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Wet Start to the Olympics
Showers dampened the Opening Ceremonies of the Summer Olympics in Paris, France. Last I checked, Paris had 0.61" of rain and it was still raining lightly. More scattered showers are possible this Saturday. Paris has now had measurable rain on 5 of the last 7 days. The forecast calls for a relatively cool day today with more clouds than sun and highs in the low 70s. Sunshine returns in full force on Sunday with a high near 80°. Then the heat and humidity return with highs in the upper 80s on Monday and perhaps 90° on Tuesday. Wednesday there's a chance of a shower or storm. Paris has had just one 90-degree day so far this this summer.
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Colder Water Due to Upwelling at Lake Michigan
Lake Michigan water temperatures north of Saugatuck have fallen significantly due to the process of upwelling. Upwelling occurs when an offshore wind blows the surface water away from the nearshore area, allowing cold water to rise from the bottom of the lake to the surface. This process can happen relatively quickly. (top pic. is the South Haven Beach at midday Friday) The graphic above shows what happens when there is upwelling. The wind (sometimes brisk) blows from the land out over the water. In West Michigan, that means the wind is from the north, northeast or east. The wind pushes the warmer, surface water away from shore toward the middle of the lake. Then colder water from well below the surface rises to the surface to replace it. Here's a graph of the water temperature at Ludington over the past 6 days. Note that the water temperature was in the low 70s several days ago. Winds turned to the north and the water temperatures fell about 20 degrees into the low 50s. The beach water temperature at Ludington was 66° on Wednesday and it's fallen to 50° today (Friday). As the wind turns back to the southwest and west, warmer water will move back toward the shore. Note there was much less upwelling south of about Saugatuck. Here's water temperatures Friday AM: Ludington Beach 50°, Pentwater 56°, Muskegon 54°, Hoffmaster S.P. 54°, Grand Haven 54°, Holland 60°. The water temperature was 72° at the South Haven buoy, where the water temperature only fell from 72° to 69° and is now back up to 71.6°. Warmer water will move back to the shore over the next couple days. Water temperatures of the inland lakes are much warmer as I type this. The sensor at Reeds Lake in East Grand Rapids is 79° (Friday PM). Here you can read about a classic case of upwelling that occurred here in West Michigan in 2018. The water temperature at the Ludington buoy fell 27.6 degrees in 7 hours!
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Beach and Boating forecast: July 25, 2024
SAUGATUCK, Mich. (WOOD) — As July comes to a close, warmer temperatures will return and stretch into next week. WATER TEMPERATURES As far as Thursday goes, it was rather cold for those who took a dip into the water. While fairly light, a northerly wind kicked in Thursday morning, leaving behind much cooler water temperatures at local beaches. This is known as upwelling. It occurs typically with a north or east wind that pushes warmer water on the surface away, allowing cooler water beneath to rise to the top. Most beaches reported water temperature readings in the low to mid-50s Thursday morning. Some improvement is expected to come this weekend as sunshine and warmer air returns. Storm Team 8 Forecast 80S AND SUNSHINE Friday is expected to be one of the coolest days of the upcoming eight-day forecast. Highs will reach the upper 70s at the lakeshore with plenty of sunshine. By Saturday and Sunday, highs hold in the low to mid-80s. Though a mostly dry start to the weekend, a chance for some showers and thunderstorms will arrive Sunday evening. UNSETTLED PATTERN Only one of the last seven days has produced measurable rainfall in Grand Rapids. That all changes into next week. The first chance for showers and thunderstorms arrives by Sunday evening. At this time, a few storms may be strong to severe. The overall threat remains rather low. Sign up for the Storm Team 8 daily forecast newsletter As the chances for rain increase, so do the wave heights. Expect yellow flags to be flying at most beaches come Saturday and Sunday as wave heights reach up to the 3 feet. STAYING WARM No signs of a cooldown are in sight. Into the first week of August, Michigan and nearly all of the Midwest has a good probability of seeing above-average highs. The Lake Michigan Beach and Boating forecast is sponsored by Green Shield Deck Builders and West Michigan Toyota Dealers.
