Jason Godwin's Weather (and Other Stuff) Blog

Over the next several days, I will be chronicling a roadtrip through Colorado I took during the last week of September and first few days of October 2020. It had been a longtime "bucket list" item to see the aspens in Colorado during the fall, and I finally got to check this item off the list. It did not disappoint! The trip consisted of about seven days of camping and hiking in Colorado. While I reside in Fort Worth, the trip was "based" out of Norman where some friends and I met up. The purpose of this blog will be to recount some of the routes taken, sights seen, lessons learned, experiences that were had, and some of the challenges of a roadtrip amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. For this post, I start with "Day 0" as the day I drove from Fort Worth to Norman to prepare for the actual trip, as well as "Day 1" which is the drive out from Norman to Trinidad, Colorado. The dates covered here are September 25-26, 2020. The gang consisted of former Uni

Introduction With all the California wildfires in the news, and questions over whether these fires can be attributed to climate change, human activity (e.g. arson), or forestry management, I decided to take a look at the trends in the number of Red Flag days over the past few decades. "Red Flag" conditions are weather conditions that when combined with critical fuels (e.g. dead trees, grass build-up, etc.) and an ignition source (e.g. lightning, an ill-placed cigarette butt, etc.), will foster rapid fire growth. In general, the two main things you need for rapid fire growth are low humidity and high winds. The criteria for the National Weather Service to issue a Red Flag Warning will vary depending where in the country you are, and the criteria may be eased (either direction) a bit depending on fuels. For example, a local weather forecast office (WFO) may issue a warning below criteria if fuels are really primed (such as during a severe, long-term drought). Conversely, a WFO

  Panorama of my parents' neighborhood at the height of the flooding. My parents' house is the one on the left side of the image on top of the hill. On Friday, August 12, 2016, it started raining in Lafayette. Over the next two days, we would receive nearly 21 inches of rain (about one-third of the average annual rainfall). This was not the result of a tropical cyclone, but a large, persistent, and slow-moving MCS with access to a deep fetch of tropical moisture. Radar loop from NWS New Orleans. The spin you see is weak low pressure, not related to any kind of tropical storm or hurricane. Below is the 12Z (7:00 a.m. CDT) sounding from Slidell, LA the morning of August 12th (image created using SHARPpy). The vertical red line in the upper-left panel is temperature, and the green line is dewpoint. With these two lines nearly on top of each other from ground-level to the tropopause, we can see that the environment is extremely saturated. In fact, the sounding parameters in the low

This week, I am featuring an autumn photo for no reason other than I am ready for cooler weather! As I write this, nearby Fort Worth Alliance Airport is 91 F with a dewpoint of 70 F. Gross! This photo was taken in Devil's Den State Park in northwest Arkansas (not too far from Fayetteville). At the time this photo was taken, the temperature was somewhere in the low to mid 40s. My group and I had camped here the night before (and the night following). The first night, Fayetteville Drake Field Airport recorded a low temperature of 16 F! Luckily, I was using my REI Trail Pod 15 sleeping bag, which is rated for temperatures down to 15 F. While the forecast showed lows dropping into the upper teens, and I knew my coldest-rated sleeping bag only went down to 15 F, I brought the thermal layers and some extra blankets, and ended up being quite comfy. The hardest part was at some point, I had to get out of the bag and get a campfire going. A couple of other cold weather camping tips I lear

Mount Sneffels and the San Juan Mountains rise above the Uncompahgre River valley. At an elevation of 14,158 feet, Mount Sneffels is the highest peak in Ouray County, Colorado. This photo was taken from the Elk Ridge Campground at Ridgway State Park. This was the view from the south end of Loop E where we were camping for two nights. I highly recommend this campground if you are looking to do some hiking or exploring in the northern San Juan Mountains. The facilities were wonderful, and included showers, laundry, and a place to wash dishes. Be sure to check out nearby Ouray (particularly Box Canyon Falls, Cascade Falls, the Ouray hot springs, and the Perimeter Trail that offers wonderful views of Ouray and the surrounding San Juans). No trip to the San Juans is complete without a drive down the harrowing U.S. Highway 550, also known as the Million-Dollar Highway or San Juan Skyway. Check out the video below from YouTube user "JeepsterGal" who recorded an awesome video of

With snow in the forecast for North Texas, I figured it was a good week to feature a snow photo. This photo was taken on January 29, 2010, and shows the Oklahoma Memorial Union on the University of Oklahoma campus in the middle of a heavy snow event. In fact, this event is the largest single-day snowfall I have ever personally experienced. Growing up on the Gulf Coast, snow was quite rare, let alone accumulating snow. This occurred during my second semester at OU, so it was quite a treat for a Louisiana boy. Data from the NWS shows that Norman received 7-9 inches of snow, depending on which station you use. Either way, over half a foot of snow! In fact, Norman recorded the highest amount in the state for this particular day, though most of the Oklahoma City Metropolitan Area picked up at least six inches of snow. I'm doubtful the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex will see something like this on Tuesday night/Wednesday (unless you believe a few outlier runs of the GFS), but I do th

For this week's Photo of the Week (actually taken by my dad), I went into the archives again and found a picture of a beautiful sunset. But not just any sunset. This was the sunset the night before Hurricane Katrina's historic landfall on the Louisiana coast. Hurricane Katrina made landfall on August 29, 2005 (when I was a sophomore in high school), bringing catastrophic damage to southeast Louisiana and southern Mississippi, and in particular, in the Greater New Orleans area. This photo was taken from Lafayette, Louisiana (my hometown). The effects in Lafayette were actually fairly minimal, but Lafayette would experience moderate impacts from Hurricane Rita about a month later. I was already interested in weather around this time, but Katrina, along with the rest of the historic 2005 hurricane season, would help solidify my lifelong interest in meteorology.

For this week's featured photo, I went into the archives and found a photo from my days as a graduate student at University of Miami. This photo was taken along the Rickenbacker Causeway which connects Virginia Key and Key Biscayne to the mainland in Miami. I do not recall much that was specific about this thunderstorm from September 19, 2012, just that it was very photogenic. There were a few "appendages" on the bottom of the shelf cloud, but they were most likely scud clouds and probably not funnel clouds. Scattered to numerous thunderstorms occur on a near daily basis across South Florida from April through October. While they are rarely severe, they often produce abundant lightning and torrential rainfall. A few more photos of this thunderstorm can be found below. The top of the storm casts shadows on the higher clouds as the sun sets in the west. Note the sun setting behind the rain shaft. Looking back towards the Rickenbacker Causeway and the main