phdhorn

Not much new. Track keeps shifting oh so slightly E/NE - new dip in Jet stream far south will suck it up like a straw, should keep moving fast.. If it does and doesn't slow down in the Gulf (not likely), that'll be good. Right now a lot of forces are fighing on it - on one hand warm water and open sea, good for restrengthening. On the other, dry air (from being over land, Beryl's now of course close to the large continental land mass with drier air, and some shear, which leads to continued disorganization. NHC thinks though it'll ramp up somewhat quickly very near the TX coast. Still think a 90-100 mph Cat1/2. However if a fast mover as currently, that'll help reduce the damage. Once it gets about = latitude with Houston or just north, it'll zip away when the Jet grabs it, probably 20-30 mph. But yeah there's gonna be some flooding on the coast where flooding is common. But hopefully it'll zip away. Austin, too early to tell, max a dousing of 4+ inches mostly central-east. Min nothing and you'll like it. Probably in the middle. Unfortunately little/no lake help I'll check back in over next 2 days, if anyone has question or comment. ) (Sorry hit the wrong durn button 'afore posting, so I added some.

... and Maria was retired by the NHC in 2017 specifically because of that storm (look it up, it's on the Internet!). They don't always get every common name, but yeah, they definitely try to use uncommon names now. Not saying everyone walks around traumatized, but yes, definitely, that's why the names are weird or weirdly spelled - to avoid associations with people of those more common names, plus the obvious awkwardness of renaming a storm which has an infamous history. Read this from NHC Page:

Hurricane Asshole would be a great name.

Hi, a few notions: 1) They give weird, psychotic names to storms because if a storm is bad and is known for death and destruction, people with that name will always be associated with that storm. Hence, no "Johns", "Helens", "Marias", etc. More like Lothar, Mairyee (i.e. psychotic spellings of common names), etc. They used to give more common names but developed that syndrome, plus bad storms tend to get their names retires, i.e. there won't be a Katrina or Camille ever again. likely. 2) This one looks to be doing what most do, angle up east of Austin. Once that high moved off to Florida, I thought it might. 3) Rain therefore is impossible to predict because it's impossible to know where the rain bands will fall out, especially on the dry side. 4) Almost certainly not a lake filler - looks pretty certain that most of the rain will be Coastal Plain into maybe 15 miles west of Austin at most. Of course it could wobble. That's why rain could be next to nothing up to 2-3 inches around ATX. But not widespread, lakes won't see much rise. 5) Look to Cat 2 (at least) if it jogs north and hits land (say s. of Galveston) relatively later; if it hits sooner (i.e. Corpus or s.) high Cat 1. Warm waters but a little shear in the Gulf, so it's a toss-up but I think it'll easy get to 80-90 again if not hit 100. Remember this thing went from cough cough to Cat 5 in 48 hrs., though under different (i.e. mid-Atlantic) conditions. 6) Coastal Plain flooding if Beryl slows down, but so far this has been a pretty fast storm and they speed up once on land. If it stalls near the coast could be trouble, but so far it's keeping up speed (moving 12-15 mph now, decently fast for a tropical storm). Houston could see flooding if it jogs more N/NE but again, all depends on strength and speed. Right now I think minor flooding bc of its movement speed. Will be back if any concern. For now, not really.

Posting because this was kind of unusual in.. not 'posta happen. Last night's version of strong storms which have essentially been parked all week along a frontal boundary straddling TX/OK border running NE into AR, MO and IA set off a strong outflow boundary (a buncha cold air pushing down the storms and out, i.e. S/SW towards us) which like a blowdryer simply pushed all the unstable, smoky, muggy air outta CenTex and replaced it with dry air. It kicked up some storms but not nearly the activity that it could have... I think one reason is that the boundary whooshed by so fast (it kinda took on a life of its own rolling down the state) that storms simply didn't have much of a chance to build - at least here (east of us there was a larger chunk of Gulf stanky moist air, and the boundary wasn't as fast-moving there and had time to kick up some mess). Once the wind started whooshing by me at 40 mph I knew something was weird... it was supposed to be muggy most of the day, but suddenly it's 83° and sunny (after a brief light shower). I wasn't expecting a strong front coming in, but that's pretty much what happened... this outflow boundary got so much punch it essentially acted like a major front. Simply pushed out all the muggy air and the atmosphere got much more stable (and capped). Definitely not the way this afternoon was supposed to look (but I'll take it). As a result, the severe weather forecast for most of CenTex has been downgraded - the atmosphere is nowhere nearly as unstable this morning. However, the heat of the day combined with storms forming N of us and moving S is still a possibility. However, most of the worst is now forecast to be NE of the Austin area. Chances are good that no rain will come out of this for many in ATX, more likely the farther E/NE you live from Austin. Frankly I'll take it. I know rain is a precious commodity right now, but the severe setup for this evening wasn't very reassuring - good chance of very strong winds, a few tornadoes, and hail in a good part of the are (3 out of 5 "enhanced" risk). Now it's 2 out of 5, which basically means less chance over your house in particular. It could still throw a severe storm or 2 in the area, but a 2 is a lot less worrisome than a 3. Also, some good chances of rain all week so not completely hopeless. Just thought this was worth it, since we got something that was not forecast at all, and completely turned the day around weatherwise, FWIW.

