Another day of thunderstorms for the First Coast. While clouds looked wicked, the bark turned out to be worse than the bite. Nocatee did manage 3/4" of rain...JIA .4"...S'side 1/2"....Fleming Island .3" (3-day total of 6.3"!).
Photos below are from Regina, Jax Beach & Tina Jamil, S'side Jax.
Storms will become more widely scattered for Fri. & Sat. sending temps. well into the 90s. A weak tropical wave will move into Fl. & the Eastern Gulf later in the weekend bringing a slug of tropical moisture northward which should again increase scattered afternoon storms Sun. into early next week.
More solar flares Thu. From NASA:
The sun emitted a moderate solar flare on July 19, 2012, beginning at 1:13 AM EDT and peaking at 1:58 AM -- click here to see the photos. Solar flares are gigantic bursts of radiation that cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere to harm humans on the ground, however, when strong enough, they can disrupt the atmosphere and degrade GPS and communications signals.
The flare is classified as an M7.7 flare. This means it is weaker than the largest flares, which are classified as X-class. M-class flares can cause brief radio communications blackouts at the poles.
Increased numbers of flares are currently quite common, since the sun's standard 11-year activity cycle is ramping up toward solar maximum, which is expected in 2013. It is quite normal for there to be many flares a day during the sun’s peak activity.
Great time lapse video! -- click ** here **.
Swedish photographer Peter Rosén took this close-up, time-lapse movie of Noctilucent Clouds (NLCs) over Stockholm, Sweden on the evening of July 16, 2012. "What looked like a serene view from a distance behaves more like a stormy sea with wave after wave rolling in," Rosen observes.