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Tiny temperature drop made Tuesday the world’s second-hottest day
BENGALURU, India (AP) — Global temperatures dropped a minuscule amount after two days of record highs, making Tuesday only the world's second-hottest day ever. The European climate service Copernicus calculated that Tuesday’s global average temperature was 0.01 Celsius (0.01 Fahrenheit) lower than Monday's all-time high of 17.16 degrees Celsius (62.8 degrees Fahrenheit), which was .06 degrees Celsius hotter (0.1 degrees Fahrenheit) than Sunday. Storm Team 8 Forecast All three days were hotter than Earth’s previous hottest day in 2023. “The steady drumbeat of hottest-day-ever records and near-records is concerning for three main reasons. The first is that heat is a killer. The second is that the health impacts of heat waves become much more serious when events persist. The third is that the hottest-day records this year are a surprise,” said Stanford University climate scientist Chris Field. Field said high temperatures usually occur during El Nino years — a natural warming of the equatorial Pacific that triggers weather extremes across the globe — but the last El Nino ended in April. Field said these high temperatures “underscores the seriousness of the climate crisis." “This has been, I mean, probably the shortest-lived record ever,” Copernicus Director Carlo Buontempo said Wednesday, after his agency calculated that Monday had beaten Sunday’s mark. And he predicted that mark would also quickly fall. “We are in uncharted territory.” Before July 3, 2023, the hottest day measured by Copernicus was 16.8 degrees Celsius (62.2 degrees Fahrenheit) on August 13, 2016. In the last 13 months that mark has now been beaten 59 times, according to Copernicus. Humanity is now “operating in a world that is already much warmer than it was before,” Buontempo said. “Unfortunately people are going to die and those deaths are preventable,” said Kristie Ebi, a public health and climate professor at the University of Washington. “Heat is called the silent killer for a reason. People often don’t know they’re in trouble with heat until it’s too late.” In past heat waves, including in 2021 in the Pacific Northwest, heat deaths didn’t start piling up until day two, Ebi said. “At some point, the accumulated heat internally becomes too much, then your cells and your organs start to warm up,” Ebi said. Lake Michigan Summer Beach Guide Last year, the United States had its most recorded heat deaths in more than 80 years, according to an Associated Press analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. The death certificates of more than 2,300 people mentioned excessive heat. Heat killed 874 people in Arizona, 450 in Texas, 226 in Nevada, 84 in Florida and 83 in Louisiana. Earlier this year, India witnessed prolonged heatwaves that resulted in the death of at least 100 people. However, health experts say heat deaths are likely undercounted in India and potentially other countries. The “big driver” of the current heat is greenhouse gas emissions, from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, Buontempo said. Those gases help trap heat, changing the energy balance between the heat coming in from the sun and that escaping Earth, meaning the planet retains more heat energy than before, he said. Tips to protect your skin while in the sun this summer Other factors include the warming of the Pacific by El Nino; the sun reaching its peak cycle of activity; an undersea volcano explosion; and air with fewer heat-reflecting particles because of marine fuel pollution regulations, experts said. The last 13 months have all set heat records. The world’s oceans broke heat records for 15 months in a row and that water heat, along with an unusually warm Antarctica, are helping push temperatures to record level, Buontempo said. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see Thursday, Friday and Saturday also set new warmest day records,” said climate scientist Andrew Weaver at the University of Victoria in Canada, which has been broiling in the warmth.
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Ask Ellen: What’s this weird beam on radar?
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — Frequent West Michigan radar watchers may have noticed a weird feature that occasionally appears jutting from the Grand Rapids Airport. This perfectly straight radial beam isn't always visible but when it appears, its always to the northwest in a straight line. Download the free Storm Team 8 weather app How does a radar work? A radar works by sending a beam of microwave energy out into the atmosphere as it completes a full 360° rotation. Next, the radar stops transmitting and switches into "receive" mode to see if any energy is bounced back by particles in the sky. For the first sweep, a radar will adjust the beam to transmit out 0.5° above the horizon. Then, for every successive sweep the radar will be sent out at a slightly higher tilt. For example, after the 0.5° beam is sent out and received, the radar will move up to 0.8°, and so on. As the beam of energy travels out from the radar in a straight line, it will naturally gain height as it gets further from the radar site. In fact, a radar beam shot out at 0.5° will intersect the bottom of a storm closer to the radar, and the middle of a storm further away from the radar. This has to do with the fact that a radar beam travels in a straight line, but the curvature of the earth increases the distance between the energy beam and the ground. Radar limitations, courtesy of the National Weather Service A weather radar is perfectly tuned to detect hydrometers large and small. Occasionally, beam energy can be bounced back by birds, bats, or bugs. Luckily, a weather radar has a way of discerning the shape of an object allowing the output on a map to filter out the riffraff and plot rain, snow, sleet, and hail (with some occasional exceptions). So, what causes the straight line spiking from the radar? It's not a bird, it's not a plane, it's a water tower. In West Michigan, most of the radar data comes from the weather radar located at the GR Ford Airport. Unfortunately, a large water tower sits along Patterson, north of 36th Street, just to the northwest of the radar's location. The radar beam being broadcast at 0.5° often has not gained enough height off the ground to clear the water tower by that point. However, daily atmospheric conditions influence the behavior of the beam. This means some days the beam might shoot just above the water tower. Many days, the radar beam is blocked leaving a blank spike shooting out to the northwest on single-site radar displays. Many weather apps use radar data collaboratively across the nation and will use math and additional data or scans to "fill in" the gap.