Well that was fun! The gorgeous blues of a clear sky weren't visible but otherwise pretty cool. That last minute where it gets geometrically darker/faster is still something to behold. Also cool to compare the two (2017) for me. BTW roosters did start crowing here and birds definitely stopped completely, we were looking for that and got it. BTW, this was the one hope I/many others had - a recently-discovered confirmation of a long-believed phenomenon. This article is why the clouds parted enough when it seemed like all hope was lost. A quick and good read. https://www.sciencealert.com/clouds-vanish-during-a-solar-eclipse-and-we-finally-know-why Talk to you in 300 years when the next one hits ATX!

Same photo above enhanced with NASA AI digital technology:

Don't read the KXAN forecast for the next 2 hours if you don't wanna be disserpointieyed.* (*of course, they could be wrong, just like Spencer has been for about 80% of this forecast).

Best loop of clouds (visible blue - not the most promising, the stuff is moving N/NE just ahead of the moon!) However, you can see a stream of dry air that's trying to work its way SE. Maybe that'll be the big surprise for the day! FYI: https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/sector_band.php?sat=G16&sector=sp&band=01&length=24

Hi, thought I'd chime in, to no one's anticipation. Weather - clouds could break, but I did a look-see of the GOES satellite and clouds are thickening from the SW (where this flow is coming from). Still could easily be breaks in the clouds here and there, but generally not going to get an unobstructed total view, which is amazing. My guess though is clouds slightly worsen as the low in Nevada starts throwing clouds our way the rest of the morning. Hope there are some peepholes though. Eclipse tidbits: 1) Once the sun *completely* is obscured by the moon, it's absolutely ok to look at it without eye protection (no "hidden" damaging rays or whatnot). But once *any* (and I mean even .001%) of the sun breaks back out, you'd better not be looking. Everyone's retinas are different - mine can absorb a quick glance but some people get permanent blind spots. Know the start and end time to within a few secs. 2) Don't waste time jacking with equpiment and miss it. Take a picture or video but the best part is experiencing it with full attention. Trust me on this. Plus there will be billions of pictures/videos of it, even if you pride your own. 3) If you've never seen a total, it's galactically different, and I mean hugely, than even a 99.99% partial. The coolest thing you can experience is that last .01% shadow of the moon creeping over the land and then at your site. Everything changes in an instant. You go into a completely different world with that .last .01% disappearring. 4) How dark does it get during totality? NOT 100% black. More like 30 mins. after sunset. Dark blue. But that amazing black disk above provides a sort of heavenly shadowy light. Nothing like it. I'll leave you with a shot I took of the 2017 clipse in Illinois, ironically enough the exact same spot where this one will cross (center of the "X" of the two tracks if you will). I had enhanced the moon's blackness a bit in this (not totally, pun intended) as often the sun, even eclipsed, will bleed into the black moon and wash it out (doesn't happen with naked eye). Hope you can get a peek at least. Nothing like it (alas, on a clear day, though). 2017 (sky is about the right color, in real life maybe a shade darker (camera tried a bit to adjust the light, but it's about 90% accurate IMHO):

Homestead, next door. Learned last night that Austin Energy issued an apology to us over the news, neighbor captured screenshot but I haven't seen it yet. I guess that's a start!

Thanks. You can sign up with a Learn To Read program - for free! - in Austin if you need help. But I understand.

