A writer and a tropical muse. A funky Lubavitcher who enjoys watching the weather, hurricanes, listening to music while enjoying life with a sense of humor and trying to make sense of it all!
Friday, May 23, 2025
RED 70% in the EPAC... Looks Like Alvin Will Form............Factors in a Forecast For Hurricane Season......... Have a Good Memorial Day Weekend!
First off there's 70% in the EPAC
Good chances for Alvin to form there!
The Atlantic is currently quiet.
So have a wonderful Memorial Day Weekend!
Not much to say today, but I just wanted to point out a few things with regard to the coming Hurricane Season. And, in this case I'm talking about the short and midterm not the long term conditions. As I said yesterday there are many factors that can easily change quickly that impact long range forecasts. As I said yesterday wind shear is not the easiest to forecast, though we are getting better. The NOAA report said nothing about Saharan Dust and Saharan Dust is a huge factor in hurricane development. Waves can ride under them and they end up appearing "bottom heavy" as the moisture in the top half of the wave is diminished by the dry air from SAL aka Saharan Dust. Generally, SAL inhibits waves from forming early in the season. And sometimes the SAL Season goes long, and other times there's long breaks in intensity. It's an unknown and happens in real time. Sal currently is doing it's thing and waves are staying too low latitude wise to be able to develop. That's as of now vs down the tropical road.
Breaking it down in parts..... these are the main basic factors mentioned regarding the numbers forecast!
Weak windshear
Warm water
Forecast strong West African Monsoon (provides the tropical waves....
It's worth noting that early season forecasts often have hiccups as often a forecast doesn't verify as wind shear at any given time can be hard to predict. And it's mathematical formula based on many moving parts in the equation. And yet, it's a snap shot of what the season will be like, but for unforseen factors.
Lots of math in Meteorology!!!
The link up above mentions some changes and things the NHC will be doing this year that I will speak about over the next week or so as we move day by day, one day closer each to the start of the hurricane season in 10 days.
Again these are the names of the year!
Personally, this is just me, I'm more into the CSU forecast put out earlier in April that has 43 pages of data and information that relates to the conditions we are expecting this year. I will link the report at the bottom of the blog. It's not for the faint of heart with little meteorological knowledge... but if you work your way through it .... you will learn a lot. Knowledge is power and the details in the CSU report are extremely valuable.
Cliff Notes to the above graphic from CSU.
17 Named Storms
9 Hurricanes
4 Major Hurricanes
CSU goes out more on a mathematically derived ledge.
Note the NOAA forecast doesn't mention Saharan Dust as a factor nor do they give out analog years. It's a good snap shot; a press release with a heads up to a possibly busy hurricane season.
Your job is to prepare for Hurricane Season. Here's another link below to their advice on how to prepare.
30% in EPAC Could Be Alvin .... Tail of a Front Should Always Be Watched As We Sail Into June. Wild Waves Rolling Off Africa... Model Discussion and Thoughts on Tropical Dreams!
Just reminding you........
Somewhere there's always a model running....
...long range possibilities.
The image above shows this.
EPAC logical place to start.
BOC follow the dots....
... happens early in the season.
Westbound wave near Panama
Off East Coast from old fronts.
Far fetched tropical dreams of models...
Long range models are like a love sick teenager that runs every possibility in their fast paced mind on what the chances are of going out with that person who caught their eye and how it could happen one day. They lie awake at night while long range models are spitting out wild scenarios dreaming tropical dreams that may or may not come true. Yet, no matter how much you make fun of them.........they will go on dreaming and the models will keep on running possibilities. Gotta learn to live with it and sometimes one of those long range possibilities verifies in some way, some day.
So let's get down to the heart of the matter. Some of us see things in satellite imagery that others do not see. DaBuh is such a person and in ways I am too. Nuances, innuendos and sometimes hearts and smiles where there's an impulse within a wave complex or at a spot in an old weak wave where it will suddenly come to life again and indicate to those paying attention where it may go.
There's a heart deep over South America.
And, there is "Alvin" in the EPAC if GFS is right.
Meanwhile we have a yellow 30% circle in EPAC.
Let's call it "Maybe Alvin"
Image above from Windy.com
Awesome tool to do many things with....
Euro sees a weaker signature in EPAC
Tho what I am curious on here is this image above.
Lots of convection at the base of yet another front.
Dipping down into the Carib....
..moisture below rushing into it.
Is that something to think on?
