Sunday July 20, 2008 Tropical Storm Cristobal & The No Name Storm

Picture above is the Wave not currently named from wundergound.com

Going to try and keep this on topic and not go off on some rant right now but no promises.

Going to start off with a comment on Joe Bastardi that might explain why I do enjoy hearing his comments at times on tropical systems. He number one calls them as he sees them and he points out often that he is just Joe Bastardi and not down in Miami at the Hurricane Center. He is just saying what he feels and the man feels and says a lot.
One thing he mentions a lot that I do like is that he talks about "the weather" not specifics as to where the center of the storm or possible storm is.. if there is weather he follows it like a bouncing ball or in this case a red bouncing ball.

Sometimes weather IS the story and it is what causes the damage whether there is a closed off center/circulation found or not. Heavy rains in mountainous areas of Haiti or Central America can do more damage than two tropical storms like Cristobal sliding along the Outer Banks.

Yet we wait for official designation to call something a Tropical Depression VS a Tropical Disturbance. Both can do a lot of damage to a thatched hut in the tropics though neither will do much to a strong built house in South Florida.

We focus too much sometimes on details on anything short of a Hurricane as Tropical Storms do so much damage in flooding and there was an No Name Rain Storm that created havoc in Hispaniola a few years back and received a lot of attention in the way of complaints that it wasn't named. An alert was issued. An alert was issued with 94 too and yet it still hasn't been designated a depression let alone a Tropical Storm.

Personally, if I was a betting girl I would say she IS a Depression and there are Tropical Storm force winds in that wave that will affect someone soon. To me that is calling it as I see it so to speak.

Why?

Consistency. It has consistently maintained convection and has been rolling across the Caribbean like a bright orange red beach ball with someone's name on it. Can't see the name cause it's rolling fast.

Hope that recon can find the center and where it is closed off and upgrade it to a minimal Dolly later today. IF the center is to the north of the previously perceived center than the models are off and the future model runs would tend to be to the right of where they are now. And, that is a big "if" but if this wave was rolling towards a beach in Miami would everyone be so cavalier about it "just being a wave approaching the Keys or Palm Beach?

Maybe. Time will tell. Imagine they could say the NWS is updating South Florida properly for severe weather (and so it is) but I think 94 has reached intensity strong enough to suffice an upgrade.

As for Cristobal... nice part of the country it's creating some nice wave action for.

On a nice warm day in March the beach looked like this and amazingly was 80 degrees but the water was cold..or so I was told. I just stayed on the beach and worked on my tan and watched the waves from my perch on the sand.

:)



Check out these waves at a few local Beach Cams.

http://www.wrightsville.com/bchcam.htm <-- updates itself automatically.

http://www.avalonpier.com/piercam.html <-- needs you to manually update.

Nice pic of Avalon Pier when I was there earlier this summer. Funny when out over the pier you don't visualize the Pier from another view... just a building up on stilts on the edge of the water.



So, Cristobal is a named Tropical Storm even though the Wave isn't.. so here we sit on July 20th waiting to see if the Caribbean gets a new named storm today.

Keep watching.. just remember if the models have bad data it's garbage in, garbage out. If the wave becomes a storm and that storm is further north then the models will be initialized further north and things could change. Mexico can become Brownsville Texas and Brownsville Texas can become Galveston real fast with that much hot water to travel over.

Something to think on. Be back later with more thoughts I am sure.

A hit is a hit whether you have strong weather or not and when strong weather hits you ...you don't ask what is in a name you ask what hit you.

No Names can be just as bad as Named Storms sometimes.

And, this no name storm is not moving so west but more north of west..wnw? And should get into the GOM if that is the case.. or maybe not. We'll see.



You tell me:

http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/flt/t2/sloop-bd.html

Be well... mucho besos Bobbi