Same thing over here.
So is the winter battle zone a battle between cold rain and mild rain?
I believe it. Here 3 of the last 5 years have had a flood/drought cycle all summer. We’re supposed to get a majority of our JJA precip from seabreeze storms propagating inland. The last 4 summers especially they seem to pop up 5-8 miles inland and die instead of moving westward until they run out of steam around the Little Pee Dee river 35 or so miles inland. Old timers blame the excessive land clearing for homes and the limestone mines. I don’t personally know why it’s like this now because Brunswick county has a lot of clearing and still gets reliable seabreeze storms but they also have the confluence that keeps them going. The 701 corridor from just north of Conway through Loris is the highest part of the county at 100-125’ and we have different soils than east or west of that topographical “spine.” Whatever is causing it is enormously frustrating.
I’ll have to dig up some info from KFLO in Florence because they had a similar issue some years back. The surface and buildings were modified around the sensor until one day it got noticed. It read high for months if not a couple of years.
Brad does give good objective analysis, though he can sometimes speak in absolutes a little too early and it’s come back to bite him. He did post last week a side by side picture of where RDU’s sensor is compared to CLT’s… CLT has it in a open field with no pavement while RDU’s has pavement close by
Typically this issue at RDU happened on SW or W wind days which would mean the wind is over the runway and potentially the rental car lots and aviation parkway. That to me meant that it's an issue of the heat from those surfaces getting blown towards the sensor. But recently the same issue has happened with S and SE wind which is far less likely to be impacted by asphalt.
Yeah I actually got up to 103 on the 5th which was only a degree off the highest I’ve recorded since I moved into this house in 2010. If I’m not mistaken that was the day RDU recorded 106 which seems high but it wasn’t way over all the other areas in the state
The dam will break eventually. We got 3.05” last night and another .17” today.
I was speculating earlier in the thread that it seems the seabreeze races inland and fires north of me probably due to how hot inland areas have been. Seems to really help that seabreeze race inland and away from the typically favored coastal areas.
For what it's worth I've seen sustained 15mph gusting to 20mph and my station is in the middle of a grass field so no wind tunnel effect. Purely from the seabreeze and I'm 20 miles inland. Sometimes I'll look at the radar and see the seabreeze line almost to Dillon by 6pm which is nuts.
It's not only Brad Panovich who is a well respected meteorologist that has commented on the temperature readings at KRDU. Greg Fishel who is still a household name even after his retirement when it comes to TV weather forecasting in the Triangle area has also expressed his doubts about some of the record highs recorded at KRDU recently.
We get put in the Winter Battle Zone every year on these maps, whatever that means (basically nothing).
What’s strange is that usually RDU is no more than a few degrees warmer than GSO, sometimes even cooler. This month RDU has been warmer every single day and the average high is a full 6 degrees warmer than GSO. RDU is even running warmer than FAY, which is insane. Maybe it’s just a long string of coincidences, but it’s very odd.
