Sally To Drown Gulf Coast; Elsewhere, Sunny Sept. Day Shrouded In Smoke

We'll start today with the dangerous first, then follow up with the sad and dismaying. I'm a bucket of cheer this morning aren't I?  

Satellite view of Hurricane Sally
Tuesday morning

So, Hurricane Sally continues its slow motion march toward the Gulf of Mexico. It's barely off the southeastern tip of Louisiana this morning, but it will take another 24 hours to make it to the coast, probably somewhere in or near Mississippi. 

Its forward speed is slower than most people can walk. 

That's why everybody is so worried about Hurricane Sally. Top winds are 85 mph, and not expected to weaken much before landfall. Which means this won't be the most powerful hurricane ever to hit the Gulf Coast, at least in terms of wind. 

The fact that the hurricane is almost sitting in one place is causing cooler water to upwell from deeper in the Gulf of Mexico.   The cooler water is helping to squelch the storm's development. Hurricanes thrive on very warm water.  Guesses are the winds with Sally are at their peak now and won't get much stronger. 

But the wind still isn't the problem with this one.  The slow movement of the storm will allow the storm surge to keep piling up along the Gulf Coast. On Monday, two days before Sally is set to make landfall, there was already some storm surge flooding. 

The biggest problem with Sally will be the rain, as has been advertised for days now. There was already a feeder band of torrential rain set up and slamming into the Gulf Coast in northwest Florida and southern Alabama. This rain band is soon to hit southern Mississippi. 

The Mobile, Alabama National Weather Service office, among others, is warning of historic flooding along and just inland from the Gulf.  Ten to 20 inches of rain is expected, with local amounts to 30 inches.  That is almost sure to cause record flooding along some rivers and low lying areas. 

There's a lot of other tropical systems in the Atlantic at the moment. This really busy hurricane season is peaking.  None of the systems, other than Sally, are an immediate threat to land, so I'll skip them for now. 

SMOKY SKIES ALMOST NATIONWIDE

Normally I love September mornings like this one.  It was almost chilly enough to frost at my place in St. Albans, Vermont. Some areas of Vermont did have frost. 

All that orange and red in this map 
represents a LOT of smoke aloft
across much of the nation. 

Usually, this type of weather has deep blue skies crystal clear visibility and a bright sun. 

Not this time.  The sky is a sick yellowish gray. The sunshine is a weak, sickly orange.  You see a little haze agains the mountains in the distance instead of the sharp outlines of the hills and mountains you usually see in this weather. 

This is all a thick plume of smoke coming from the massive western forest fires. This pall of smoke extends all the way across the nation, from California to Maine and well beyond. It's not just here. 

The bit of haze you see against the mountains is particulates from the smoke precipitating out. It's not enough to prompt air pollution alerts and it's not thick enough to be especially dangerous. But still.

I hate to complain, when people are losing their homes and even lives in these wildfires. But the smoky skies when we should have clear blue conditions makes me a little sad and angry, let me tell you. 

Climate change influenced these fires and made them worse than they otherwise would be. The smoke overhead is not dangerous to us Vermonters, but it does affect us. Just another example of how climate change will continue to make quality of life diminish.