[Cross-posted from Sullivan’s Travellers.] The Weather Channel’s harbinger of hurricane-related doom, Jim Cantore, has changed his travel plans, and will be greeting Hurricane Earl from Cape Hatteras instead of Cape Cod. The latest computer model map illustrates why: The models now universally call for Earl to take a pronounced right turn between 30° N and 40° N; there is no… Read more »
[Cross-posted from Sullivan’s Travellers.] First, please accept my apologies, anyone who’s been looking here for hurricane updates. I’ve been derelict in my storm-watching duties — indeed, I don’t know if there’s ever been a time in the last 20 years when I’ve paid this little attention to a major hurricane in the Atlantic, never mind one that’s a possible threat… Read more »
I blogged over at Sullivan’s Travelers about newly designated Tropical Depression Three, which has just formed over the Bahamas. It’s likely to become Tropical Storm Bonnie, and to move through the Florida Straits and into the Gulf of Mexico. That expected track virtually guarantees that this storm will get a whole lot of media attention, far more than your average… Read more »
Hurricane Alex, the Atlantic Basin’s strongest June hurricane in 44 years, has been downgraded to a tropical storm as it moves over mountainous terrain, after “ripping off roofs, causing severe flooding and forcing thousands of people to flee coastal fishing villages” in northern Mexico. Meanwhile, Dr. Jeff Masters is looking back at some eyewall replacement weirdness that happened yesterday as… Read more »
Landfall is expected early tomorrow morning. Winds are “conservatively” estimated at 80 mph, and expected to increase. From the 5am EDT discussion: VERTICAL SHEAR IS FORECAST TO REMAIN LIGHT UP UNTIL LANDFALL OCCURS IN ABOUT 24 HOURS. GIVEN THAT ALEX IS ALSO MOVING SLOWLY OVER SOME OF THE WARMEST UPPER-OCEAN HEAT CONTENT IN THAT REGION OF THE GULF OF MEXICO…STEADY… Read more »
As noted earlier, today is Atlantic hurricane season’s opening day. But the Pacific hurricane season starts a half-month earlier, on May 15, and it has already produced a landfalling system — Tropical Storm Agatha — which has killed more than 150 people in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, and produced this enormous, building-swallowing sinkhole in Guatemala City: Photo courtesy of… Read more »
Today is the “official” start date, climatologically speaking, of the Atlantic hurricane season. As I’ve pointed out before, it’s really an arbitrary date, with no special significance except that the National Hurricane Center begins publishing its Tropical Weather Outlook four times a day. Speaking of which: TROPICAL WEATHER OUTLOOK NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL 800 AM EDT TUE JUN… Read more »
I’ve written extensively in the past on why I think preseason tropical activity forecasts are generally fairly useless. And indeed, trying to specifically predict a particular number of storms is pretty silly. Although hurricane seasons are medium-period events, occupying the gray area between long-term weather and short-term climate, individual hurricanes are short-period events, influenced heavily by other short-period events, which… Read more »
There’s a lot of talk about the allegedly slow reaction to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill being “Obama’s Katrina.” I haven’t followed it closely enough to have an opinion on that. But could the moniker prove more literal than anyone now imagines? Blogger Alan Sullivan, who predicted “significant harm to the Gulf” from the BP explosion at a time… Read more »