Hurricane Harbor

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!

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Sudden Flash Floods Devastate the South... Worse than Hurricane Ivan?

rb-animated.gif (1120×480)
This is the state of the world today. A slow moving, sort of.. kind of stalled out front is inching it's way East.

Note two things here. Steering patterns are weak and it's almost May and there is a cold front that dropped temperatures in the Carolinas and snow in Minnesota.

Let's look at another familiar view from Intellicast. I like the big wide view as it shows many things...


Note the Eastern Pacific looks colorful... ready to pop in time for the start of their season May 15th maybe.

Remnant moisture is hanging out in the GOM at the tail end of the front that produced flash floods.

Low latitude waves rolling off the coast of Africa. 

It's sunny in Miami where I am ...or close to Miami as I'm in Hollywood, Florida and happy to be home.

So here I am watching everything from CNN to TWC to CNN online to AOL front page for nostalgia sake and the big weather story is about Flash Floods that have caused more damage in Northern Florida than Hurricane Ivan may have... 

Dave Schwartz is back on TWC. Weather is back on TWC. Mike is out in the field on TWC. 

Check it out. It's like 1997... like yesterday once more... la la la la la...


So I sit here on my Spring Vacation that may segue into Summer... watching weird weather stories on TWC and following alone on Twitter.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwxsWIYJI2A

AOL:


And this tells the real story.

FLASH FLOODS..........
ANNIHILATE............
SOUTHERN STATES............

The water rose at astonishing heights, roadbeds gave away... motorists were trapped on I-95 and train tracks were washed away. They had more rain in towns in Northern Florida that some dry states get in two years.

I'm going to spare you incredible pics of me at the ocean yesterday in the water dancing around happy to be home or drinking a hurricane at Fat Tuesdays in Ft. Lauderdale and another day I'll tell you how AMAZING the new Marlins stadium is in Miami. Awesome.. beautiful, wonderful... incredible.

Today is a day to dwell on how random weather is... how it can come up behind you when you aren't watching and hit you with the fury of a Category 2 Hurricane when you were expecting twisters to be out on the plains not in Alabama and North Carolina.

The more we know about weather... the less we know about the wicked randomness of it.

It's the shock ...the surprise... the sudden quality of how the fabric of a normal life can be ripped away and you never saw it coming.

That my friends is why you need to watch the weather....

Your app...

Your favorite web site..



Stay on top of the weather... before it's on top of you...
My personal prediction for this hurricane season is that North Florida will be in play for early GOM systems.. more rain for water logged places just trying to clean up... stay tuned..

Besos Bobbi
Ps at the Marlins game with my brother Ron who was doing his thing with the Red Cross informing people of their new app. Oh..and the Marlins beat the Atlanta Braves... a shut out ;) Stay tuned for my post waxing poetic about the beautiful new stadium...where the Orange Bowl used to be..



Sunday, April 27, 2014

Does TWC Hype the Weather? You be the judge... Twisters in NC AGAIN... EF3 this time..

This has to be one of the strangest images on radar I have seen for a Twister ... it looked like the storm had an eye and if I hadn't known what was going on I would have thought some small hurricane had moved inland around the Outer Banks and kept going..

Is that odd or what? TWC tweeted the radar image... seems they thought it was weird too!!



I can't believe I'm writing two stories back to back on The Weather Channel. But, first let me speak about that EF3 Tornado that broke the dry spell that had been the longest in 3 years... gone, whoosh on a Friday afternoon when once again twisters targeted Eastern North Carolina and this time... it was an EF3.


This is the third time in the last several weeks that the area more known for hurricanes has been under the gun for tornadoes.

In Kansas, Iowa and Oklahoma if the weather gets funny the locals know something might be happening fast in real time. They are weather aware when it comes to their own most common weather. In North Carolina if you heard they were talking about the possibility for tornadoes... you might think they are hyping the weather. If the tornado hits your town you know they were not HYPING the weather, but trying to warn you. Yes, ratings are nice... but the ratings spike is a bubble in the overall picture. They are doing what they are supposed to do ...they are giving a heads up on the nightly news.. on their weather app and probably on The Weather Channel. The NWS is out there doing the same thing. The question remains is anyone listening?

While you are fighting with Pandora or searching for a tune on YouTube or listening to your favorite, faraway country radio station did you know that a Tornado Watch had been issued in your area?

If this was your house... you would not think they were "hyping the weather"


The New York Times wrote an article last week, a short article, stating basically that TWC is in the business of hype. I imagine it was a small article not on the front page, because this was not exactly breaking news.

The WEATHER Channel is all about weather. It's like saying that ESPN is HYPING the start of the baseball season or the upcoming NFL Draft. Um... yeah....that is what we expect ESPN to do... talk about sports with enthusiasm. We don't want to Perry Como type announcers yawning while talking about the Super Bowl.  And, we all do expect TWC to hype what they are selling... which is weather.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/26/arts/television/nature-is-a-threat-in-tornado-alley-and-will-to-live.html?_r=0

The article goes on to say the following ...which to some extent I agree with in that after awhile a lot of the re-enacted episodes begin to all look the same. Luckily I own this thing called a remote control and when I am bored... I use it.



