Rain in Forecast/Hurricane Felicia/Best Cancer Treatment

HURRICANES AND WEATHER
Tropical Atlantic is quiet. In the Pacific, Enrique is a tropical depression. Felicia should start to weaken soon. But according to the National Hurricane Center, a weakened depression over tropical storm strength version of it should move over Hawaii late Monday. More to come on that.

Ridge is shifting eastward and it is going to be a very hot weekend from the southern plains into the southeast with middle and high 90s and highs humidity. There will be thunderstorms in many locations but the severe threat will be in the northern plains and western Great Lakes states.

Houston hit 99 on Friday. Some isolated storms brought 1.5 inches of rain to Sugar Land and 1.3 inches in League City. Isolated storms are possible again on Saturday with highs in the middle to upper 90. Looks like there will be some scattered storms on Sunday with slightly cooler temperatures.

SPANISH WORD OF THE DAY
Let's do tratimiento, pronounced trah-tee-mee-EHN-toe. There is a unique cancer tratimiento in Houston. Learn about it in the AND MORE section.

Our award winning DVD, Let's Learn Spanish with Frank & Paco, is on the shelves of Barnes & Noble store throught the US. Please look for it and encourage your family and friends to purchase it. We are being tested. We gave them 650 DVDs and in 6 weeks, 43 have sold. I was told by our distributor that is excellent for an educational product in the summer. It should keep us in Barnes & Noble's good graces. But, it sure would help if we sold more. You can also order your copy from www.frankandpaco.com/. You can also order from http://www.venturaes.com/, http://www.dololanguages.com/, http://www.carlexonline.com,www.thecuriousmindstore.com/, http://www.amazon.com/, http://www.bestbuy.com/, and http://www.barnesandnoble.com/. For our English as a Second Language (ESL) version, go to http://www.frankypaco.com/.

AND MORE
I put a picture of the MD Anderson Proton Therapy Treatment Center to the right. This is where my stepdad recently completed a course of treatment. This is more than just your standard radiation treatment. This is a very specific radiation that starts and ends at precisely the right point to avoid damaging healthy tissue ahead of and behind the cancer area. There are only 2 facilities in the world which have this kind of technology and this is one of them. My stepdad was able to lead his normally crazy busy life with a minimal impact. We are happy to report that he has completed the course of treatment--I believe there were 38 sessions. His followup will be in 3 months.

As I've mentioned, I am on the board of The John C. Freeman Weather Museum. The associated Weather Research Center does lots of research including tropical meteorology. Their forecast for this year is 7 named storms, 4 of those hurricanes. On August 4th (3 days ago), Dr. William Gray and colleage Dr. Phil Klotzbach issued a revised forecast for this season (partly based on the El Nino which as developed). They are now calling for 10 named storms, 4 of those hurricanes, 2 of those major hurricanes. They forecast issued in early June called for 11, 5, and 2 respectively. An average season has 10, 6 and 2 respectively. The following is an excerpt from a report recently released by the Weather Research Center discussing how we have had no storms yet and how that does not guarantee a problem free season (as proven through previous seasons with slow starts).

"Since Weather Research Center [WRC] does not update their Seasonal urricane Outlook during the season, they continue to expect a total of seven namedstorms in the Atlantic with four intensifying into hurricanes. There have been 30 otherhurricane seasons when the first storm formed after August 1, since 1900. There have been only four seasons [1941, 1920, 1914 and 1905] when the first storm formed afterSeptember 1. The last time we experienced a similar late season start was 2004 whenAlex formed on August 1, according to Weather Research Center [WRC] meteorologist Jill F. Hasling. However, a late start does not mean a break. For example, Ivan theTerrible occurred in 2004 and in 1988, Gilbert became a large Category 5 hurricane.And who could forget Hurricane Alicia in 1983 which was a Category 3 hurricane whenit made landfall in Galveston.The peak of activity for the Atlantic Hurricane Season is from August 15 to September15 so we still need to be prepared.WRC’s 2009 outlook gives the Louisiana to Alabama coast the highest risk ofexperiencing a tropical storm or hurricane. Additionally, the outlook anticipates seven hurricane days and 47 tropical storm days during this year’s season.Below is a table of the date of the first named storms in the years indicated. There were 30 years from 1900 to 2008 when the date of the first storm was after July 31. There were 18 years whenthe date of the first storm was August 15 or later, 12 years when the date of the first storm wasafter August 20, and four seasons when the date of the first storm was after August 31. Thelatest date for the first named storm was September 15. In other words you have 27.5% chanceof having the first storm after July 31st, 16.5% chance of having the first storm after August 14th, 11% chance of having the first storm after August 20th and 3.7% chance of having the first storm after August 31st."

Speaking of The Weather Research Center, they have a wonderful model page. If you want to see some of the models meteorologists enjoy reviewing, go to this link:

http://wxresearch.com/model.html

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!
Cecilia Sinclair
Wonder Weather Woman