and I have no computer models. But I do have eyes. At the time I snapped this screen shot, 1:14pm yesterday, the conventional wisdom was that the storm would track along US49 across Jackson before it entered the ArkLaMiss delta region– roughly the line I’ve drawn on the map. (I posted a shot of tropical storm winds arrival times.)

Later in the day I was puttering around the kitchen and for sh*ts and giggles, I turned on The Weather Channel. LOL. “Beclown” is a great word. They were still yammering on & on about the wind and rain and the delta and the flooding to come in Jackson.

I just checked the Clarion Ledger, Jackson’s rag, and there’s nothing on the front page about flooding or wind damage. Really? I was told it would be so.

You know why I took that screen shot? Because anyone with eyes and an amateur understanding of the weather could have predicted that good ol’ Gordo was not going to track that far west.

The image above is the radar image overlaid with the satellite image. See Gordon? Now look over there to the left. See that– gosh, what’s the meteorological term?– yeah, right, see that front whose N-S leading edge is basically the western boarders of Missouri & Arkansas & Louisiana?

Interestingly, the meteorologists at TWC paused ever so briefly to inform us that they were also tracking severe weather in the midwest. Unfortunately, they– or their computer models– were unable to put these two things together.

This is the radar/satellite overlay snapped at 9:43 this morning. Looks like good ol’ Gordo tracked a lot further to the east than the meteorologists’ computer models predicted! Wonder why?

One more because I can’t resist.

How’d that happen?

Understanding the weather is nothing more than understanding some basic stuff about energy. Don’t believe me? Remember that awful devastating horrific hurricane Patricia? The one that was going to wipe out all of the Mexican pennisula?

Here is the area where Patricia made landfall.

See those things that seem to pop up from the surface of the map? Those are mountains. Google Earth tells me that some are about 5000+ feet tall. That certainly doesn’t make them the highest in Mexico, but they are still pretty tall. What are mountains? Very tall piles of mostly immovable rocks. Now, what happens when moving (= energy) stuff like air runs into tall immovable stuff? It slows down or stops moving all together. It loses energy. Boom. There’s your explanation for Patricia. And yet the models couldn’t figure this out!

Weather forecasting rants are among my favorites. Thanks for indulging me.