Dream on?
Dream on.........
Note the ICON model has something spinning.
Or trying to spin in EPAC
Word on the street is........
MJO is a player in the EPAC soon.
Either way it's more likely to pop....
...than the Atlantic.
But time will tell.
In the Atlantic we look East towards Africa.
In the EPAC we look East at Colombia.
That li'l area near Panama.
A blurry heart like image shows color...
...in an old westbound wave.
Let's go wide.
You can see the color there I zoomed in on.
Front pushing East...
...moisture on South side lingers a bit.
EPAC possibilities lit up in dark reds.
Further East... wave train.
Next wave coming off Africa is wild.
And you can see there's wave complexes.
That's important.
Bulked up they go further West...
...more likely to survive and be a player!
But it's early.
It's like being 14 and wishing you were 18.
Like the models dream on 10 days from now.
Even if....Alvin doesn't form now.
It will sooner or later.
And there are possibilities as we get into early June..
Yellow Circle in EPAC 20% Chances of Being Alvin. Possibly. More Important is the High Is Building, Setting Up & That's a Problem!
The area I have been talking about in the EPAC...
...is now introduced by NHC at 20% Yellow
Satellite imagery of the set up has been very consistent and it's possible that something may try and form in the EPAC towards the end of May. Day by day we are getting to the end of May fast. You'll note I showed models in several posts earlier this week that indicated development is a possibility and logical as there's abundant moisture in the region already and we are officially into their hurricane season that began on May 15th. When moisture lingers in one area over time pressures lower and all it needs is the trigger and that's usually a Low coming off of South America and/or a westbound tropical wave.
Various posts from the last few days.
Consistency is important in tropical forecasting.
Even so things can change over time.
Today's models remain ripe with possibilities.
EURO and GFS show "something" forming.
Also ....or maybe more so ....
long range models show a huge High Pressure in ATL.
Those big red eyes the size of the Atlantic below.
This is the GFS from a bit earlier today.
While I went to look at what might become Alvin.
The size of the huge High in the Atlantic...
..stole my attention.
It should steal your attention.
That high presses down on the wave train...
...moving, scooting waves fast to the West.
To the left you can see the area being watched.
Intense colors in the EPAC
It's a solid line currently to Africa.
Again it's Africa to South America...
Amazon energy enhances what's left of the waves.
Then they move West into the EPAC.
While the ITCZ is low it's par for the course in May.
We don't always have such a wave train in May...
...but this year we do.
The solidity of this moisture is not so par for the course.
The dark blues (high pressure...dry air) push down ....
Wave stay low in June but this is May.
At some point one can break from the pack...
..and get into the Carib or the Gulf.
You can't ignore it.
Our first wave by Africa is marked.
The red Low moves West...
...into an area moist and ready for it.
So prepare.
Things change fast in the tropics.
The waves usually show up the end of May.
But this is a healthy, early, low latitude wave train.
Jim Williams Top 20 List of Cities ....for 2025 Hurricane Season. Thoughts on Possible Hot Spots and Tracks.........
Spoiler Alert.
If your city is shown here with a red dot.
You just may be on Jim's list!
More on this map later.
But it's easy to see....
..where a hurricane in the Bahamas could slide up the FL Coast.
Or perhaps criss cross Florida the way Donna did....
Bahamas to FLL to Tampa back to St Aug out to sea.
Then slide up the coast?
Just musing as it's only May.
Today's blog post is about a list that Jim Williams of HurricaneCity fame puts out every year of his top 20 cities for 2025 Hurricane Season. Jim's list has a very good accuracy rate and I've seen city after city on his list be crossed off with eerie accuracy. Accurate would be a word for Jim, as he is very detail oriented, very fact based and spends much time researching through various sources to see which cities are often impacted in similar years (El Nino, La Nina, Neutral) with similar factors and adding in which cities are overdue for impact.
I've known Jim a long time. I know Jim online on various sites, I have watched his shows online during hurricanes before people were doing Facebook Lives or YouTube Live and I know him in person as we have spent time discussing hurricanes, hurricane history and hurricane memories. Nothing like talking to a hurricane friend......it's much like recounting the year your favorite team almost won the World Series or the big trout that got away. And, I'm blessed to know a few people who frequented Jim's Message Board who showed up in Miami to help cut back trees from a house where a Ficus tree bigger than the house collapsed in hurricane all around it. The network of storm chasers and hurricane people online is real and well if you know.........you know. I'll link to the Message Board below if you want to check it out.
