Direct hit: Wet microburst bomb drops right on radar site

Here's a meteorological phenomenon you don't see often.

A monsoon-driven wet microburst dropped it's rainy payload right over the El Paso, Texas Doppler radar site Wednesday evening.

The resulting Doppler image looks like the shock wave from a meteorological bomb flowing outward from the epicenter of the microburst.

Though it has been used in the past, notice I didn't use the term "rain bomb" to describe this event. That's not really an accurate term, and some meteorologists correctly take issue with that description of monsoonal downbursts. I spent 9 years forecasting and warning for monsoonal thunderstorms in Tucson, Arizona. I know what dry and wet microbursts are.

But I did choose to describe the resulting Doppler loop in the tweet from the El Paso NWS as resembling a "shock wave from a meteorological bomb flowing outward" because that is an accurate description of what the Doppler looks like in my opinion. The 70+ mph gust front flows out radially from the center of the microburst like a shock wave from a bomb blast as it strikes the ground.

Then of course there's the irony of a microburst putting a direct hit on a Doppler radar site. Doppler Dog finally catches stormy car bumper?

Spectacular weekend

This could be one of the best weekends of summer in Minnesota. Really weather fans, does it get any better than this?

High and mostly dry

The high pressure cell setting up over the western Great Lakes may bring us as much as a week of mostly sunny, warm, dry weather with just a couple slight rain chances.

Temperatures look fairly stable into next week.

Edge of drought

A serious drought is taking hold from eastern Montana through the Dakotas. Western Minnesota rides the eastern edge of this developing drought.

Eastern Minnesota and Wisconsin have recorded plenty of rainfall in July. Much of southern Wisconsin has soaked up 5" to 10" of rain this month. But western Minnesota has trended dry.

Thirty-two percent of Minnesota is now in abnormally dry or moderate drought categories in this week's U.S. Drought Monitor.

Holy hail!

Amazing video of severe hailstones pounding down in Istanbul, Turkey.

D.C. flash floods

Some areas around Washington, D.C.  picked up two to five inches of rain Friday.

https://twitter.com/megluku/status/890973738170290176

Climate shift

As the Bell Curve on climate shifts to the right, the number of extremely hot days is increasingly outpacing the number of extremely cold days.