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FEMA denied May 7 disaster declaration. What now?
PORTAGE, Mich. (WOOD) — Southwest Michigan homeowners were disappointed when they learned the Federal Emergency Management Agency denied the state's request for a major disaster declaration. John Conroy, who lives in the Oak Brook Estates in Portage, told News 8 Wednesday that while the area looks much better now than it did the night of the May 7 tornado, the sounds of chainsaws and hammers persist. "I hope the governor does appeal and I hope for a better outcome next time," he said. FEMA denies disaster declaration for May 7 tornadoes In a Tuesday letter to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, FEMA said that the initial information submitted did not demonstrate the May 7 storm damage was of the magnitude necessary to grant individual assistance in Kalamazoo and surrounding counties. In a statement released to News 8 Wednesday, a spokesperson said Whitmer's office was "disappointed" by the denial and is evaluating its next steps. Following the storms, a joint preliminary damage assessment was conducted by state, federal and local entities. Its initial findings estimated a need of more than $4 million in individual assistance. The state had asked FEMA for grants to help with temporary housing, home repairs and low-cost loans to cover uninsured property losses. "This was only for individual assistance and when it comes to FEMA, there’s not a set threshold for individual assistance," Lauren Thompson, spokesperson for Michigan State Police Emergency Management, said. The letter from FEMA said the state has 30 days to appeal. "In order for us to appeal a denial, we really have to show that there was further damage found or further impact to the community since the initial request," Thompson explained. "We are working with local officials, who have until mid-next week to get back to us to show if there is in fact is further damage or further impact to the community that then we could go back and include in an appeal. But without that additional information, we can’t appeal the denial and go back with the same information that we went with in that request." SBA offering low-interest loans for May 7 tornado recovery Local officials are expected to reassess damage in the worst-hit areas starting Thursday. "A lot of people here could use some help, some money to help with their repairs," said Don Walter, whose own home was damaged in the storm. "They don’t have that much insurance."
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Sunday was the hottest day on Earth in all recorded history
WASHINGTON (AP) — On Sunday, the Earth sizzled to the hottest day ever measured by humans, yet another heat record shattered in the past couple of years, according to the European climate service Copernicus Tuesday. Copernicus' preliminary data shows that the global average temperature Sunday was 17.09 degrees Celsius (62.76 degrees Fahrenheit), beating the record set just last year on July 6, 2023 by .01 degrees Celsius (.02 degrees Fahrenheit). Both Sunday's mark and last year's record obliterate the previous record of 16.8 degrees Celsius (62.24 degrees Fahrenheit), which itself was only a few years old, set in 2016. Without human-caused climate change, records would be broken nowhere near as frequently, and new cold records would be set as often as hot ones. “What is truly staggering is how large the difference is between the temperature of the last 13 months and the previous temperature records,” Copernius Director Carlo Buontempo said in a statement. "We are now in truly uncharted territory and as the climate keeps warming, we are bound to see new records being broken in future months and years.” Can I get seasonal depression in the summer? While 2024 has been extremely warm, what kicked Sunday into new territory was a way toastier than usual Antarctic winter, according to Copernicus. The same thing was happening on the southern continent last year when the record was set in early July. But it wasn't just a warmer Antarctica on Sunday. Interior California baked with triple digit heat Fahrenheit, complicating more than two dozen fires in the U.S. West. At the same time, Europe sweltered through its own deadly heat wave. “It's certainly a worrying sign coming on the heels of 13 straight record -setting months,” said Berkeley Earth climate scientist Zeke Hausfather, who now estimates there's a 92% chance that 2024 will beat 2023 as the warmest year on record. July is generally the hottest month of the year globally, mostly because there is more land in the Northern hemisphere, so seasonal patterns there drive global temperatures. Copernicus records go back to 1940, but other global measurements by the United States and United Kingdom governments go back even further, to 1880. Many scientists, taking those into consideration along with tree rings and ice cores, say last year's record highs were the hottest the planet has been in about 120,000 years. Now the first six months of 2024 have broken even those. Scientists blame the supercharged heat mostly on climate change from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas and on livestock agriculture. Other factors include a natural El Nino warming of the central Pacific Ocean, which has since ended. Reduced marine fuel pollution and possibly an undersea volcanic eruption are also causing some additional warmth, but those aren't as important as greenhouse gases trapping heat, they said. Because El Nino is likely to be soon replaced by a cooling La Nina, Hausfather said he would be surprised if 2024 sees any more monthly records, but the hot start of the year is still probably enough to make it warmer than last year. Sure Sunday's mark is notable but “what really kind of makes your eyeballs jump out” is how the last few years have been so much hotter than previous marks, said Northern Illinois University climate scientist Victor Gensini, who wasn't part of the Copernicus team. “It's certainly a fingerprint of climate change.” University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann said the difference between the this year's and last year's high mark is so tiny and so preliminary that he is surprised the European climate agency is promoting it. “We should really never be comparing absolute temperatures for individual days,” Mann said in an email. Yes, it's a small difference, Gensini said in an interview, but there have been more than 30,500 days since Copernicus data started in 1940, and this is the hottest of all of them. “What matters is this," said Texas A&M University climate scientist Andrew Dessler. "The warming will continue as long as we’re dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and we have the technology to largely stop doing that today. What we lack is political will.”
