So Now What?

Not much occurred today across the northern portion of the state, but south of Wake County there has been several rounds of showers and thunderstorms. The first few rounds were severe with large hail and damaging winds. Golf ball (1.75 inch diameter) hail occurred in Fayetteville with nickel to quarter sized hail (.88 - 1.00 inch) in other areas including Harnett County and Pope AFB. Several trees fell on homes in Fayetteville. The radar shown below shows this nasty thunderstorm cell. Apart of me believes it was a supercell and some of the parameters necessary for supercells were there across the southern part of the state. Supercell thunderstorms are capable of producing large damaging hail, damaging winds, and the stronger tornadoes. Image courtesy of WRAL's Fayetteville Doppler. The purple and black colors indicate hail being detected by the radar(High intensity signal).



Here is an picture of some the hail and a tree that hit a house. WRAL says this house was up for sale. Images courtesy of WRAL.






So how come we did not see any thunderstorms with such a big weather change coming? Our winds were coming from the NW direction which is down slope of the higher terrain of the Appalachian mountains. This wind flow tends to dry out the air so it is harder for storms to develop in such an environment. The southern part of the state was in a much more favorable environment with higher low level moisture and was also in a region of high instability.

Now.. the next several days should stay away from the 90 degree mark. Last August, we had one day that did not hit 90. It appears like the next several days (maybe even into the middle of next week) will stay below 90. That is significant because our normal high temperature is 88 for the next several days meaning we will actually have more normal or even below normal weather if we stay below 88 which is certainly possible. There are other variables to discuss that might play a role in sensible weather but I will not get into details. Oh and one more thing..Saturday mornings low temperature should be near 60 and just as a note.. the record low for August 9 is 58.. could come close!