An upper level disturbance will bring bands of showers & t'storms to the First Coast Tue. with widespread rain. Rain will start pretty early especially near & west of Highway 301 which could limit instability (warm temps.) &, therefore, the intensity of the storms. So if we manage morning sun & can get temps. well into the 80s, strong storms could occur. But it looks to me like the First Coast will be shrouded in quite of cloudiness so heavy rain would be the primary threat from widespread showers & storms through the day. The rest of the week will continue to be damp but not as hot. A few lingering showers Wed. -- but not a lot of rain -- before showers increase some again Thu. & Fri. At this point, looks like the showers continue right into the upcoming weekend.
The National Hurricane Center continues to study how best to incorporate storm surge into their forecasts for landfalling tropical storms & hurricanes. It has become obvious in recent years that including the storm surge in the Saffir-Simpson Scale was misleading (especially "Katrina", "Charley", "Ivan" & "Ike"). In fact, I'd argue that "Camille" was the reason that so many were killed by "Katrina". Survivors of "Camille" felt if their homes & building survived that storm, the dwellings would surely survive "Katrina". But the Cat. 5 "Camille" had a lower storm surge in most spots than Cat. 3 "Katrina". Read NHC's discussion ** here **.
From NASA:
NASA scientist's story: In 1977, Pawan Bhartia – known by colleagues as P.K. – had finished a Ph.D in physics and entered a bleak job market. The only somewhat-related opportunity listed in the newspaper's classifieds section was for the position of atmospheric scientist with a NASA contractor, Systems and Applied Sciences in Maryland. He applied, got the job, and had no way to foresee that he was about to play a role in what he and many others now call an "unparalleled environmental success story" – the discovery and stabilization of the Antarctic ozone hole. Read the feature story ** here **...click ** here ** for ozone "hole watch" from NASA.
