Great night for football!  Clear, calm and turning cooler after sunset this evening.  Enjoy the beautiful fall evening!

It’s my favorite time of the year.  Honeycrisp apples, apple cider, pumpkin doughnuts, applebutter are just a few of my favorite things.  It’s also a great time to visit many of our local communities with fall festivals.  Here are a few going on this weekend:

Appleumpkin Fest –Tecumseh, MI

Oktoberfest — Put-In-Bay, OH

Applebutter Fest– Grand Rapids, OH

With dry and sunny weather all week, be prepared for the fall color to sprout out!  Our peak colors will arrive in the middle of October.

Septermber of 2011 tied for the 5th wettest September on record.  Enough with the rain already, right?  Looks like early October will trend toward a much warmer and drier pattern.

Rainfall totals continue to pile up with many areas around 2″ or more in a 12 hour period since midnight.  Flood warnings posted for several counites in and around I-75.  Here are some radar estimates of rainfall as a 11 AM Monday.

Hancock County and Surrounding Areas:

Lucas/Wood and Surrounding Areas:

This puts the monthly rainfall well over 5″ and will likely put us in line for reaching into one of the top 10 wettest months of September on record. 

Everything is bigger in Texas…apparently it’s hotter too.   On Tuesday, September 13th Dallas, Texas recorded a record high of 107°.

What’s even more amazing about this is the number 70, as in the number of times Dallas has reached 100° or warmer this year.  This sets the record for the most 100° degree days ever recorded in a year for the city surpassing 1980 (69 days)

How would that compare to Toledo?  We recorded 100° only once — thankfully so — this year.  That was on July 21st when the mercury soared to 102°.

Enough model uncertainty still exists so it remains a “close call” but all indications point toward a sharp turn in Hurricane Katia by Thursday morning.  This should steer the then major hurricane back out to the Atlantic Ocean avoiding any significant impact on the US coastline.

Current Satellite Imagery:

Latest forecast path:

Check back for the latest updates through the week!

Sometime this afternoon, after further aircraft reconnaissance missions through the circulation of Katia, it will likely be determined that hurricane force winds have been established.  This will make for the 2nd hurricane of the season.

Katia will likely intensify into a major Category 3 hurricane by this weekend, but is expected to remain mainly over water with very minimal impacts through the weekend.  Atmospheric steering currents will likely bear a re-curving effect on this storm directing it northward into the Atlantic.  (*Note this steering current is often due to a Atlantic Subtropical high pressure system, or a Bermuda high)  At this point concern for a landfall on the US coastline appears to be low. 

On the other hand, computer models indicate tropical wave over the Gulf of Mexico may have a more immediate effect on the United States.  Pictured below is the GFS forecast model valid Sunday afternoon.  Notice the tropical development in the Gulf of Mexico.

Within the next 24 hours Irene’s extreme impact will be felt across North Carolina.  She is now expected to make landfall as a strong category 2 hurricane.  A slight decrease in the intensity is due to upper level shear it is battling just off the eastern seaboard.  This shear and the slightly weaker projection is a sliver of good news in an otherwise dire situation that still exists.  Severe coastal flooding and erosion, inland flooding and damaging winds are still all major hazards through the weekend all along the east coast.

The second landfall is still expected through the day Sunday on the Island of Long Island.  This could be the strongest hurricane to hit Long Island since Hurricane Gloria in 1985. 

Updated Hurricane Track:

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