I appear to owe the astronomy community an apology.

Everytime I buy something related to astronomy (e.g., telescope, filters, etc.) the weather turns to crap and noone can see the stars. The length of time this goes on for seems to be directly related to the amount of money I spent on the astronomy stuff.

Just after Christmas, I picked up an iOptron Skytracker Pro, so we probaby won’t see the the stars anytime soon.

I’m sorry.

There’s a lot of stuff on Twitter, some of it pretty scary and/or creepy. This tweet, however, probably jumps to the top of the holy-crap scary list:

***THIS IS AS REAL AS IT GETS***

***NOWHERE IN THE FLORIDA KEYS WILL BE SAFE***

***YOU STILL HAVE TIME TO EVACUATE***

Please RT. #Irma pic.twitter.com/VWLMEDWoUs

— NWS Key West (@NWSKeyWest) September 8, 2017

It has been a while since I grumbled about the weather, so here goes:

TAF CYOW 081738Z 0818/0918 31012G22KT P6SM OVC030 TEMPO 0818/0902 3SM -SHGSSNRA OVC020
BECMG 0821/0823 30008KT
FM090200 31008KT P6SM BKN030 OVC050
FM090600 31006KT P6SM SCT030 BKN050
RMK NXT FCST BY 082100Z=

-SHGSSNRA ??? Seriously? I had to go to the magic decoder to find out what that was:

LIGHT SNOW PELLET SHOWER
LIGHT SNOW SHOWER
LIGHT RAIN SHOWER

Geez… that’s piling a lot of crap into one element in a TAF. And we need exactly none of it.

I just looked at the radar…

And the aviation forecast:

TAF CYOW 101738Z 1018/1118 12010KT P6SM -SN OVC040 TEMPO 1018/1019 2SM -SN OVC030
FM101900 13012G22KT 3SM -SN OVC030 TEMPO 1019/1020 1SM -SN VV007
PROB40 1019/1020 3/4SM -SN
FM102000 13012G22KT 1/2SM SN VV005 TEMPO 1020/1022 1SM -SN
PROB30 1022/1103 1/4SM +SN VV003
FM110300 14018G28KT 3/4SM -SN BLSN VV007 TEMPO 1103/1107 2SM -SNPL OVC012
PROB30 1104/1107 3SM -FZRA BR OVC015
FM110700 17020G30KT 3SM -SNRA OVC012
FM111100 22020G35KT P6SM BKN030
FM111400 23015G25KT P6SM FEW030
RMK NXT FCST BY 102100Z=

The likelihood that this is going to suck is very high.

Well, it looks like the non-snow infested weather is probably coming to an end on Thursday…

TAF CYOW 270238Z 2703/2724 VRB03KT P6SM SCT040
FM271100 07010KT P6SM FEW025 BKN200
FM271500 08012G22KT P6SM FEW012 OVC120
FM271800 09015G25KT P6SM -RA FEW020 OVC060
FM272000 09015G25KT 21/2SM -SNRA BR BKN015 OVC030
FM272300 08015G25KT 11/2SM -SNRA BR BKN008 OVC012
RMK NXT FCST BY 270600Z=

Basically, the aviation forecast is suggesting that a mix of light rain and snow, aka sleet, will start around 4pm, which should make the evening commute magical.

At least it’s not quite as icky as what was being called for 8 years ago.

I really enjoyed the warm weather that we had up until a week or so ago.

After editing photos for most of the morning, I decided to head out and do a little geocaching. My first find was a puzzle cache in the Experimental Farm that I had solved a while ago but hadn’t gotten around to finding. While there, I heard rumblings of thunder in the clouds to the north and the rain started just as I made it back to the car. (more…)

Lots of exciting weather this afternoon and into the evening:

TAF CYOW 132038Z 1321/1418 20012G22KT P6SM FEW050 BKN220 TEMPO
1321/1322 VRB15G25KT 2SM +TSRA BKN060CB PROB30 1322/1324
VRB15G25KT 2SM +TSRA BKN060CB
FM140000 21010KT P6SM FEW100
FM140900 18008KT P6SM BKN050 BKN200
FM141200 20010KT P6SM -SHRA SCT020 BKN050
FM141500 21012G22KT 5SM -SHRA BR BKN020 PROB30 1415/1418
VRB15G25KT 2SM +TSRA BR SCT007 BKN030CB
RMK NXT FCST BY 140000Z=

In a nutshell this evening from now’ish until about 8pm, heavy thunderstorms with big gusty winds. And then tomorrow from about 8am it looks like we’re in for more wind and rain, with possibly some thunderstorms over the lunch hour.