So that being said I am going to start here and count backwards as Jim likes to do. You can watch his video on YouTube and hear his exact words, reasoning for these cities and the cities that almost made the list!
#20 Tampa. I know it's always on everyone's list for a landfall and yet it gets lucky time and again avoiding a direct hit. One day.........it's luck will run out. And, yes Milton impacted it but it was not a direct hit.
#19 Great Abaco, Bahamas. Note this is the 1st of 6 cities in the Bahamas and you can clearly make out that cluster on the map above.
#18 Neuvitas, Cuba. I put a map below in case for those of you who don't know the Cuban coastline well.
#17 Gulf Shores, Alabama. A wonderful beachy town that conjures up visions of Jimmy Buffet.
#16 St. Pierre, NewFoundland. A place that you can see doesn't look very tropical, but often feels the fury of a hurricane's wind as it reaches the end of it's road.
#15 Southhampton, Long Island. I have a son who loves trips to Southhampton. Many a hurricane likes to threaten it while on it's way North to .... NewFoundland!
#14 Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I have several kids who live there and I stay there often when visiting. While Hurricane Katrina made landfall "near"the Broward/Miami Dade County Line it is well known in hurricane history circles for getting a strong direct hit in 1947. The NWS map shows it really crossing North Dade, but I digress. As I lived just South of the County Line I got the eye of Katrina .... we all sat outside on little lawn chairs enjoying the fast moving thin clouds and marveling at being in the eye, before the back side hit fast. A wonderful memory.
#13 Eleuthra, Bahamas
#12 Morehead City, NC This is one of my favorite coastal towns. A city that's been visited countlesss times by the eye of a hurricane.
#11 Elizabeth City, NC Just up the road from Morehead City and it makes me wonder if this year there will be a similar pattern as we had last year with storms moving further inland across North Carolina vs just kissing the tip of the Outer Banks.
#10 Andros, Bahamas (lots of Bahamas on this list add in nearby Fort Lauderdale.......hmnn)
#9 Mole St. Nicholas, Haiti There's a map below so you see where it is for reference.
#8 New Orleans, Louisiana. Yes.... Nola and Tampa are both on the list!
#7 Cat Isle, Bahamas. Putting a map here for all these Bahamas cities so you can keep track!
#6 Ponce, Puerto Rico. Worth noting PR has been in the cross hairs for heavy rains often of late.
# 5 St. Augustine, Florida. I have a son who loves this place the way I love Key West.
#4 Bimini, Bahamas. This is a very small place just offshore Fort Lauderdale and Miami. Bimini is 58 Miles off the coast of Miami as a reference. Very, very, very close!
#3 Pensacola, Florida. My Grandma spent time up here when she was young. It's a pretty part of the Florida Panhandle, a world very far removed from Miami that reminds me more of Caroline Beach coastal towns than South Florida.
#2 Nassau, Bahamas
#1 Norfolk, Virginia. If you draw a line from Morehead City to Elizabeth City in NC you would line up well with a hurricane exiting land at Norfolk, Virginia. See map below. I'm not predicting this track I am just saying based on Jim's research it would be totally logical.
If.......May is all about IF
One wonders if a storm could do this track.
Norfolk is a big port city as is Tampa and Nola and FLL.
Just saying good to remember details.
Jim drew a nice little map here.
A map of possible tracks.
So much depends on what is going on regarding the Bermuda High and where it's set up and if we have late season fronts or early season fronts. I saw someone else online put out discussion on the areas close in could be problematic and this would align with what Jim's cities are implying.
Time will tell. I'll be here blogging telling it as I see it and trying to help however I can.
I did ask him about Miami and the cities that missed the top 20 and he said it was up there but didn't make the top 20. It's really hard to split the difference between North Miami Beach and Hollywood Florida it's one area that has no real boundaries or landmarks other than the Hollywood Water Tower off of I-95 being the only marker to tourists they have left Miami. Hey it's a landmark!
Hollywood is a fun city... great beach.
Ft Lauderdale Airport is there.
That's it's real name, by the way!
Honestly Hollywood was my kid's beach.
My friends and I would walk the Broadwalk.
Listen to music, get drinks, dance.
Hopefully any hurricane will turns away hard right....
A Look Down the Tropical Road at Models. Early Season Low Lat Wave Train Forming... What's Up With That? Alvin May Form in the EPAC. Odd Area off SE Coast...
