Hurricane season doesn’t officially start until June 1st, but we are already keeping an eye on the Tropics, and most notably, a disturbance off the Yucatan. Let’s first get the scary image out of the way. Here is what the GFS has for Saturday afternoon.

That is a closed isobar around a tropical feature off the Florida Peninsula. Yikes!

Now some sanity. Model guidance doesn’t have this storm getting any stronger than a very modest tropical storm, and the biggest threat is a ruined weekend on the Gulf Coast of Florida. The feature will landfall around Apalachicola sometime on Sunday. There might be some light tree damage, and as I noted the rain could be heavy at times, but the feature won’t linger. The feature will pull away from the coast by the night of Memorial Day.

So yes, there is a little feature that will likely make some news, but it’s not going to be the end of the world. Somewhat more importantly, one early storm, even a named storm, is not indicative of how the season will unfold in it’s totality, however the NHC is predicting a somewhat above average season in the North Atlantic.

Ever since Electric Daisy Carnival (EDC), the country’s largest EDM festival, moved to Las Vegas in 2011, extreme heat has always been an issue. With the festival being held on the weekend closed to the Summer Solstice, high temperatures would often push into the mid 100’s, nearly 110 in some cases during festival weekend, with overnight lows struggling to drop into the 70s (the festival runs overnight, from roughly 830p to 530a), so even without the intensity of direct sunlight, some people can be easily overwhelmed if not properly hydrated.

2018 was a first for EDC Vegas, however, in that they moved it to mid-May, mainly to avoid the intense June heat. So far, this decision has proven to be an excellent one! The daytime highs for Las Vegas the last couple of days have peaked in the low 90s, and temperatures between midnight and 4am were in the low 70s. Also, a cirrus deck moved over the valley in the early evening hours last couple of days, tempering the heat just a bit as well. The wind on night 1 was fairly calm at the festival, while last night’s winds got some decent 20-25mph gusts going through midnight – 1am before settling down just a little bit for the rest of the night. It looks like it will be another windy start to the festival tonight, but certainly nothing like 2012 when gusts of 40+mph caused the festival to shut down due to safety concerns.

There are many factors which can cause a festival experience to go sideways, but thanks to the decision to move it forward a month to avoid the extreme summer heat in Vegas made sure that the weather wasn’t one of them. An absolutely picture-perfect weekend weather-wise!

Or at least that is my interpretation of the SPC’s graphic this morning. That IS the Loch Ness Monster leaping out of the Rio Grande to gobble up part of the Tennessee Valley, isn’t it?

A strong ridge is expected to build ingo the western part of North America in the coming days, and will likely be in place for the Memorial Day weekend. While most of the country will be above normal, no place will be quite as abnormally warm as the Rocky Mountains.

In Grand Junction, Colorado, temperatures will be in the upper 80s to near 90 over Memorial Day weekend, as compared to a seasonal average of 80. Billings, Montana will be in the low to mid 80s, compared to an average high near 70.

The eastern part of the country will be somewhat warm, but that patch of relatively cool temperatures in the southeast is suggestive of the continued activity in the region. Every where east of the Mississippi is in line for some showers and thunderstorms, particularly in and around the Florida Peninsula

Awesome aerial shots of a small hail trail. Pilot says this was on Tuesday morning just north of Wellington, Colorado. Love how small it is, and how it turns sharply to the right. This probably fell late Monday night or early Tuesday morning. 📷by Jane Carpenter #9wx #COwx pic.twitter.com/Yjvc4B8VzX

— Cory Reppenhagen (@CReppWx) May 17, 2018

The pictures above, courtesy Jane Carpenter via Cory Reppenhagen of 9 News in Denver, highlight a narrow area that had intense hail near the Wyoming border in Colorado. As Mr. Reppenhagen notes, this probably fell overnight, and this photo was taken during the day, which means that the hail was so heavy it took at least several hours to melt down. The coating even at this point looked like snow, but it took a much smaller slice out of the High Plains countryside.

It’s a cool looking image, and a reminder of just how intense hail storms can be!