One more time. Precip over for CenTex, as expected not a big deal. Weather services did really good on this event, which is not easy. Travel E of U.S. 77 today dicey - because icy. Take care. Finally, a little "glad I'm not that guy" satisfaction by relative position comment. Yesterday Austin had about 174 customers without power max in the day. 171 of them were my neighborhood. Power went out about 9:45 a.m. Sunday. After the usual AE claptrap on their outage site, and a seeming update (2 hours est. restore, which was goalpost-moved about 6 times), they extended the estimated fix out to midnight (from about noon when they gave us that one). Missus and i said skrew that, we hopped on over to a nice hotel in Lakeway for the evening - good decision. Then we read a cryptic share posted by our Bee Cave Mayor (Bee Cave has one and it's not (quite) Gomer Pyle or Helen Crump). She was sharing blamespeak by AE, stuff like "when the developer put this in he did blah blah.." and tech speak like "we need to have a loop return to allow multiple access to the location" - sounded more like a sex ed talk on fertilization than electric stuff. But what got us was this part: "We have yet to determine the actual location of the break (although somehow they seemed to know enough to blame it on "someone digging" - yet no name, location, or purpose given. Ni-i-i-ce deflection). So "after 4 hours we have no idea what happened or where to try and find the problem." Beautiful. The days before, I spent some time prepping the well as usual with space heater and a few lights, always works. But now there was no power to it - would it be pointless? That was about my only worry, the rest I said we'd deal with if/when. But we were not gonna sit in a cold house staring at dying phones. Eventually they gave "good news" on the outage app - our power would return by 7:30 p.m. Sure enough, neighbors reported power at about that time - followed by a flickering over the next hour - followed by power going out - again. Oops. No problem, you guys are pros. Apparently acc. to neighbor texts, power finally restored w/o flickering 1:30 a.m. We returned home from a great relaxing stay by about 10:30 this a.m. House warm water flowing(!) except for final stop (bathroom faucets). I opened cabinets and expect it to thaw, keeping an eye out for problems. But we have water! 3 ice/major cold event, 3 power fails. Neighborhood is pissed. We're going to go to the mayor with pitchforks and tell her to get someone from AE out here to do a damn assessment of the infrastructure. If the neighborhood wiring is akin to the Douglas phone-on-the-pole on Green Acres, then we want to know so we can outlay to fix it. "The way it was done 50 years ago" is complete bullshit. AE ran a Usain Bolt dash out here in the 70's to claim electric here with Pedernales in the area. So now, you bastiges fix it. Yeah, like that'll happen. The '21 storm I can sort of understand (though we found out our outage was due to a transformer blow and power would have remained on otherwise). The '23 Ice Dump - again a piece of infrastructure went kerplunk and we were without for 24+ hours. This one? Proud to say that in the vast, great expanse of the Greater Austin Metroplex, one neighborhood - one tiny, lil' group of settlements - mine - was out - the ONLY group outage all day. We're gonna do some stuff and stuff to get some answers. Not cool. Most of the time, the fear and paranoia preceding one of these events is regrettable if not funny (though after '21 peoples' anxieties can certainly be more understood). But apparently in our enclave, if you get below 30°, those scenarios are real. This isn't a destitute area and we want answers - the authorities say they'll give them to us after this - but of course we'll see. But if it's time to upgrade something, then DO IT. I do have a 15K big honking generator that will easily power the entire house if needed. So why didn't I set it up? Good question but long answer. However next time I'll probably drag the SOB out and get it ready if needed. With this event, even with our recent history, I couldn't conceive of losing power - ERCOT had a lot, there was NO precip (at least power-killing kind) in this forecast, zip. I thought no problem. Wrong [Trump meme]. Half-confidently expect power to hold, if not we'll motor it to the hotel for another night. So much better. So yeah, you weren't "that guy." See ya at the next weather disaster - whether real or overblown. Stay cool.

Someone tapped me from the grave to see if I was alive c/o this thingy whatever. Looks like y'all got the typical things covered: panic buying (seen plenty of that myself the last 36 hours) are we going to die, 10 ton chunks of ice falling overnight Sun/Mon, -450 in the sun, the grid, Old faithful sized pipe bursts, drip vs non drip, people at the stores are assholes, Noadic flooding, 500 day supply of chili, etc. Me: going to get really cold, then it won't. Brief cold event, zero or very spotty ice event, always spotty issues with power or burst pipes, don't see any statewide power problems, mostly sporadic local, yes take it seriously but for the most part just a few vrry cold days, fortunately almost no precip to speak of with it. Shouldn't stand out from many we've had before. That's all I got. I'll look in here later tonight. Otherwise, good luck, we're not counting on you.

Oopsch! <Hic!> https://www.ftvlive.com/sqsp-test/2023/7/17/cops-camp-the-cuffs-on-longtime-austin-anchor?format=amp