Well there is no storm out there...
...not even a disturbance.
But note everything coming together ....
...setting up for Westbound Tropical Waves.
Low latitude wave like features have been visible.
A convergence of wind barbs all going one way!
Everything to the North is Eastbound.
ITCZ moves West currently.
Til the entrance to the Carib...
..where everything is sucked up to the North.
Let's see how long that continues.
Could lead to interesting formations.
Common this time of year to see a collision of sorts.
No not like the Brooklyn Bridge.....
...North of PR and East of The Bahamas.
*more on this down below............
Long range models show possibilities.
SW Carib is a place to watch.
Tho what begins there often ends in the EPAC.
MJO is set to show in the EPAC...
count a week or so then it's in the Carib.
The EURO.... is acting like the GFS.
It shows a system off the Mexican coast.
May 29th.
EURO goes with Landfall actually.
Day before our Season begins.
1st name is Alvin in the EPAC.
EURO also shows an odd system off SE Coast.
Prime time area for early Subtropical Storms.
Not predicting that, just reminding you it's a thing.
The GFS however...........
has a flash of color in the Caribbean.
June 1st basically.
EURO shows Alvin and something off SE Coast.
Let's say an area of unsettled weather.
EURO shows the area.......
....and a front.
How fast would the front be moving ?
Way out in time.
Just peeking at the models.
So now I have talked models and long range possibilities for the start of the Hurricane Season.
Now I want to talk just a bit about the present. Today, tomorrow and what's actually worth looking at and thinking on as we transition towards the Hurricane Season 14 days away. No it's not the Loch Ness Monster. Not a leaping dolphin neither.
*You can see the area North of PR.
I mentioned it up above....
Curvature look to it today.
It's drawing up deep tropical moisture.
Linkage goes all the way to South America!
On the Water Vapor it looks like a donut.
Hard to ignore that so mentioning it.
Will just keep watching it....
Lastly it's common to see Africa shoot blanks ...
...early in the season.
Cute wave like structures that battle their way West.
Water not as warm out there as it is in the Gulf.
But it does catch our attention.
Could we get an early season as we did last year?
I would not count it out.
What's actually weird is..........
...Africa looks like it's ready.
Maybe it thinks its July?
Feels hot enough today in the Carolinas...
As my buddy Dabuh always reminds me...
...check the time stamp and so I did.
What's up with that indeed?
Lastly............... really horrific set up yesterday. Horrific, tragic and deadly and the death toll climbs as they go through the rubble. Just really not much to say other than a reminder that tornadoes don't just dance out on the Plains and they can rip their way through a densely populated city and somehow we are always are surprised. Very sad. Prayers to everyone out there that has lost anyone, their home, parts of their home, their job and most probably their sanity. Hurricanes are easier in that we can prepare our home and our minds for a hurricane or tropical storm we track for days with a cone that can go out 7 days if needed. We can prepare and make decisions. Tornadoes just happen. Finger of God ... some call them. Dropping out of the sky, ripping up lives with very little warning.
And, Severe Weather Season is NOT over and the chance for more tornadoes, a derecho and heavy flooding rains along with deadly cloud to ground lightning strikes will show up in the forecast regularly as two seasons often collide. And, in this case Twister Season collides with Hurricane Season for a while.
So stay tuned and watch your weather carefully as it's that time of year that often gives us a higher death toll from one tornado than we get from many low end hurricanes and tropical storms.
As Mother Nature gives you time to prepare for Hurricane Season ........please take advantage of that time and prepare.
Sweet Tropical Dreams,
BobbiStorm
@bobbistorm on X
X mostly weather
Elsewhere whatever.
My strange mind.........
1. How long did they do their hair to get it like that?
2. 1967 odd year... long trackers mostly weak storms.
Beulah, right.........Texas.
ps 18 tropical depressions..........
3. I always thought this song was:
"give me some summer loving"
LOL
Easy to be silly in May.
Nothing really happening yet.
Have a good week!
Will start with various predictions Monday Morning!
Location: Miami, Raleigh, Crown Heights, Florida, United States
Weather Historian. Studied meteorology and geography at FIU. Been quoted in Wall Street Journal, Washington Post & everywhere else... Lecturer, stormchaser, writer, dancer. If it's tropical it's topical ... covering the weather & musing on life. Follow me on Twitter @ https://twitter.com/#!/BobbiStorm
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