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FEMA denies disaster declaration for May 7 tornadoes
PORTAGE, Mich. (WOOD) — The Federal Emergency Management Agency has denied a request for a major disaster declaration for the tornadoes that tore through Southwest Michigan on May 7. In a Tuesday letter to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer that was shared with News 8 by state Sen. Sean McCann's office, FEMA wrote that based on the information it had been given, it decided the storm damage "was not of such severity and magnitude as to be beyond the capabilities of the state, affected local governments, and voluntary agencies." "Accordingly, we have determined that supplemental federal assistance is not necessary. Therefore, I must inform you that your request for a major disaster declaration is denied," FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell wrote. The letter said the denial may be appealed within 30 days, and added that "FEMA will coordinate with the State of Michigan to identify additional damage information to support an appeal if necessary." PDF: Declaration rejection letter Whitmer had asked for the declaration for Branch, Cass, Kalamazoo and St. Joseph counties. Such declarations make federal resources available for recovery. The Portage mayor and city manager told News 8 that the rejection means they'll have to rethink how they were helping those affected. “The letter that we received references that local and state sources should be sufficient, but that is far from the truth because people are truly suffering, and we truly don't have the resources needed to get everybody back on their feet," said Portage City Manager Pat McGinnis. McCann, D-Kalamazoo, said in a statement that he was "dismayed" by FEMA's rejection. "It is a disappointing determination that impacts real people," he stated. He said he had asked Whitmer to appeal. Damage on Timbercreek Court in Portage the day after a tornado. (May 8, 2024) Damage at Timbercreek Townhouses in Portage the day after a tornado ripped through. (May 8, 2024) Damage at Timbercreek Townhouses in Portage the day after a tornado ripped through. (May 8, 2024) What's left of a Pizza Hut on W Centre Avenue in Portage following a tornado. It was part of a strip mall that took a direct hit. (May 8, 2024)A strip mall along West Centre Avenue in Portage the day after a tornado ripped through. (May 8, 2024) Storm damage at the Pavilion Estates near Portage on May 8, 2024. A mobile home that was destroyed at Pavilion Estates near Portage in the May 7, 2024, tornado. (May 9, 2024) The May 7 storms spawned four tornadoes in Southwest Michigan. Among them were an EF2 that tracked 11 miles through Texas Township, Portage and Pavilion Township, packing winds of up to 135 mph. The twister ripped apart houses and businesses in Portage and flipped mobile homes in Pavilion Township. A preliminary assessment determined at least 60 buildings were destroyed and another 129 sustained major damage. There was also another EF2 that covered 19 miles from Centreville to the Union City area, an EF1 near Dowagiac and another EF1 in the Union City area. There were injuries reported as a result of the storms, but no deaths. SBA offering low-interest loans for May 7 tornado recovery The U.S. Small Business Administration previously approved a separate administrative disaster declaration for the tornadoes, which opened open low-interest loans for property owners affected by the storms. With backing from the Kalamazoo Community Foundation, the city of portage has brought on Michigan-based nonprofit After the Storm to connect people with disaster case managers to help them get housing assistance, deal with insurance and sign up for disaster relief. McCann also said the next state budget includes more than $3 million for people in Southwest Michigan. He added that the budget also includes the maximum deposit into the State Disaster Emergency Contingency Fund "so that there will be money already available for future disasters."
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Chief Meteorologist Ellen Bacca (and husband Mark) welcomed their first child over the weekend, with the birth of Piper Sunny. Check out these sweet pictures<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hurricane Lee continues to slowly track toward the United States. Click here for the latest on intensity and path<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Saturday brought plenty of sunshine and calm conditions. Bill’s Blog dives into what is currently the calmest day of 2023.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
WEATHER WEAR<\/strong>
Rain Jacket
Umbrella<\/p>\n\n\n\n
SUNRISE<\/strong> 7:17 a.m.
SUNSET<\/strong> 7:59 p.m.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is real love – not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.
1 JOHN 4:10 | NLTGrand Rapids / Lakeshore
Kalamazoo
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