The weather's been fine over the region for the past few weeks but things are about to change with the approach of a strong cold front currently situated across Minnesota, the Dakotas, and southwestward into Nebraska and Colorado. And speaking of this cold front--the temperature yesterday at Bismarck, ND was 72 degrees, today it was 59. Winter Storm Watches are in effect stretching all the way from northeastern North Dakota, southwest into northern Wyoming, all thanks to that strong cold front set to move through our region Friday.

Friday morning, the cold front should be encroaching on the region--with scattered showers possibly breaking out across western portions of Maryland. There is still significant model spread between the interactions of a tropical low pressure system in the Gulf at the same time, and the cold front, a complex weather scenario seems to be developing. The less aggressive GFS is emphatic in developing a much weaker low in the central FL area Friday, and absorbing that low into the cold front up north. This, in turn, creates a nor'easter type set up with a strengthening low east of the cold front, just off the east coast.

If the NAM's depiction is right, the cold front sweeps through the region sans fanfare, and completely misses the tropical low to the south in the extreme northeastern Gulf of Mexico. This leaves the low to spin, and eventually ride northeastward over the southeastern states, eventually spreading a tropical airmass over the entire region with an increased chance for some rain showers over the weekend.

Whatever the case is, Saturday will be cool and cloudy, with at least a 50% chance of some rain showers. Temperatures will be hard pressed to make it too far into the 60s during the day, and will likely stay in the low 50s overnight.

An interesting article appeared in Today's Science section (A7) of the Washington Post, which I see the team at Capitalweather.com have already touched on. The article entitled "One Researcher's Plan: Fight Storms With Storms" calls for what appears to be a ludicrous set-up of turbo jet engines, huge barges, and (oh yeah) about a $10 million price tag. Moshe Alamaro has a theory that if we can obtain some large ocean barges and a couple immensely powerful jet engines (maybe 10 or 20), and set them tail up into the ocean. We would then, in essence, be creating anthropogenic storms, which could draw oceanic heat content from the waters, depleting the source of fuel a hurricane has to gobble up--potentially saving individuals from another Katrina disaster.

The last time we tried to tamper with hurricanes was back in 1962-65 with the US Navy's creation of Project Stormfury. The scientists involved decided to seed the outer eyewall of the hurricane with pure Carbon Dioxide (dry ice). This would (in theory) weaken the hurricane due to a large loss of latent heat and raise the atmospheric pressure of the storm. Seemed like a great idea at the time. So, in 1965, a couple airplanes flew into Hurricane Betsy dropping silver iodide and dry ice into the storm. It weakened, but suddenly turned back from heading due east, to due west, slamming into North Carolina.

So the question is: Should we really be tampering with Mother Nature? Can we really control the weather?