May 1: Looking Back at April, Daily Links

WEATHER

We just experienced the warmest April on record in Nashville!  The average temperature for the month was 65.9°, which tops the old record by more than a half-degree.  Three of the first four months of 2017 have ranked in the top 5 warmest for each of those individual months (5th-warmest January, 2nd-warmest February). The four-month January-April period is the warmest on record by almost a degree and a half!  That’s a HUGE departure when you’re dealing with a dataset of that size.

But as I’ve written and said many times, current weather is never a reliable indicator of future weather…at least in the short-term.  In fact, most of the first week of May is looking cooler than what we experienced for most of the month of April:

The Climate Prediction Center’s outlook for the entire month shows a pretty good chance that this will be our first below-average month in well over a year:

That’s enough big-picture stuff…let’s get into some local details.  The rain is moving off to the east, allowing cooler and breezy conditions to settle in for the rest of the day.  High temperatures will only reach the upper 60s this afternoon:

Winds will gust over 20 mph throughout the day:

We’ll drop to around 50° tonight:

But we’ll warm back up to the mid to upper 70s by Tuesday afternoon:

We’ll still reach the mid 70s Wednesday, before the next round of widespread rain moves in late Wednesday and sticks around Thursday:

No severe weather concerns in that time frame, but we’ll be on the lookout for some localized flooding.  Next weekend is looking cooler than normal, but pleasant!

 

LINKS

• A large and destructive tornado hit the town of Canton, TX over the weekend.
• Can we blame this year’s active start to the severe weather season on winter’s weak La Niña conditions?
• The US Climate Extreme Index currently ranks as the highest on record, due to abnormally warm and wet weather so far this year.
• It’s been a worrisome start to 2017 when it comes to climate trends.
• Short answers to hard questions about climate change.
• Japan has plans to drill through the Earth’s crust and reach the mantle.
• NASA’s new heavy lift rocket won’t launch until 2019.
• In case you missed it, NASA released images from the Cassini spacecraft’s journey between Saturn and its rings.
• Astronomers have found evidence of a new “missing-link” black hole in the Milky Way galaxy.
• New technology being developed by NASA could allow long-distance flights to take significantly less time.
• Your brain has its own “autofill” function for speech.
• Scientists are getting closer to deciphering what humans “see” as we sleep.