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Century Since the Storm: Forecasting the Fury

All Climate Blog Posts

Oct 17, 2013

Summer Projects: Leaf Wetness and its Effects

This post is part of a series highlighting the summer projects from our office’s undergraduate research assistants. The third part of this series is by Madeline Pope, a senior majoring in Environmental Science and minoring in Meteorology at NC State University. Everyone has seen it. You walk outside as the sun is rising and see…

Oct 9, 2013

Dryness Creeps Back in During September

Monthly statistics for September 2013:Statewide Average Precipitation: 3.00 inches (36th driest since 1895)Statewide Average Temperature: 69.1 degrees (42nd coolest since 1895)* Values generated from preliminary numbers Cool Temperatures Continue Much like the summer months, September was marked with temperatures on the cooler side of normal — 0.3°F cooler statewide, to be more precise. While most individual locations…

Oct 3, 2013

Summer Projects: Freeze Risk and a New ECONet Station

This post is part of a series highlighting the summer projects from our office’s undergraduate research assistants. The second post in this series is by Joseph Taylor, a recent graduate with degrees in Meteorology and Marine Science from NC State. I am currently researching how the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO)…

Sep 26, 2013

Summer Projects: Rainfall Study and Severe Weather Stats

This post is part of a series highlighting the summer projects from our office’s undergraduate research assistants. First up is Colin Loftin, a senior in Meteorology at NC State. This summer I completed two separate projects. For the first half of summer, I worked on a comparison of daily MPE (Multi-Sensor Precipitation Estimates) and PRISM…

Sep 17, 2013

Summer 2013 Recap and Fall Outlook

If you’ve been in North Carolina for the last few years, you would be forgiven for thinking this summer felt almost out of place. The heat and drought of recent years was nowhere to be found, replaced by cooler and wetter weather across the state and throughout much of the Southeast. Officially, the summer was…

Sep 10, 2013

Cooler Temperatures Across NC in August

Monthly statistics for August 2013:Statewide Average Precipitation: 5.00 inches (0.17 inches above normal)Statewide Average Temperature: 74.6°F (1.3°F below normal)* Values generated from preliminary numbers A Wet, Cool Summer Continues August in North Carolina was a continuation of the cool, wet conditions experienced in previous months. It didn’t rain quite as much, but temperatures continued to be below…

Sep 6, 2013

Century Since the Storm: Road to Recovery

This is the fourth and final part of our weeklong blog post series Century Since the Storm. Several days after the storm passed through and the rains and winds ended, its true toll on the coast of North Carolina became apparent. In towns like Washington, which saw a record-setting 10 feet of flooding, the first…

Sep 5, 2013

Century Since the Storm: Moment of Impact

This is the third part of our weeklong blog post series Century Since the Storm. Early on the morning of September 3rd, 1913, just before 4 a.m., the storm made landfall as a category 1 hurricane near Cape Lookout. The worst damage along the Outer Banks occurred north of Cape Lookout, which was within the…

Sep 4, 2013

Century Since the Storm: Forecasting the Fury

This is the second part of our weeklong blog post series Century Since the Storm. One of the greatest meteorological advances since 1913 is our improved ability to track and forecast hurricanes. These days, it is quite literally down to a science: Geostationary satellites observe systems from their birth as tropical thunderstorm clusters, reconnaissance aircraft…