Thursday, June 19, 2008

Rain rain go away...

We have been dealing with a pesky low pressure system in the upper atmosphere since Monday here in eastern Ontario. The storm system is slowly spinning its way westward towards the Ottawa Valley. In most circumstances this area of low pressure would have been long gone by now, but with very little in the way of steering and movement aloft, the low pressure area is hanging around and even retrograding, (a fancy way of saying it is moving the wrong way). The low pressure has resulted in numerous days of heavy showers and embedded thunderstorms. The cold nature of the low pressure area has kept temperatures down, and even produced small hail in many of the storms. Kemptville has received 66mm of rain so far this month, as of 2am this morning, with half of that in the last 4 days. Expect rain today, all day long, and a risk of showers right through the weekend. It will slowly warming to 23 or 24C by Sunday. The weekend will not be a wash out with some sunny breaks occurring.

While annoying, it is a far cry from the pounding storms and rain that have flooded the Midwest US. The flood of 2008 is heading south down the Mississippi River, flooding thousands of acres of farmland and homes and eclipsing the high water marks set by the "once in a lifetime flood of 1993" Time to rename that event I would say....

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