Hey, Jeff ... there are more than just 3 ... there are several generated from the US, Canada & Europe that I use. Each is a computer's "best guess" on the weather, but each has its own type of bias (some run cold in warm weather, some get a little too excited about moisture, etc) - and these biases are dependent upon the current weather scenario (also known as "initial conditions").
The short answer: I don't choose just one ... I use a blend of model output combined with a base knowledge of trends as well as just good old fashioned experience to pop out a forecast each morning!

Thanks! ... I'm going to guess that it was a warm/hot afternoon with very little wind ... no matter how "clean" of the lake was, a slightly stagnant atmosphere would allow the lake smell to generate at the surface ... as the storm rolled in, the gust front in advance of the front would've stirred up that shallow layer, collected it & pushed it your way! (hope that helps!)

Speed-wise: The easy answer is that the wind is always strong in the upper atmosphere where there's less fristion & lower density ... as you get closer to the earth, temp/density & surface features start to play a factor ...
Direction-wise: the atmosphere behaves just like the ocean ... or a river in some instances - it's just that we can actually breathe the medium! Therefore, just like a river, the atmosphere had eddies, currents, etc that swirl everything around at different layers (think rip-currents & the gulf stream in the ocean)

The ole "Metro split", eh? ... The simple answer (but not necessarily the complete answer) is that its simply a percieved effect exagerated by the fact that we now notice it when it happens to occur ... the slightly longer answer is being studied by a group of Meteorologists/chemists/etc at the Universities of Oklahoma & Michigan to see what effect, if any, pockets of urban developments can actually influence weaker storm's tracks.

sure ... some of them do hold weight, otherwise the never would've become common knowledge ... things like size of a pig's spleen or the old wooly caterpillar to determine winter's impact/etc ... not all are useful, lol, but I still know its going to rain by watching the leaves in the backyard turn upside down! (mostly)

Because it does! :-)
Our overnight lows usually occur right around sunrise ... simply because we've had all night to cool off (ie: we shut off the heat source (the sun) as it sets, then we slowly cool all night until the point that the heat source comes back!)

lol - NONE! ... I'm not a fan of the "seasonal forecasts" - even the "official" ones ... remember last year most were calling for a colder & wetter winter ... My specialty is remote sensing & forecasting in the short term ... historical trends might win you a bet over time, but doesn't help for a given year ...

On occasion ... but I have to share my holocron with Ian ...

Nope! ... and I dare say your comment is incorrect ;-) ... I run a VERY solid accuracy rate ... & an independent firm keeps track of our forecasts & has consistantly ranked me (along with Ian) as most accurate in the Twin Cities ...

(and no offense taken, by the way ... the weatherman bad-rap comes with the job!)

no problem! ... I can't speak for anyone else, but in the oddball times that I TOTALLY blow a forecast, I'm the first to talk about it - try to explain it - & just generally cop to it ... lol - I HAVE to since my coworkers here would call me out on-air with no hesitation if I didn't!

I guess that's the real question ... Although I AM a meteorologist, my specialty is in remote sensing & short-term forecasting, so I'm far from a true expert (ie: not a Climatologist) - for instance, if you have a broken foot, an ear-nose-throat guy would know the basics, but you'd want an Orthopedic surgeon to give you the gory details.

Not so much ... and, to be honest, it's not that bad, at all ... most folks recognize that meteorology is a young science & although great advances are being made, we're far from "taming" the atmospphere's widespread predictability...

Thanks! ... On the rare occasion that Susan & I go out for some "grown-up" fun, you're more often than not going to find us at Pittsburgh Blue on the patio ... although Malone's & Wild Bill's are on the docket a lot if all 4 members of Team Marler are a'cruisin' ...

Dewpoint is an "absolute" measurement of moisture in the atmosphere ... relative humidity is a ratio derived from temp & dew point & given as a percentage ...
I ALWAYS will give dew point rather than r.h. ... Dew points in the 50s are always comfy in the summer ... lower 60s are noticable ... mid 60s are humid ... upper 60s are muggy ... 70s are downright tropical feeling!

yes ... from year-to-year-to-year the day-one outlooks are certainly improving ... even their experimental Day 4+ stuff is showing signs of life ... Of course the best improvement was a few years ago when we went to polygonal severe warnings instead of county based warnings

Hey GC ... here's the "official" statement Ian & I put our thoughts into & crafted a couple of years ago ...
"Climate change is an inevitable fact. Scientific research shows naturally occurring cycles of warming and cooling throughout the earth’s history and while we are confident that the Earth is in a warming phase the scale of human impact remains unclear. The FOX 9 Weather Team would like to create a dialogue, a conversation about climate change to evaluate our lifestyles and our energy consumption. It is important that we give the Earth the benefit of the doubt in order to limit pollution before we know the long term affects it has on climate "

Thanks! It's good to see more and more folks recognizing that climate change is occurring...and/or, at the very least, that it's best to take precautions ("give the earth the benefit of the doubt") to try and mitigate damage.

One's simply more conversational than the other ... I'm a fan of "plain talking", so to speak ...

Hey Luke ... I LOVE my job! ... Especially now that I'm able to stretch my hosting muscles on the Buzz over the past few years!
I obviously spend 5.5 hours of my day on-air ... a couple of hours before the show to create the forecast & make my graphics ... depending on the day, I'll spend anywhere from a half hour to 2 hours at the station taking care of business, shoots, prep, etc ... Some days I'll have school visits in the AM or PM ... then I'll spend another hour or so in the evening going over data & putting a rough forecast together ... and on a busy weather day, it'll obviously get a little more involved!

No Problem!

