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Good moaning my friends! Mother Nature had a bit of a slow start
to the season, so I thought I would sleep in. :-) Truth be told, I was swamped
by a deluge of work (versus being swamped by a deluge of rainfall… which we’ll
get to shortly).
Welcome to the middle of the 2nd month of the Atlantic
Hurricane Season of 2019 and my well-worth-reading-award-winning-yet-very-modestly-written-blog. And I see we have a stormy blob (my highly scientific and technical term for a er... blob of clouds and stuff ;-)) in the Gulf of Mexico. The future Tropical Storm Barry perhaps? (In case
you missed Subtropical Storm Andrea - she was a blobette on the horizon back in May, a flibbertigibbet, a will-o'-the-wisp, a cloud - very short lived, very little, and perhaps shouldn't even have been named but
we’ll let that one go shall we?).
Potential Tropical Cyclone Two, as the NHC (National Hurricane Center) are officially calling
him at the moment ('Potential'???) has been struggling to develop for the last
couple of days. He started off the coast of Florida, decided it didn't have
enough ice cream, so he is now moving generally westward along the northern Gulf coast at a sedate 5mph – who
has the best ice cream? His center is around 27.5N, 88.2W. I think this
one should really be a Tropical Depression already as his wind speed is around
30mph (central pressure 1009mb), and he does have some circulation. The definition of a Tropical Depression
is circulation with winds greater than 17mph (and less than 39mph). They sent a plane in yesterday, but it couldn’t locate a decent
circulation which is why it’s still a ‘Potential’. From the data I am looking
at, it looks like there is decent circulation and has been since yesterday
evening.
Most of his convection (rainy and thundery weather) is currently offshore as we can see from the satellite images:
Although no deluge of rain yet, the circulation for a storm in the northern hemisphere is counterclockwise, so there is the chance of him pushing water on shore as he moves by you. For example, water levels are around 1 ft above normal in Mississippi, and about 0.5 ft above normal in eastern Louisiana at the moment.
From the satellite image, I think his center is a little south of the location that they have him. The current track is for a hurricane to make landfall in LA on Saturday, but he may make it closer to the LA/TX border if they find the center is, indeed, south of that location:
You should all be prepared though because it only takes one (although this is unlikely to be that one). The most famous example was in 1992 which was a quiet season with a below-average number of storms: 7 named storms, 4 hurricanes, and only 1 major hurricane. But that 1 major hurricane was ‘the one’. It was the first storm of the season and formed quite late, in mid-August, and turned into the infamous Hurricane Andrew who hit Miami as a cat 5 causing over $27 billion in damage (in 1992!) and over 60 deaths. So be prepared. My usual hurricane supplies would include: water, wine, ice cream, a good book to read, wine, some candles, ice cream, a radio for setting the mood, batteries, some more wine, mosquito repellent, some gin and tonic (for the quinine of course), and lots of cans of lychees as I'm still partial to lychee martinis or just lychees in general. :-)
And of course, this wouldn’t be my first post of the Season if I didn’t go over my top 10 notes about this blog so you have a reminder of what you are getting into. As I appeared to have gathered a few more very intelligent and good-looking readers last year (current hits on the website is getting close to 255,500), these notes are mostly for you. And for my returning good-looking and very intelligent readers, remember, if you get bored someone, somewhere, is painting so you can always go and watch that dry... ;-)
Top 10 things to note about this blog:
1. These updates are about fun, forecasting, and education... and tropical storms (and whatever else pops into my head that may, with some imagination, fit those three words - possibly after a glass or two of wine (or lychee martinis)). It is just what I think.
2. I have a British sense of humoUr... you have been warned.
3. This is my hobby - sometimes you'll get one update a day, sometime four. If you are really lucky, you won't get any. If you wish to pay me to write, let me know and I'll send out updates as frequently as you like.
4. I hope you like Monty Python, Eddie Izzard, The IT Crowd. And other Funny Stuff.
5. If you have any questions (preferably about tropical storms), please ask. I will be happy to make up the answers for you. I can also cut and paste from previous entries (I’m very talented) so if I say something or use some "scientific jargon" (always thrilling!), please ask me about it (people in the area of any active storm get first dibs).
6. I often write tongue-in-cheek, which sometimes hurts my cheek but what can you do? Gentle sarcasm, irony, and puns are all perfectly acceptable forms of communication. Unfortunately, they don't always translate in writing so please don't be offended - like Planet Earth, I'm "Mostly Harmless" (Douglas Adams). Have a piece of chocolate or a soothing cup of tea instead.
7. I'm sure every cloud in the Atlantic is exciting to some but, unless I'm bored, I'll usually write about those that I think have a chance of developing.
8. Despite what you may have heard, I am not always right. But then neither is anyone else. Forecasting is complicated. Sometimes the crystal ball gets smudges and you are all out of Windex to clean it and the store is closed. So PLEASE pay attention to the National Hurricane Center, National Weather Service and your Emergency Managers - especially when a storm is looming because they have the most up-to-date information!!
9. I stopped adding people to the listserve a few years ago so if you have friends who want to get updates, please can you direct them to the website (
http://jyotikastorms.blogspot.com). This is part of my very complicated top-secret grand plan to take over the world (bwa haa haa = evil laughter in case you were wondering) - which I have been working at for at least 7 years now, but I'm not sure it's going very well really.
10. I confess I am a twit. I am on twitter (@jyovianstorm). Twitter is cool. Just like bow-ties are cool (Dr. Who). I will post these updates on Twitter, but I’ll also tweet about storms in other basins, my job, other people’s jobs, movies (I have a movie 'career' - it's a requirement for anyone living in Los Angeles, where I currently reside), cool science fiction, cooler science, goofy things, etc. so if you want to catch up between updates, that’s the place to lurk.
That's it for now! I'm in rural England and writing from a thatched roof cottage at the moment but I'll be back later/tomorrow with another update. :-)
Ciao,
J.
Twitter: jyovianstorm
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DISCLAIMER:
These remarks are just what I think/see regarding tropical storms. If you are making an evacuation decision, please heed your local emergency management and the National Hurricane Center's official forecast. This is not an official forecast.
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