I was planning to get this new portion of the website – MORNING MODEL MADNESS — up and running around the 15th of September but my son came down with the H1N1 Virus which has kind of screwed things up this week so I really have not gotten a chance to get the first entry here of morning model madness -MMM — under way until today. (and yes he is doing just fine… he beat the hell out of this virus like the Phillies crushed in those pitiful Dodgers) .

Occasionally there may be a comment or two which is not strictly weather-related but that’s me and if you don’t like it… I don’t care. For example I might make a comment here this morning about the rains coming in on Saturday for the game six ALCS at Yankee Stadium. Right now it looks like again could you be rained out or significantly delayed but I suspect as we get closer to the event the front will probably move through faster. I would not be surprised if the 12z models show the front clearing New York City and New Jersey coast by 7pm Saturday.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that much of October and September have been pretty wet over the Midwest and the Plains region. But you may not be aware exactly how wet since many of you reading this are not an agricultural meteorologist like yours truly.

It has been the wettest September and October on record for most of the Plains and the Midwest. Every Monday afternoon the USDA issues crop progress report after the closing bell at 4 pm EDT. The main concern is getting the hardest of the beans / corn into the bins for storage before it gets too soggy or lays on the ground for too long which causes a loss of nutritional value. Since we had a very cool summer there has been a spectacular crop for most of the corn and beans. The isue is that the threat

of extended delay like we are seeing now means that we are going to experience a drop off in the actual amount of crop which is harvested and that concern is forcing the prices skyrocket over last few weeks. The five-year average of the corn harvest in Illinois based on October 19 is 68%. The actual number this past Monday was 11%. For Iowa the five-year average for the corn harvest is 33%… the actual number this past Monday 10%.. for Indiana the five-year average number 49% but the actual number 15%…. we see similar staggering numbers for the bean harvest as well. For ILL the five-year average is 79% of the beans should be harvested as of October 19 but the actual number this past Monday was 13%! 13% …. for Indiana 72% versus the actual 27%… and for Iowa the five-year average for the bean harvest a 5% but the actual number as of October 19 was 37% .

The heavy rains were saying this morning and yesterday across much of the Plains and the Midwest really is going to keep things very wet and not allow any sort of significant progress. And the pattern is going to repeat itself. In what I believe to be ominous trend developing for those wanting a severely cold winter over the Northeast US… the Pacific jet from Hell has returned. Of course the question remains how long does the Pacific jet continued to blast away with powerful pieces of energy into the western and central US… but it’s there for the time being and it’s not going anywhere soon.

There is widespread model agreement of another surge of energy carving out a massive trough this weekend over the western US. Originally the European model earlIer in the week was developing a powerful short wave which would develop a negative tilt as it move up the Mississippi Valley and become a super bomb over the western Great Lakes at 972mb. However most of the models have backed away from that solution and instead were looking at a slow moving trough that tries the bang eastward against the strong ridge in the Southeast. We are now seeing several significant wave of Low pressure tracking from the Delta into the eastern Great Lakes and with the Gulf open for business… this looks like more excessively wet conditions and heavy rains for much of the Midwest and the Delta regions.

Not surprisingly the European Canadian and GFS all go in different directions by the time to we reach day 10 (D10). Of course the GFS model develops a very cold polar/arctic air mass that plunges out of Canada into the central and eastern US to the joy of winter weather weenies everywhere across the eastern third of the US. There is about as much chance of that solution work in out as the Angels beating the Yankees in game — in other words it’s not that happen. The operational GFS at 0z in the face of this overpowering jet coming in from the Pacific insists on developing a major Ridge along the West Coast of North America– a +PNA. While the model can insist all it wants to… until something changes in the Pacific …that sort of event is not going to occur. Not surprisingly the 6Z GFS and the GFS ensemble continues with this bs… but that doesn’t make it any more likely to occur.

The 0Z European actually shows a break in the pattern with a fairly zonal flow at day 10. The European ensemble n the 11-15 day shows a positive and significant height e anomaly developing over the Gulf of Alaska and into Alaska. The pattern is similar to what the GFS is depicting but of course since the 0z European ensemble has the positive height anomaly over Alaska — and NOT over the West Coast — . the entire pattern is significantly changed. The European ensemble mean is implying some sort of trough over the Pacific Northwest and fairly strong Positive height anomalies over the Southeast US and into the lower Midwest and Atlantic states.

There are many locations even in Southwest Virginia which have already received 3 to 4″ of rain that precipitation probably be shutting down by late Thursday afternoon. And of course much of central and eastern North Carolina received anywhere from two to as much as 5 inches of rain… but as of midday Thursday most of that precipitation is now a long more east of I-95. However for Central Virginia included in the Richmond area as well as the southeast coastal areas they probably will stay in the rain almost until the system finally pulls away and go from the coast on Friday. Thus it’s pretty clear that the heaviest rains will occur over the Chesapeake Bay area as far west as Richmond and including much of lower Maryland Eastern shore.