also travelling eastward) this cooling air then decends forming essentially a high pressure system out in front of it. This suppresses any kind of cloud formation and allows the sun to come shining through on one of the hottest regions in the world (near the equator)...lots and lots of radiation is getting poured down into it heating the water

not that type of radiation but you get the point

This hot water is much more susceptible to being lifted into convective system which intensifies them further it gets sucked up into the storm and the cycle repeats itself. Likewise behind the storm due to the rain the sea surface temperatures (often abbreviated SSTs) are cooled leading much less favorable conditions for convection. Creating a sort of dry phase trailing.

really good image of what exactly is going on

and a simpler version of it

Sorry for the totally off topic research talk this week! Now onto this week where I have a decent chance of redeeming myself. At first, it seemed like a 500 mb trough would be coming across the midwest bringing with it some bad weather, however this bad boy doesn't get far enough south late in the week. The north east and most of the rust belt is going to be in for spotty showers all day, and it seems like the national weather service is preparing a "just in case" forecast with a 30% chance of showers but it really doesn't seem like thats going to happen as of now! Id expect a partly cloudy day with a really low dew point (indicating little to no humidity) all and all its looking like a pretty glorious day for tailgating with a high around 90 and a low at 68 that evening. If we do get any kind of rain its probably not happening until really late in the evening (im thinking midnight). Likewise there will be little to no wind so I dont see any real impacts the weather could have on the game. So this is turning out to be a perfect beautiful saturday evening for #gamedayforfrank and the battle at bristol for our boys in maroon to play hard!

sorry my photoshop skills arent good enough to change the date

All and all I really dont think either team has a significant advantage, and this is the closest thing I've seen to a "neutral site" game in a LONG time. Both fanbases are going to come out in force and please for the sake of everybody enjoy the tailgating! the days dont get much better than this!

while we're on tailgating points my teams are 2-0 as the underdogs when I'm drinking strictly whiskey and coke during the game

Final forecast and predictions

High 90
Low 65
Wind - light breeze
Cloud cover - partly cloudy (mostly sunny)
precip - prolly not
Kickoff temp - 72
humidity - not much
Hokies - 24
Tenn - 21

GO HOKIES!!!!!

had to sneak a shot in at UVA somewhere in this write-up after last week