12:08AM: The various outlets are going all in on the Milton coverage, and it is warranted. While this storm won’t be the same as Helene – nothing may ever be – Milton will provide his own unique set of circumstances. First, he is tracking through the Gulf, directly at west Florida. This will undoubtedly lead to storm surge. Second, he is angling right for the Tampa area. Wind will also be a concern on top of the likely flooding in St. Petersburg, Clearwater and Sarasota. Third, and fortunately, Milton will cross Florida, and head off to sea, rather than make his way to the mountains.

Stay safe, west Florida. Even with all the action in the area the past few years, Milton looks to be the hardest punch to Tampa, perhaps in living memory.

105AM: There is another area being monitored for tropical development in the southern Gulf of Mexico, and the latest run has really latched on to it. This is but one run of one model, but the latest Euro organizes it into a landfalling storm for mid-week in southwest Florida, and then, curiously, moving east into oblivion. It’s a strange track, but certainly something to continue to monitor.

7:47PM The area I discussed this morning is now Tropical Storm Milton, and he is indeed forecast to make a hard drive for Tampa later this week. The storm is already prognosticated to be a Major Hurricane upon it’s mid-week landfall. It will have to grind through quite a bit of shower activity over the Gulf to make it happen. We can see some of that activity now on radar.

12:43AM I should note that at this time, not only are there no storm warnings, but there are also no flood warnings. Right now, every terrible headline that comes out of western North Carolina comes with the small positive notion that we are hearing them because another corner of the state is reconnecting with the outside world. Not everywhere is back online yet, though, so there are still more days ahead with more bad news to come.

Now with the end of Dlvr.it’s free program for publishing posts on social media (which got us through about 10 years, honestly), I’m looking to make update posts in a more easily transferred format, manually. So this is it! When I don’t have other posts to publish, I’ll amalgamate all of the daily updates into one post, such as this one, and it can be a one stop shop for recaps when I have them. Stop by the site regularly!

12:46AM: There was a severe thunderstorm watch in the evening for southeastern Oklahoma, and storms are mostly winding down. There is still one cell that is severe and crossing the Red River for Sherman. What I’m particularly taken with is how much lightning there still is in the Sooner State as we approach 1AM.

The Atlantic Basin is also home to TD Nine, which should become a tropical storm, and ultimately a hurricane before landfalling, likely in the Florida Panhandle, later this week.

UPDATE: The NHC now has a page with a track cone, which does indeed place it’s landfall in the Florida Panhandle, around Apalachicola. As seems to be the case pretty often now, it will likely be a Category 3 storm upon the storm’s arrival late this week. It will be a strong storm, battering a part of the coast that has seen a few storms lately, but it will arrive, as presently forecast, in about as sparsely populated a stretch of the coast as you’ll find.

Vacation season is right around the corner, and there is a Tropical Storm getting ready to make it’s way ashore near Acapulco. Tropical Storm John is going to landfall in Oaxaca State today, and will pose a significant flash flooding threat thanks to the terrain and infrastructure of the region. Fortunately, the storm isn’t terribly strong and won’t last long, but this part of the world doesn’t see landfalls terribly often, and it’s particularly poorly set up for the heavy rain.

Please note, dlvr.it, the software I have used to publish directly to social media is going to a different structure. Going forward, please check the site itself for updates like these, and I will try to post full posts manually on Twitter and Facebook.

The radar, showing the band of heavy rain reaching the Hudson alley, is one thing, but don’t sleep on those post frontal winds. It’s howling over the eastern Great Lakes, which is leading to some small craft advisory, beach hazard warnings and even the threat of some lake effect rain later today.

A bunch of Gulf moisture has led to some of New Orleans western suburbs received up to 4 inches of rain, leading to some flash flooding in the area. Of course, the radar in the area is out, which really throws a wrench in things. Fthe flash flooding was reported on the ground though, and not necessarily by radar indications. Fortunately, Lake Charles and Mobile are up and running, providing coverage for NOLA.

The meteorological seasons don’t quite line up with the seasons of the astronomical calendar, which means that instead of waiting until the 21st, we can say that autumn begins today. This does not, however, mean that I condone the Aberdeen WFO making their weather story pumpkin spiced,

I know Alaska is the furthest north of all of our 50 US states, so one would imagine that it is usually also the coldest of our 50 states. So what is so unusual, warranting this quick update? Alaska is the only spot for essentially the rest of the month that the CPC has tagged as “below normal” for their temperature outlook.