A strong cold front passed through the area around 4-5 am today with gusty thunderstorms.  A few isolated severe t-storm warnings were issued.  Minor issues were reported due to the gusty winds.

A powerful storm will continue to reside over the northern Great Lakes through Tuesday.  This will keep gusty winds in the area today into tonight.

Winds will be sustained at 20 to 30 mph, but occasional gusts will be close to 45 mph.  A wind advisory is in effect for the entire viewing area.

Much cooler air will continue to settle into our area the next few days.  High temperatures will be hard-pressed to break out of the lower 60s.  Lows Tuesday night/Wednesday morning will drop to near 40°, and into the upper 30s Wednesday night/Thursday morning .  Areas well northwest of  Toledo could see the first frost of the season.

Temps will moderate a bit by the end of the week.

Thank you to all who participated and/or donated to this year’s Race For The Cure.  This is an event that continues to grow each year, and one that WTOL is very proud to be associated with.

Check out our race page HERE for pictures and clips.  We also have video of the 2 hour live coverage on that page as well.

Even though the race is over this year, you can still donate to the NW Ohio Komen charity HERE.

We have now closed the books on a somewhat cool summer.  After crunching all of the numbers, we ended up having about 51% of the days with above normal highs (46% were below normal, and 3% were exactly normal).

Some of these numbers are a little misleading — a lot of the days with “above” normal highs were just a few degrees above normal.  Some of the below normal days were well below normal.

Also — July is statistically the hottest part of the summer.  We actually had the 23 days in July with below normal highs, and never hit 90° during the month.

For the summer season, we used about 83% of our normal air conditioning.

Fall begins at 5:18 pm EDT tomorrow evening.  The autumnal equinox marks the time that the direct rays of the sun are directly over the equator.  Those direct rays will continue moving into the southern hemisphere as we get closer to winter.

The term equinox suggests equal daylight and darkness.  That is true closer to the equator.  Our sunrise Tuesday will be at 7:23 am, and the sunset will be at 7:32 pm.  We continue to lose about 2-3 minutes of daylight each day.  By Saturday, our amount of daylight will slip to just below 12 hours.

Normal high this week ranges 70°-72°, and the lows range 49°-51°.  Temps look like they will remain above normal until late in the weekend.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has just completed the implementation of a new generation of supercomputers to aid in weather and climate prediction.  The complete technology overhaul had a price tag of $180 million dollars.   The new computing power will allow NOAA to run more complex models in an effort to improve forecast accuracy and extend watch and warning lead times for severe weather, including hurricanes, tornadoes, air quality, wildfires, floods, tsunamis and winter storms.

The supercomputers have been named “Stratus” and are 4 times faster than the prior system.  Stratus has the ability to make 69.7 Trillion calculations per second!!!

Interesting facts about Stratus:

• The microprocessors inside Stratus contain 2,000 miles of copper wiring, enough to stretch from Washington, D.C. to the Grand Canyon.
• It would take one person with a calculator 3 million years to tabulate the number of calculations that Stratus can perform in a single second.
• Stratus would fit in half the size of a tennis court.
• Stratus is 34 times more powerful than the most powerful supercomputer in existence a decade ago.

The new computing power will give meteorologists better accuracy and precision in both short-term and long-term forecasting.

Other than some morning fog, the weather through the weekend will be quite tranquil.  Highs will be near or slightly above normal across the area.  Normal high is 76°.

There will be a few light scattered showers across northeast Ohio today and Saturday, but the rest of the region will stay dry.

This is a map showing rainfall from Friday through daybreak Monday.  As you can see, the active weather will be in the Plains, across the Gulf coast, and the northeast.

Those who watched the CBS Morning News/The Early Show a few years back may remember Mark McKewen.  He served as a weather anchor and entertainment reporter.

He suffered a serious stroke back in 2005, and was profiled by Harry Smith last year on The Early Show.

Mark filed a lawsuit against the emergency room doctor who treated originally him.   A decision was handed down yesterday.  For more details, check out the full story from the Associated Press.

The high humidity, recent rainfall and calm winds are creating some areas of dense fog.  Some locations across Hancock, Hardin, Allen, Putnam, Henry, William & Fulton counties have visibilites near or below 1/4 mile.

Fog will dissipate between 8 and 9 am.

With cooler temps and more breaks in the clouds tonight, there will be more widespread fog Thursday morning.

For current school delays, check out our Just In, Always On page, and you can also sign up for Text It.

September 10th is statistically the peak of hurricane season, which runs June 1 to November 30.  Ocean water temps have warmed after a summer of heating, and the upper air winds cooperate a bit more at times.

We have two systems that we are tracking:

1)  In the Pacific, tropical storm Linda is located well west of North & Central America.  Forecasts take Linda slowly northward as she weakens.  She will be no threat to Mexico, the continential USA or Hawaii.

2)  In the Atlantic, tropical storm Fred has formed west of Africa.  Similar to Linda, his track takes him northward as he weakens. 

The National Hurricane Center is also watching an area along coastal North Carolina, but it does not show immediate signs of developing.

After a decent dry stretch from last week into the weekend, we’ve transitioned to a temporarily wet pattern.  A slow-moving storm system is to our southwest, and it keeping some showers and thunderstorms around.

With the higher humidity levels and slow-moving areas of rain & storms, locally heavy rainfall has been occurring.  Some spots on Labor Day received between 1 & 2 inches of rain, and a few areas may pick up an inch or more today.

The wetter pattern will break down tomorrow and Thursday with only isolated thunderstorms possible.