Welcome to North Carolina Weather Plus!!

Hi all, I am forecaster Eric, some of you may know me for producing the gigantic posts at weatheradvance.com, well, I'm here to focus much more on weather at the local level in North Carolina  & even the surrounding regions. I really must thank Mark from USWeatherplus for giving me this opportunity to operate this website, and I must tell you I'm lucky to know this kid because I can tell he is going to be a big factor in the weather world one day, at his age I was still hooked on the weather channel (lol) (of course it was much more informative back then, at least IMO).

A little history about myself, I first became interested in the weather in kindergarten when my teacher assigned me a task to describe how April showers bring May flowers, and although at first weather was just something I thought was ok, it grew on me over time & I have become much more "addicted" and acquainted with the study of meteorology. In fact, up until the summer of 2009, I really had no idea whatsoever as to any of the processes that drive winter storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, etc, only basic knowledge average people tend to have such as hurricanes need warm water, tornadoes rely on the clash of cold & warm air masses (baroclinic processes, it needs to be 32 degrees to snow, etc.). However, once Hurricane Bill in 2009 came around, this all changed. I don't exactly know what it is about this storm that pushed me into further studying the weather, perhaps it was because I was simply in awe at the fact that I knew going into that year it was el nino ENSO wise, & I understood that those types of years generally aren't favorable for hurricane activity, thus seeing such a powerful & magnificent storm drew me in to understanding why such a storm was occurring. (I would later find out through research & scientific readings that a lot of this had to do with the negative Indian Ocean Dipole)

From there I began to look through weather blogs, look at online meteorology 101 videos, pictures, etc, and read books on various meteorological topics, thus over time I grew smarter & by the time last summer came around I began blogging, not really knowing what to expect. That's when I was offered a forecasting position at weatheradvance.com last August, (a site that has been around for several years, funny thing is I've happened to see their videos online a couple years ago, didn't know that one day I would actually become a part of that website.) I was very excited. Since the time I was given a forecasting position at weatheradvance, my knowledge of the weather has increased exponentially over the last several months & I'm still a developing meteorologist so, I can really only get better from here! Along the way, I've met some great people there, one of them was Mark, who of course was kind enough to give me this website :).

I may seem like in my posts & comments that I'm the stereotypical "nerd", although I am a "nerd" (and proud of it) when it comes to weather, you really wouldn't know that by looking at me. I'm a very large guy for my age, over 6 foot & 200 pounds, and of course a lot of that weight is muscle. That's one of my other hobbies besides weather, I love to lift weights to train for hockey & of course impress the ladies :) (certainly have a lot of work to do in that department.) However, I really have to work on trying to stay off the computer all the time or I'll end up like this....

I think you get my point, of course I look nothing like my idol Joe Bastardi, but trust me, I'm working on that.

Now, if you know me at weatheradvance, you probably know my posts are notorious for being gigantic & even a little hard to understand. I'll try to compromise here as I will do my best to try and make these posts shorter, but I don't know about the "little hard to understand" part. :) In case you're curious, something I'm going through at the moment is the 1893 hurricane season, a truly historic year that had 4 hurricanes at one time in the season (only 1998 also was able to accomplish this feat), & of course I'm appalled at the fact that North Carolina was obliterated that year with 2 significant hurricanes, 7 tropical cyclones total to cross through the state (unbelievable) & even a few other close calls.  To put it simply, this was a "nightmare" season for the state & I'm will do everything I can this year to make sure that just in case something similar were to occur this year, you would be warned.

1893 Hurricane Season

 

You can't really blame me though, look at the US precipitation anomaly for April through June 1893 & compare it to this year, very similar patterns indeed with a large swath of above normal precipitation extending southeastward from the northern Rockies through the midwest & into the southeastern US with drier than normal conditions towards southern Canada & the southern plains/south-central Rockies. 

1893 Apr-June precipitation anomaly NOAA ESRL 20th century reanalysis 

This year for the same time period

Ok, I'll try not to bore you too much with the details on this, that's for another post, but for now I'll say thank you for coming to my site & I really hope you enjoyed my post, if you have any questions, concerns, or even want to say hi, feel free to leave comments.