Clark
(Meteorologist)
Thu Sep 02 2004 11:51 PM
Re: Restore the sanity.. PLEASE!!!!

There are no fronts currently in the Florida region. A drop in temperature may be realized, however, with an outflow boundary from a thunderstorm complex. This happens when cool air rushes fastly out of a thunderstorm and spreads out in one/all directions, leading to an increase in wind speed and a drop in temperature. This was likely due to the east coast seabreeze (another example of something that is not a true front but can produce a slight cooling effect) and thunderstorms associated with it and not anything with Frances.

It should be noted that the 5-minute rapid scan visible imagery of Frances did show an outflow boundary earlier today with the storm itself. Such a boundary is usually a sign of weakening convection and an overall weakening of the storm -- this may have been either a result of or a factor into the weakening of the storm earlier today. It raced out of the west side of the storm towards the west & Florida, but was only really detecable with high-resolution satellite.

One last bit: if you use that same highres visible imagery (link in the first post of the thread) and look at the eastern bands of Frances over time, you'll see these little undulations that appear to radiate outward but remain stationary. These are examples of atmospheric phenomena called gravity waves. They are nothing to worry about and lead moreso to minor internal undulations in the pressure and wind fields, but are cool to look at.



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