Fax Finale

Just a little “inside baseball” news this afternoon… today is the last day that we will produce our daily WeatherFax forecast product. This started way back in 1993, before most folks used the Internet, and was one of our prime methods of distributing weather to businesses and institutions that really need detailed weather information for their daily plans.

For most of it’s 17 year run, I wrote the morning edition, J.B. Elliott wrote the afternoon version, and Bill Murray covered the weekend. All of our other products fed off the fax, including the last one this afternoon.

Times change, and for years most folks have gotten our discussions and forecasts online. We had some dear customers that still wanted that daily fax, but we believed it was finally time for it to come to an end.

Most of you that read the blog here, and use our other forecast products didn’t know about the fax, but we sit back this afternoon amazed it lasted 17 years. The most famous early fax was the headline on March 10, 1993 that read “Major Snow Event Ahead For Alabama”. Those that heeded those words sure got their money’s worth, as the great Blizzard of ’93 followed just a few days later.

Perhaps the most famous little part of the fax is J.B.’s “My Little Corner Of The World”. The stories about Miss Molly have warmed the heart of thousands of people over the years.

Understand nothing will change for our online users; our discussion from the fax is the one that appears over on the seven day forecast page on abc3340.com.

If you missed it, below is the last weather discussion that will ever be written for the fax… now everything is exclusively online. From J.B. Elliott:

A MORE PLEASANT WEEKEND: Again today, we have focused one eye toward the north and one toward the south. The story of Hurricane Alex is pretty much settled, but when we look toward the north we see some drier air trying to push into North Alabama. Early this afternoon the dew point had dropped to 63 in Decatur and 64 in Huntsville. Further south, in the state it was 72 in Anniston, Birmingham and Tuscaloosa and in the low to mid 70s down in South Alabama.

The dew point is a very important item for weather forecasters. This means that some drier air has pushed into extreme North Alabama. The latest model guidance is projecting dew points in the mid 60s tomorrow for the Birmingham area and it shows a weak front pushing down into Central Alabama tomorrow and trying to stall and then pushing a little more to the south on Friday. Actually, the broad circulation around Alex will help pull it southward a bit. The front will likely become indistinguishable Saturday and Sunday, but a high-pressure system will establish itself over Virginia and the Carolinas giving us a NE wind flow.

Enough of all that mumbo-jumbo, you say, what does all this mean? We think it means only a small risk of a shower or thunderstorm in the Birmingham area Thursday through the weekend. We do not believe there will be any on Friday and possibly not any for Sunday, July 4. This afternoon some scattered showers were already developing across Central Alabama, but few, if any, in the Tennessee Valley. We will have a fairly good chance of showers and thunderstorms well into the evening and diminishing real late.

A MORE FRIENDLY THERMOMETER: Instead of those 93 to 95 highs, we are projecting mostly upper 80s over the next several days—mainly around 88 or 89. That, with some lower humidity, will be a noticeable change.

HURRICANE ALEX: He has become a larger hurricane and a little stronger this afternoon. The center is moving toward the north coast of Mexico or possibly South Texas. He was about 130 miles SSE of Brownsville, Texas and moving toward the NW at 12 mph. Sustained winds have increased to 85 mph and the central pressure was down to 28.41 inches. A Hurricane Warning is in effect for the coast of Texas south of Baffin Bay (Baffin Bay is about 60 miles south of Corpus Christi) to the mouth of the Rio Grande and southward along part of the Mexican coast. A Tropical Storm Warning extends northward along the Texas coast to Port O’Connor. A Tornado Watch was posted this morning for extreme South Texas.

USA NOTES: A very hot 120 in Death Valley yesterday afternoon. Cold spots this morning: 32 at Land O Lakes, Wisconsin and Barrow, Alaska. We watched the weather station at Dawson in the Yukon very closely during winter for bitter arctic air build-ups. Sort of interesting to see that they had a mild 63 with showers today.

MY TINY CORNER OF THE WORLD: Little Miss Molly is very opinionated. She has about 10 balls to play with, but one small blue ball with little rounded spikes is by far her favorite. I can throw all 10 balls across the living area for her to chase, but she will only go all the way and return the little blue ball. We had such an aggressive ballgame several nights ago, that the little blue ball disappeared. We cannot find it anywhere. She still looks for it. Life goes on…..

Category: Pre-November 2010 Posts