Pike County Forecast -- March 16, 2020

It's 58ºF at the Farm. Humidity is up. The wind is a barely-there 2 mph from the North.

The forecast is simple this  morning.  Sprinkles.  High of 60ºF.  The clouds and the rain might go away  around 4 PM.  You can skip all this other stuff unless you're curious.

The Atlanta area (and ATL) are suffering from the infamous "wedge" front this morning.  It was explained enough in the forecast discussion that it refreshed my memory of it -- from back in my air traffic controller days.  I took the liberty of doctoring up a screenshot of the surface map. to illustrate it.

See the "H" up around Maine?  As we all (hopefully) know, wind circles clockwise around a "H"igh.  So the wind from this high  is being "dammed up" against the Appalachian Mountains. So the cold air flows along the red curved arrow I drew down into northeast Georgia and meets the warm air from those two "L"ows -- one over the Atlantic and one over Lower Alabama.  (Imagine which way winds circle around a Low. Cold air meets warm air -- Presto!  Clouds, fog, rain.

If you'd like to see it in action, click here for a cool animation.

A guy from the National Weather Service, attached to the FAA facility where I used to work, figured out how this phenomena worked.  As you can imagine, aviation works at lot better without clouds, fog and rain.  The airlines, FAA and NWS were keen to be able to forecast these conditions at the busiest airport in the world.  Every time I hear about the "wedge front" I think about him.

Enjoy your gloomy day.

Don Brown

March 16, 2020