The Miami Herald reports on the expansion of hurricane aerial resources:Agencies ready planes to study hurricanes

The Air Force Reserve WC-130 turboprop “hurricane hunters” make the most critical flights, feeding information on a storm’s strength and structure, necessary for forecasters to issue advisories and tropical warnings.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will deploy a WP-3 Orion turboprop and a Gulfstream G-IV jet to study how storms intensify. NASA will send three jets, a DC-8, a WB-57 and a Global Hawk, into storms to learn more about how tropical systems evolve and what triggers them to suddenly strengthen.

And the National Center for Atmospheric Research will dispatch a Gulfstream G-V to study how hurricanes form in the first place.

The C-130 is a cargo aircraft, the Orion a Navy patrol aircraft, and the Gulfstreams are business jets. The WB-57 is a heavily modified light bomber design used for high altitude missions, and the Global Hawk is a high altitude remotely piloted aircraft, or UAV. The DC-8 was a standard airliner, but NASA’s aircraft is a flying laboratory.

Now all they need are a few storms, although they might want to see what is going on that has been suppressing the formation of storms this year.

So, I had to go out and checked the weather. I looked at the local radar loop and it struck me that the storms in the area seemed to be moving in a counter-clockwise motion, like a tropical storm.

So, I jumped to the regional radar view and the storms were definitely moving counter-clockwise around a center near where Florida, Alabama, and Georgia meet. It was time to head to the tropical weather site to see what was going on:

Statement as of 2:00 PM EDT on August 15, 2010

For the North Atlantic, Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico –

An area of low pressure, the remnant of Tropical Depression Five, is located over southwestern Georgia. This system is forecast to move southward toward the northern Gulf Coast later today and tonight and it could emerge over the Gulf waters by early Monday, where conditions are expected to be conducive for some development. There is a medium chance, 30 percent, of this system becoming a tropical cyclone again during the next 48 hours.

Elsewhere, tropical cyclone formation is not expected during the next 48 hours.

Forecaster Pasch

Just ducky! The slacker couldn’t hack it the first time around, so it decides to give it another go. Rain, more rain, and nothing but rain for yet another week.