be flooded out. Notice how one computer model produces wave heights of more than 20+ feet for Long Island late Monday. Granted, this is a long shot scenario but it something to watch...see next post for the official National Hurricane Center track

surface during winter storms. Since radar only tells us what's happening aloft, we need a huge amount of reports of weather at the surface so we can better calibrate our new Dual-Polarization radar products.

You can enter your reports, and get all the details here:

http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/projects/ping/

In the coming weeks, a free iOS platform smartphone app will be released where you can quickly and easily send a report no matter where you are. A free Android platform version will follow soon after. Every report will help make a difference.

Consider helping out this cold season - it will make a difference!

to East Coast (as shown here). POTENTIAL for dangerous storm next week, particularly in New England but mid-Atlantic still in play An out to sea track is also VERY possible (as shown here). Bottom line: keep a close eye on forecasts in the coming days.

Our latest blog post describes the scenarios: http://wapo.st/RiwoJ6

he other models, it catches my eye. Remember Isaac back in August? 5-7 days out, many of the models, including the GFS, showed Isaac riding up Florida and the east coast, while the ECMWF was consistently showing a more westward track toward Louisiana and Texas. As we got closer to landfall, the GFS trended toward the ECMWF track. In the end, landfall was in Louisiana...a huge win for the European model. This map is the European's projection of where Sandy (likely a massive Nor'easter) may be Monday night. Interestingly, this model projects the central pressure to be 950mb...equivalent to a cat 3 hurricane! We're still 6-7 days away from this potential scenario playing out, so nothing is etched in stone. In fact, it's still entirely possible it misses the east coast all together. With that said, if I lived in the Mid-Atlantic or New England states, I'd keep a close eye on things through the week. The potential is there for this to be a massive, perhaps historical, storm for that part of the country. If you have friends or family up there, share this!

dust storm has produced "grey out" conditions between Imperial, NE and Hays, KS with visibilities reduced to near zero. This has led to road closures. This is all due to an enormous pressure gradient between a departing low pressure system over Minnesota and an incoming high over Wyoming. Pressure gradients (the difference in air pressure over a given distance) are what drives the wind, and the values today on this scale are about as large as they get. If you click to enlarge this graphic, you will see a second image which is a screen capture taken along Interstate 80 in southwest Nebraska just after 1 PM.