Major Hurricane Bertha....

Bertha rapidly strengthened today...max winds now at 115mph....below is a quick video discussion on Bertha I cut this evening.

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Hurricane Bertha

Bertha has strengthened to a hurricane this morning....the first one of the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season. Bertha looks pretty healthy on satellite imagery this morning.

It continues to look more likely that Bertha will re-curve in the Atlantic before threatening the East coast. However, the threat to Bermuda is very much alive. It looks like the stronger the system is, the farther east the eventual track will be due to the incoming trough later in the week having a greater influence on the system. The weaker the system, the farther west it could track. Since Bertha is ahead of 'schedule' in terms of strength, the more eastern solutions seem a bit more likely right now.

Let me caution though...it is still too early to completely clear the East coast from any threat.....we will keep watching.

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Back in the Saddle.....

It was nice to take some time off and enjoy some down time with my family. We got the chance to travel and see some friends and family that we do not get to see nearly as much as we would like, and that was great. I will tell you....all 3 of my kids LOVE swimming. Jayden is just a little fish now...she can swim completely on her own....on this trip she even jumped off of the diving board and slid off of the slide on her own. Grace has lost most of her timidity she had last summer and was jumping in to me off of the diving board and sliding to me on the slide. And little Julianna....wow. She is completely fearless. She has no inhibitions about jumping right into the pool....no fear at all...I mean none....side of the pool....diving board....slide. That is a little scary for us as parents....but it is a lot of fun as long as someone is right there with her at all times. All of the kids just had a blast.

I did a fairly effective job of stepping away from the weather while I was gone. I checked on a couple of things from time to time, but generally speaking, I came back in cold today in terms of the overall weather pattern.

We look to remain unsettled through Monday with good chance of showers and storms in this rather soupy airmass we have in place. And, occasionally some storms could be severe.

Fewer showers and storms look to be around Tuesday and Wednesday, and because of that, the heat will crank back up with highs back in the 90s.

In terms of Tropical Storm Bertha, I am still gathering my ideas on that one, but I can't rule out a potential threat to the U.S. East Coast at this point. While I would think odds are that is re-curves into the Atlantic, there are some indications that the upper level ridging will try to build back over the system as we near next weekend.....we will see.

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