Tropical Storm Alberto: May 20, Update A

Too early. Stop. Not awake yet. Stop. Still twelve days to the official start of the Atlantic hurricane season. Stop. Aaaargh. Stop.

I see that yesterday afternoon the National Hurricane Center named our first Tropical Storm of the 2012 Atlantic Hurricane Season (which officially begins on June 1). Quite frankly, I think it’s just impolite of Alberto to be making so much noise this early in the season, and on a weekend no-less! You’d never catch me vacuuming at 7am on a Sunday… my neighbours will tell you that I wait until at least 8am. ;-)

Tropical Storm Alberto is the first real pre-season Tropical Storm in the Atlantic since Tropical Storm Ana in 2003 (all the others have been Subtropical Storms). But he’s a cute little baby storm. J He has been hanging around off the S. Carolina/Georgia coast since yesterday and is officially at 30.5N, 80.1W. He is crawling southward(ish) at 5 mph and is now actually off the Florida coast. He has decent circulation in the lower part of the troposphere (I’ll explain this mumbo-jumbo jargon later, when I’ve woken up properly) but the convection is not very strong. At the moment his winds are officially 40mph (TS range: 39-73mph), central pressure 1007mb, so he is barely a Tropical Storm. Although he is close to the Gulf Stream, which has a lot of deep warm water, there is relatively strong wind shear in the atmosphere and a lot of dry air around him so it’s unlikely that he will get much stronger. In this I agree with the NHC.  

The east Pacific had their first Tropical Storm of the season (TS Aletta) last week. Apparently this is the first time in our records that we’ve had Tropical Storms in both the east Pacific and Atlantic before June 1. Maybe we can get them all over and done with by July to make things easy for the new Director of the NHC (Dr. Rick Knabb, starts work on June 4). J

Until tomorrow,
Ciao!
J.

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DISCLAIMER: These remarks are just what I think/see regarding tropical storms - not the opinion of any organization I represent. If you are making an evacuation decision, please heed your local emergency management and the National Hurricane Center's official forecast and the National Weather Service announcements. This is not an official forecast. If I "run away, run away" (Monty Python), I'll let you know.

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