Looking from my office window at dawn, the western sky has a reddish glow. The billowing clouds of an approaching cold front have caught the first rays of the sun and warn of a change in the weather. After the first significant respite of relatively cool, dry air, humidity has returned to the Heartland and the advancing front will bring showers and thunderstorms over the next two days before Canadian air reinvades from the northwest.
This cold front, while still creeping across the Northern Plains, represents the hope of the Eastern Seaboard. Indeed, it is this front, attached to a potent low at it northern end, that will hopefully steer Hurricane Earl away from the Coast. Now chugging WNW from the Caribbean, this major storm will not make a turn to the northeast until it interacts with this front. If the progress of the cold front slows down or stalls out, Earl, currently a category 4 hurricane, could produce major damage from the Outer Banks to Cape Cod.
As the sailor's poem advises, this red sky in morning is a warning for us in the Midwest. But, for those along the East Coast, it is sign of hope that can't get there fast enough.
