Hurricane Earl poses some threat to the East Coast.

North Carolina and Eastern New England could be brushed by Earl.  The storm will be closest to NJ about Friday.  It should miss us.

Heavy downpours in parts of NJ. Tropics getting active.

Add caption

A Cape Verde type storm has begun forming East of Africa.

• There is a chance for a near miss from a hurricane in 10 to 15 days according to Dr. Jeff Masters at the Weatherunderground.  Bermuda may be in the path.  But it is way too early to get worried.  Lots of things can change.
• Most areas get 1 to 2 inches of rain with the most northern locations reporting 3 to 4 inches.

Good chance for rain today and later this week.

Right now, rain is headed for northern areas and, more rain may fall tonight.  When you are in a drought as we currently are, you have to keep your fingers crossed for rain.  Forecasts for rain tend to go bust when the drought hangs on stubbornly. 


 When droughts do break, it tends to happen in a big way.

Historic heat wave: is it Global Warming?....maybe.

The heat wave in Russia is greater than anything in the historic records available.  Unfortunately, written numerical records are available for only about 130 years.  In the USA, we are in the same situation, only 100 to 150 years of weather data.  Colonial accounts of brutal winters with great snows have no measurements, usually.  You can read about a winter when the horses could not move through the deep snow, yet, no one actually measured the depth.

The 1936 summer is the Grandaddy of all USA heat waves, with widespread temperatures of 100 degrees or better.  Some of those records still stand today.

In 2003, Europe had a brutal heatwave with as many as 25,000 to 50,000 deaths blamed on excessive heat.

People in France and England learned that air conditioning is not an unnecessary luxury, because they "never get" hot summers.

But, these are all weather events, not climate change indicators.  One hot summer does not mean Global Warming is here.  Nor does a cold, snowy winter such as we just had, mean that Global Warming is only a hoax.

If only we would stop thinking that current weather tells us how the climate will shape up for the next 30 to 50 years.  Responsible climatologists insist that while we have had plenty of warm weather, the last couple of decades, we just don't know if it is because of a climate change, that is already underway.

Climatologists think in periods of many decades, if not centuries.  So we just don't know for sure.  But current trends, if they continue, could change all that.

My own sense, is that we are being hit by a combination of natural cycles and warming caused by human activity.  The CO2 warming theory is sound, but how soon will it happen and how bad will it be? We don't really know.  By the time we do know, it will be too late to change anything.  And when you think about it, it is probably too late already.  Stop burning oil,gas,coal,wood etc.?  How do we do that?
Solar is too expensive, nuclear too dangerous (for some people )  and wind power too limited.

Hey, if it is hot in NYC, why don't we plant more trees and paint all the roofs white?  It might help.

Green energy sources are worth pursuing with or without Global Warming so, why not?  I don't like sending my dollars overseas every time that I fill up my gas tank.  Do you?

CSU still predicting active hurricane season.

Dr. Gray still expects about 18 storms this season and about half of those will become hurricanes.  Tropical depression Colin is very weak but may gain strength over the next several days well east of Florida.


We are only now just beginning to enter the time of most frequent storm development.  The probability of tropical storms increases quickly as August progresses.


July was a hot month with NYC metro temps about 5 degrees above normal.  Baltimore was even hotter.