Old school they were slightly different with partly cloudy having more sun available than partly sunny (I know ... seems weird) ... these days they're interchangeable with the NWS going so far as adopting partly sunny for daytime use & partly cloudy for night time use - they both mean roughly a quarter to half the sky has some type of opaque clouds!

Sometimes - but ALL very good-naturedly ... Mike at CCO & I text/twitter many times a week & occasionally do lunch ... Jared over at KARE lives here in Maple Grove with me & we yap when we see each other at the gym/etc ... I've dined with Patrick at KSTP & yap at Sven on Twitter ... ... so we're all pretty friendly, by all means! Think of it as we're all students in the same class - just because we compete for the best grades doesn't mean we're not friends! (But with a trident!)

Not necessarily ... but I DO think our ability to observe MORE of the weather allows us to see more of the extremes

Woman? ... ... Ian Leonard, hands down! lol

I had no idea!!! Sweet mercy, that sounds fun!

Now THAT is funny! ... thanks!! (my wife Susan just rolled her eyes at that comment, HA!)

Our standard operating procedure is to completely interrupt programming & stay on the air live whenever there is a Tornado Warning in the 13 county Metro area. A Severe Thunderstorm Warning in that same zone will warrant a 2 or 3 minute cut-in to relay the proper info. Otherwise, we try to keep our interruptions as brief as possible while balancing public safety. In the event of ANY severe weather, we will ALWAYS run a crawl at the top or bottom of the screen detailing the necessary info.

lol - I'll tell them! ... and hi right back to him ...

Yup - we get a lot warmer & more active than NE WI ... it's really that Nebraska & South Dakta get even warmer than us - and they're the "proving grounds" for some of our biggest storm systems.

Ha! ... or Lightning Lad? ... or Weather Wizard?!

Oddly enough, I don't tend to watch much television so I can't really speak to what available ... but I DO know that the topic is covered online extensively - I just got my latest update from NASA tracking the big Greenland area ice-shelf that broke off a few months ago & is continuing to break apart as it journeys south

Good luck with that! ... it's too ingrained in my DNA! ... but I DO have a good section of the "Marler Library" shelves devoted to Marvel!

Hmmmm....let's stay on the weather topic, shall we? Speaking of...Keith, I've noticed that when I'm watching on a online radar, it can look like a storm is heading right for us and suddenly splits. What are some of common reasons that it goes off track so quickly?

Can't say that there's ever been a BMW in my driveway ... are you checking out the wrong house?

and for editor Wendy: looks like YOU need to go up & read one of the first questions posed by YOUR HUSBAND! lol - see - you guys ARE almost one mind!

(mini cooper)

Are you looking for model forecast data or actual "current" data?

Current data preferred

here's a link to a cool little site ... called the "e-wall" ... it's got a healthy mix of observation data & model data ... enjoy!
http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~gadomski/ewall.html

Yup ... but not to the extant that you see on TV/movies ... nowadays my storm chasing consists of me & a special app on my iPhone that lets me broadcast LIVE back to the studio & on the air. I have no problem with folks that do professional storm-chasing ... and as long as the amateurs are properly trained/educated than more power to them!

No problem ... my pleasure!

Nope ... not a regional thing ... it's just "traditional" to talk about relative humidity. It's not a bad thing, but it really doesn't help the viewer by itself ... Ian & I moved to dew point a few years ago and several others are slowly moving in that direction, too.

Thanks, Bonnie!! Comments like yours help make getting up at 2am worthwhile! (ugh - that's just 5 hours away - time to hit the hay!)

Correct! The dew point is the limit (for the most part) to which we can cool the air at night - dew points in July on those hot & sweaty days are in the 60s or even the 70s (and rarely even in the 80s) ... dew points this week have mainly been in the 40s to around 50 (they're in the 30s THIS morning!), so we're able to get chilled in the AM!

lol - you're not imagining anything! ... We did just that this year, as you observed. Warm & cold fronts can certainly be powerful, but think of them as the quickly shifting, transient weather makers - they CAN make a big impact, but they really need support in the upper layers in the atmosphere to raelly make a longer-term change.
The biger shifts & "régime changes" (as I like to call them) occur when the large ridges & troughs (hills & valleys) in the Jet Stream (a fast-moving current of winds in the upper atmosphere) ripples around the US ... very simply put: when the Jet is to our north, we'll stay warmer (since it lets the warm air from the SOuth to surge our way) & as it shifts to our south we'll stay cooler (again, a gross simplification).
So, yes - when the Upper-Air Pattern & its associated oscillations get stuck in a pattern, not much can change until the pattern shifts again!

Thank you!

Generally, yes.
But: the subtle nuances of any forecast that can become more exaggerated have to do with the INTERPRETATION of the models. Think of any model data as simply "inspiration" ... the main thrust of a forecast is a balance of computer model data (a blend of several), eduacation, experience & good old-fashioned "gut feeling".

Not sure how to respond to that Terry, not knowing your background/etc - other than I'd take that bet & be VERY confident I'd win ;-)

I'll pass along your thoughts to her, lol - perhaps there's a support group?
Weather changes & the old "feel it in my bones" is theoretically a result of the changes in atmospheric pressure ... the bigger the storm system approaching, the bigger the change possible ... (but this correlation is still debated)
here's a link for you:
http://www.johnshopkinshealthalerts.com/reports/arthritis/44-1.html

Not silly at all!! ... Hot & humid weather are the perfect "fuel" for thunderstorms and get the air really churning ... hence why thunderstorms are much more common in the warmer months - although we DO get thunder-snow every so often!

Thank you, Keith, for participating and everyone for submitting their questions!