Forecast for the week of September 28th + what is a hurricane?

By: Paige Klobucnik

Hey guys! I have some excellent news, after some afternoon storms in the DFW area today, as we head into the 2nd half of the week, we will be seeing some much deserved cool(er) weather! There is a slow moving upper level low pressure system, following a pacific cold front and moisture from the dissipating Tropical Cyclone Polo. This will give us widespread storms for the 2nd half of the week. Expect this mostly during Wednesday night to Thursday night, and there could be some flooding possible, so be on the lookout for that. With the increased clouds and rain, we will see some cooler temperatures for the 2nd half of the week, with a cold front keeping the air cool over the weekend! So yayyyy our first taste of fall!!! :) 

Expect highs for tomorrow and Wednesday to stick around the mid 90s, with Thursday and the rest of the week to have highs drifting around the low to mid 80s. So hang in there for the next couple of days, because the rest of the week and into next week will surely begin to cool down after.

With this dissipating tropical cyclone Polo, I thought this would be a great time to dive into what hurricanes are! A hurricane is a massive rotating storm that forms over warm ocean waters, with sustained winds of at least 74 miles per hour. We talked about thunderstorms, which are considered mesoscale, hurricanes actually sit at the boundary of the mesoscale and synoptic scale, and have a lifetime of several days. There are several parts to a hurricane, which is the rainbands, the eye and the eye wall. Hurricanes are essentially giant engines that use warm, moist air as fuel, which is why they only form over warm ocean waters near the equator. The warm, moist air that sits over the ocean rises upward from near the surface, which in turn leaves less air near the surface. In order to displace this, air from surrounding areas with higher pressure, pushes into the low pressure area left below. This creates a whole system of clouds and winds that, because of warm water from the ocean, continues to grow and spin, creating a positive feedback that continues to feed into the system until it is met with different conditions. Which is usually whenever it hits the surface, and isn’t able to continue to grow. 

The reason that hurricanes have what's called an “eye” is because the storm system rotates so fast, which causes a calm, extremely low pressure center, where you can find clear skies during a hurricane. These red arrows show warm, moist air rising from the ocean's surface, forming “rain bands” around the eye. Though these storms begin to weaken as they hit land, they can dump massive amounts of rain and cause catastrophic wind damage before they die out completely.

These hurricanes, as they dissipate, leave a lot of moisture over land, which is why you may hear how after hurricanes weaken, they still can cause outflow storms, which is what we are going to see in Dallas later this week. Hurricane Polo's remnant moisture is causing rain chances to increase for us. Just like thunderstorms, I did a deep dive on hurricane Dorian, here's an example picture of me tracing the hurricane's path and its corresponding pressure/category.

Thank you guys for reading! I hope you learned a lot about hurricanes and enjoy the cooler weather we are going to see here very soon! :)