Hurricane History 101 - Hurricane Camille

Hurricane Camille is a case in Hurricane History as she didn't just pop up from a stray rain shower south of Cuba. Nope.

Camille came from a weak, tropical wave that made it's way across the Atlantic, wandered into the Caribbean and took her time getting herself together.



Many waves are like this. They can't find their center or their groove. They know where they want to go but not how they will get there so they drift along with the westbound winds until they get to our side of the world.

Sometimes...often...they crash into the coastline of Central America, bring a little rain to the ABC islands and Jamaica. But, other times they find their groove and conditions improve and they are no longer bucking headwinds from an Upper Level Low or they find a patch of particularly hot water or they just sit up, take a look around and decide now is the time.

Yes, I am personalizing these storms because basically it's fun to see them as entities not just mere moisture and convection and bars of high pressure and low pressure but they are pure science and mathematics. A whole lot of "ifs" and most just keep going unless..they develop enough to pull themselves away from the lower level winds and feel the pull the upper level features and they want to go poleward at some point. Always. They don't if a high pressure system (those boring bars of pressure) doesn't allow them to but while the cats away the mice will play and before you know it you have a storm climbing in latitude trying to find a weakness to take it to the Gulf of Mexico.

See... Atlantic Cape Verdes are almost easy in comparison as they usually re-curve out to sea. But, once a wave is in the Caribbean and beginning to dream of Texas or Louisiana there is no where for it to go but to hit land. It becomes a bull in a china shop.

Will this wave continue it's wanders as an unknown entity or find a name and fame along the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico?

Will it play out with a track like Camille? I said track not intensity note. Probably not. Could it? Given the chance it could. Watch the GFDL.

http://moe.met.fsu.edu/cgi-bin/gfdltc2.cgi?time=2008071806-
invest96l&field=Sea+Level+Pressure&hour=Animation

A friend told me they might fly out on Friday into the wave, Friday was the day they were most worried about it seems. That was back on Tuesday. Tropical Forecasting takes patience. We study history so that we don't get blinded by it later in the forecast period. History rarely repeats itself but in a year where a Bertha flew off the African coast early in July with the same name as the previous Bertha that survived the July Atlantic Crossing... we have a pattern of anything is possible.

Stay tuned, it's one of the biggest free dramas on the planet. Sit back and watch. You're paying for the Internet anyway.

Besos Bobbi
TGIF