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Health & Fitness

Lorton precipitation amounts April 1 - 7, 2013; Hurricane season outlook

Daily rainfall totals for previous 24 hours measured at 6am from my rain gauge in Lorton.

Dr William Gray at Colorado State released his annual Atlantic Seasonal Hurricane Forecast last week and it called for more activity than the average from 1981-2010 season.  The best advice, though that “coastal residents are reminded that it only takes one hurricane making landfall to make it an active season for them, and they need to prepare the same for every season, regardless of how much activity is predicted.”   Hurricane season for the Atlantic and Caribbean is June 1 to November 30 annually, with the peak season being from mid-August to late October.  A picture of last year's hurricane tracks accompanies this post.

The forecast is for 9 hurricanes (median is 6.5), 18 named storms  (median is 12.0), 4 major (Category 3-4-5) hurricanes (median is 2.0).   The probability of U.S. major hurricane landfall depends on how big of an area we look at.  For the entire U.S. Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coastline it is 72% (average for last century is 52%).   More specifically, the probability or the U.S. East Coast Including Peninsula Florida is 48% (average for last century is 31%) and for the Gulf Coast from the Florida Panhandle westward to Brownsville is 47% (average for last century is 30%).

Find out what's happening in Lortonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

If you’re looking to purchase something to help you get ready for hurricane season, this year Virginia’s Hurricane Preparedness Sales Tax Holiday is May 25-31.  Details can be found here.

For those of you anxious to plant your tomatoes, the soil temperatures couldn’t help but rise when it was 90 degrees last week, but at depths between 2” and 4” are currently around 55 degrees.  You can see a graph of the temperatures at various depths from last week at the closest USDA monitoring station in Beltsville, MD.

Find out what's happening in Lortonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

My rain gauge in Lorton recorded the following precipitation at 6am on the day indicated for the previous 24 hours.



Date

Precip

Mon 04/08/2013

0.00”

Tue 04/09/2013

0.00”

Wed 04/10/2013

0.00”

Thu 04/11/2013

0.00”

Fri 04/12/2013

0.06”

Sat 04/13/2013

0.89”

Sun 04/14/2013

0.02”

Weekly Total :

0.97”


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