While there are some changes coming to the area, it looks like the sunny skies, warm temperatures and light winds will hang on long enough to get through the Balloon Race weekend in good shape. Highs will be in the low 90s through Sunday, and winds will stay light until late in the day Sunday, when an approaching low pressure trough begins to dig in. temperatures nosedive into the low 80s on Monday and then all the way to the low 70s on Tuesday, with a good chance of showers and thunderstorms moving in with it. Temperatures should climb back to seasonable levels toward the end of next week.

One more hurricane question, this one from Mary: “Would it be possible to halt a hurricane from forming in its early stages with a squadron of cloud seeding planes or other means, e.g. explosives, just to break it up & disrupt the storm/rotation?”

Wouldn’t that be nice? For time immemorial, mankind has been frustrated by having to live under the old adage, “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.”  And as a result, many interesting proposals have been thrown out for ways to stop hurricanes (and modify the weather in other ways), but none are considered practical and/or effective. We don’t have the means to affect something as large and energetic as a hurricane. The power in a hurricane is so immense that blowing stuff up in them would really amount to spitting in the ocean, as it were.