If you already miss the sweltering dog days of summer, here’s some good news: Summer-like conditions return to the area Wednesday, with heat index values at 100 degrees or higher.
Record highs for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday — 93, 91 and 92, respectively — will probably be safe as temperatures at the airport push toward the 90 degree mark. But the forecast heat index at Palm Beach International for Wednesday is 102 degrees; 100 degrees in Palm Beach where an east wind at 8 mph should cool the island down a degree or two.
The chance of rain diminishes each day into the Columbus Day weekend, when the chance of a shower will be just 20 percent.
Although plenty of clouds have been streaming up from the Caribbean, rainfall amounts were modest in Central Palm Beach County Monday and Tuesday. Officially, the airport had 0.70 of an inch Monday compared with 1.77 inches in Miami and 2.14 inches in Fort Lauderdale.
Boca Raton reported 1.81 inches and Loxahatchee, 1.01 inches. In Broward County, though, Weston recorded 3.69 inches and Plantation, 2.78 inches.
The prize for the most rain goes to a station in the Everglades just south of Big Cypress National Preserve in Collier County, where 4.22 inches of rain fell.
Another half-inch to an inch was expected on Tuesday before the system moves out and drier air moves back in.
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A major rise in sea levels of up to 3.6 feet (1.1 meters) by the year 3000 is a done deal, a new study released on Tuesday maintains. Researchers said greenhouse gas emissions have caused “irreversible damage” and the only question is whether lack of action makes things worse.
Under three other scenarios, researchers said sea level rises of from 6.9 feet to more than 22 feet were possible over the next thousand years.
The study appears in the Oct. 2 edition of the journal, Environmental Research Letters, a publication of The Institute of Physics based in London.
The major reason for the sea level rise will be the melting of the ice sheet in Greenland, according to the study.
Co-author Philippe Huybrechts of Universiteit Brussel in Brussels, Belgium said: “Ultimately the current polar ice sheets store about 65 meters of equivalent sea level and if climatic warming will be severe and long-lasting, all ice will eventually melt.”
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Tropical Storm Nadine is expected to survive through Saturday, which would put its longevity at an amazing 26 days.
That could earn it a third place finish among all-time longest-lived storms, behind Hurricane Ginger in 1971 but ahead of Hurricane Inga in 1969. The record holder is the Great Puerto Rico Hurricane of 1899, which survived for 28 days.
Nadine’s final place in the record books will depend on how its life is calculated, since it spent one day in September as post-tropical before regenerating. It formed Sept. 11.
On Tuesday, Nadine had 65 mph winds and was moving east-southeast in the Eastern Atlantic Ocean at 7 mph. It has done two different loops in that area, and may do a third loop before it heads for colder water.
Far to Nadine’s south, Invest 96L was moving west-northwest and was given a 70 percent chance by the National Hurricane Center of becoming a depression, or Tropical Storm Oscar, by Thursday. All major computer forecast models show this system turning into the North Atlantic without affecting land.