Channel 11 News Dallas

Florida thunderstorms; some for Dallas?; Atlantic hurricane season to rev up!

Dallas. TX has baked for more than a month now.  The past 39 days have seen daytime highs at DFW Airport soar to 100 degrees or higher (Fig. 1) while nighttime lows have only dropped below 80 twice since July 7th.  Average daily temperatures have hovered around 90 degrees since the current heat wave began.

Southwest Florida

Compare that to the weather here in southwest Florida for the same period.  Fort Myers, for example, has only reached above 95 degrees on four days, with daytime highs consistently in the upper 80’s to lower 90’s.  Overnight lows, except for one night, have stayed in the mid to upper 70s.

In fact, the average daily high temperature for the last 40 days in Fort Myers has just about matched the average daily temperature in Dallas!

However, dew points in Florida have been about 10 to 15 degrees higher than Dallas, so the actual “feel-like” readings we’ve been experiencing are in the same category.  But, “feel-like” temperature records are not being kept…yet!

For our area, not a lot of change can be expected.  The usual daily daytime increase in cumulus-type clouds, followed by scattered showers and thunderstorms (some with heavy downpours and frequent cloud-to-ground lightning) and ending with partly cloudy skies should continue until further notice.  As always, look for subtle daily variations in this pattern.

Rainfall, however, will continue to lessen drought conditions statewide.  During the past 7 days, for example, some locations north of Tampa and some inland locations in southern Florida have netted upwards of five inches of rainfall (Fig. 2).  Statewide, just every place has received at least an inch of rain.

Dallas, TX

However, in the Dallas area, some welcome changes are in the offing.

As the upper level trough continues to deepen in the eastern U.S., the overbearing upper level high-pressure system in the southern Plains continues to be squeezed westward and southward.  This has allowed more thunderstorm activity to develop across eastern Colorado, Kansas and parts of Oklahoma.  Early this morning, two mesoscale convective systems (known as MCSs) can be seen marching across the south-central Plains (Fig. 3).  MCSs are simply organized clusters of intense thunderstorms and primarily bring heavy rainfall and gusty winds.  They can also bring hail and spawn tornadoes (Fig. 4).

Downtown Education Company Accused Of $11 Billion Fraud

PITTSBURGH — The Downtown company that owns The Art Institute of Pittsburgh and 100 other schools bilked the U.S. government out of more than $11 billion in federal student grants and loans since 2003, the Justice Department said in a complaint filed Monday.”This action against EDMC seeks to recover a portion of the $11 billion in federal student aid which EDMC allegedly obtained through false statements and which enriched the company, its shareholders and executives at the expense of innocent individuals seeking a quality education,” said David Hickton, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania.The federal government and the attorneys general for California, Florida, Illinois and Indiana claim Education Management Corp. violated a federal ban on paying college recruiters for the number of students they sign up. The company denies the allegation.”The pursuit of this legal action by the federal government and a handful of states is flat-out wrong,” said Bonnie Campbell, a former Iowa attorney general who is an adviser for the company’s legal counsel. “EDMC’s 2003 compensation plan followed the law in both its design and implementation, as EDMC’s response to the governments’ complaint will show.”The government filed the complaint in a 4-year-old whistleblower lawsuit that a judge kept under seal until May so that the state and federal governments could decide whether they wanted to intervene.Campbell, who also formerly worked for the Justice Department, said federal regulations in 2002 permitted companies to consider the number of students enrolled when paying their recruiters as long as the enrollment numbers weren’t the sole factor.The complaint says the other factors the company considered were just window dressing.”In practice, the sole factor that determines changes to the compensation of admissions personnel is the number of students the admissions employee recruited during the previous twelve months,” the complaint says.In addition to the federal money, the complaint says the company fraudulently obtained more than $137 million in education dollars from the four states.Education Management Corp. is the second-largest operator of for-profit schools in the country. it owns and operates 101 schools either online or on traditional campuses. The company reported $2.5 billion in revenue and $168 million in profit for the fiscal year that ended in June 2010.

The Dallas myth, the making and unmaking of an American city

New York Magazine

New York Magazine

New York Magazine

Southern speech communication journal