Omar/Paloma/Greg Forbes/Jack Hayes/Lance Berkmann/Louisville Slugger

HURRICANES AND WEATHER
T.D. #15, in the eastern Caribbean, is now Omar. Omar is will eventually move into the Atlantic…so not a worry to the Gulf coast. Meanwhile, Tropical Depression #16 has formed off the coast of Honduras. It will probably become Tropical Storm Paloma on Wednesday, but it is very close to the coast of Honduras. Regardless…this will be a rainmaker for Honduras, possibly Belize, and Guatemala.

There were heavy downpours in parts of the Houston area today. Thanks Kim Matthews for your spotter report! A trough is just offshore and will produce some heavy rain…some offshore, some mainly in the coastal counties. Meanwhile cold front approaches late Wednesday and generates a line of storms…timing—late Wednesday into early Thursday. A nice weekend shaping up with cool mornings, low humidity and mild afternoons.

For Louisville, one more day of mild weather with a few showers Wednesday and scattered showers Wednesday night. Rain continues into at least the first half of Thursday with noticeably cooler temperatures—highs only in the 60s and 40s for Friday morning.

SPANISH WORD FOR THE DAY
Today is our wedding anniversary so the word for today is love or amor, pronounced AH-more. My husband is my amor. Happy anniversary Gordy!

Early language learning enhances cognitive development and improves memory. And if you want the youngsters in your life to develop proper pronunciation, have them start language learning early. A great way to do that is by purchasing our award winning DVD, Let's Learn Spanish with Frank & Paco, Volume 1, a Dr. Toy Top 10 Educational Product of 2008 at http://www.frankandpaco.com/, Ventura's Educational Supply, Dolo Publications, Carlex Inc., The Curious Mind Store, amazon.com, bestbuy.com, and barnesandnoble.com.

AND MORE
Lots of great talks today at the National Weather Association but we did take a couple hours to sneak away to the Louisville slugger museum and factory. We were given an excellent 30 minute tour of the factory area. I got to touch a baseball that was custom ordered by Lance Berkmann (Astros). He’ll get it next, but he doesn’t know it was blessed by me first. Ha! Ha!

Today’s keynote address was by Jack Hayes, National Weather Service Director and perhaps even more exciting, Good Morning America went live with Sam Champion outside the conference hotel!!! This was definitely some excellent and much deserved publicity for the National Weather Association. Kudos to our president, John Scala, for getting all of this arranged. This workshop has had record attendance…about 560 folks.

Greg Forbes of The Weather Channel gave a talk about the tornado outbreak of 1974. Although he had done a thorough evaluation of the Monticello damage, he had not had a chance to see Xenia's. I was in Ohio in 1974 and I saw the damage...it was something else!!! Dr. Forbes compared the available radar technology to the improvements we have today.

There were so many terrific talks today, but I definitely had some favorites. Jeffrey Craven, was brave and extremely self-deprecating in his talk about a rare January tornado which touched down on January 7 in Wisconsin. Jeffrey is a fantastic severe weather forecaster, but even this one almost got the upper hand. Jeffrey was generous to give credit to the weather intern at the time who really thought mention of tornadoes should be in the forecast. I commend you Jeff on coming forth with this important talk—reminding us all not to stop looking at the weather carefully in all cases. I personally have had at least a few similar experiences. It is humbling and educational. I think every person in that room could relate to Jeff’s experience.

I learned a lot from Kristopher Nedka’s talk about Aviation Turbulence Signatures. Did you know that 1000 people a year are injured by turbulence? He showed one example where standard IR imagery failed to show turbulence which definitely showed up on the water vapor imagery. He also talked about overshooting tops and Rapid Anvil Expansion. There is no doubt that satellite imagery can provide our pilots with very important routing information.

Well it is our anniversary, so I gotta run! We already had a lovely dinner at the Rivue—voted Louisville’s most romantic restaurant. Our dessert was definitely hot…they lit it before serving!!!

Cecilia Sinclair
Wonder Weather Woman