No it doesn't match the real thing and the real message they are trying to get out is that we are moving from Winter into Spring and the Tornado Season is upon us. And, last year they were the target of that very wild weather and am sure Mike Bettes doesn't think tornadoes bearing down on you while on the road are over hyped.



http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/after-suffering-symptons-of-ptsd-mike-bettes-is-back-for-tornado-week_b222465

Before showing the quote from the NY Times story I want to preface it with my comment that yes.. Stephen King has made a lot of money doing just that and he is considered one of the best suspense writers since Edgar Allen Poe. I don't hear them complaining that Stephen King is scaring the public into reading him making people afraid to go to bed for fear a dome will fall on top of their home ....



"you should be terrified at all times, of all sorts of things, not just the weather. But especially the weather."

Well... there sure are a lot of movies about weather and books about weather. It sure seems like people love talking about the weather enough ... and it sure seems like this Spring is going to be a double doozie with both tornadoes and floods so....as far as I'm concerned let's let TWC do what they do best and that is cover the weather.  That child in the above picture has had a wake up call he will never forget and am sure every time a thunderstorm builds over his house he is going to be searching for a funnel cloud. That is how much weather people get started in the business. That one hurricane.. that crazy snow storm, that random twister that hit up just the road somewhere.



Seems to be Hollywood hypes the weather..

and well novelists since before Shakespeare have written about the weather...
....never heard an English teacher complain about that neither... 
:)


The Tempest was a little heavy on the weather and disaster if you ask me...

Worked for Shakespeare.. will work for The Weather Channel.

Personally would rather see them hyping the weather than gardening, rock climbing & building skyscrapers...

AND...the Weather is going to be worth hyping this week as today's bad weather moves east...



That's weather worth hyping if you ask me... if it saves ONE LIFE... it's worth the hype..

Besos Bobbi

Ps.... Southbound for a while...going home to Florida... for a while... yay ...
let's call it a Spring Break from Spring and the pollen and a time to smell the tropical flowers..







Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Dave Schwartz Back on TWC.. If It Ain't Broke.... Don't Fix It!



It's seems that TWC has recently learned the lesson that the people at JC Penney learned recently. When something isn't broke... don't fix it! And, more so... sometimes you have to go back to the beginning to reinvent yourself back to who you were ...

Yup... I turned on TWC this afternoon between commercials and I lingered a little longer. There was Dave Schwartz, back in the studio doing weather :)  My best friend TIVOED it... Now think on that. The drama is supposed to be about LIVE BREAKING WEATHER ... but she is such a fan of Dave Schwartz she is going to go home, put her feet up and watch him on TIVO doing this afternoon's weather this evening. Now, THAT is a dedicated fan...

TWC is a station that was formed with the intent to DO Weather 24/7 or as close to 24/7 as they could. Round the clock weather in a news format that people could check in on... or leave on.. whenever they wanted. Weather at their finger tips... as long as they didn't lose the remote control.

Somewhere along the way they got lost digging for gold and building skyscrapers with entertainment episodes that were on so often that Weather Nation made fun of them saying there was a 40% chance of reality programming. Every afternoon rather than go head to head with talk shows and soaps they switched over to canned, reality programming. That's a problem in that Miami it begins to cloud up and thunderstorms threaten around 3PM ... or Tampa where lightning can form at the drop of a hat.

The new crew at TWC fired some of the gang that didn't fit into their demographics... Dave Schwartz being one of the ones that was gone with the wind. Now... he's back. And, they seem to be cutting back a bit on their reality programming. It seems people don't want new fancy graphics that are hard to see and translate...they want The Weather Channel.

Sort of like the resurgence of CNN after the "Missing Malaysian Plane" drama reminded them why people used to watch CNN... for the News Dummy ;)  Shouldn't have been that hard to remember. But, somewhere over the last few elections CNN became the voice of the democratic party and  FOX became the voice of conservative America and those liberals who closet style watched FOX but didn't tell anyone. To be fair FOX sticks to the NEWS more than CNN, which is probably why some of my very liberal kids watch it .. even though they don't admit it.

People in America were raised on the belief that the NEWS is the voice of the little people.. the average Joe who questions the President, the Senate... the Congress. The press is part of the check and balance system of sorts. FOX argues how stupid Obamacare is and CNN takes cracks at Sarah Palin...  CNN always has Obama's back and FOX is always ready to challenge Obama's decisions. Somewhere along the line they got away from the NEWS and it became a partisan, party fest ...and it became incredibly boring.

The Missing Malaysian Plane went DOWN... somewhere... and CNN's ratings went UP. They carried on with the maps and grids and moved on to cover the Ferry Hero's Story. People began tuning in for .. oh my goodness ... NEWS or maybe just innuendo on the mysteries of life, death, tragedies and current events.  FOX will to some degree follow in line and is going after a larger piece of the market by hiring away Maria Bartiromo from CNBC and James Carville has bee hired to be a contributor.

Both networks it's seems are stretching... going through some growing pains remembering the reason people wanted a 24 Hour News Network.. for the NEWS.

http://money.msn.com/investing/post--can-maria-bartiromo-save-fox-business-network?ref=bfv

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/fox-news-hires-democratic-strategist-james-carville-contributor-article-1.1604522

I don't know if Dave Schwartz can save TWC from it's FACEBOOK like ADD changing and rearanging their line up...  but it would be nice to see them try.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2014/03/14/weather-channel-brings-back-fan-favorite-dave-schwartz/

At times we all have to stop... look around..... take a deep breath and remember who we are and how we got where we are .... remember what we love and what makes Johnny run...

JC Penneys found out that people really did love the stupid coupons in the newspaper and weren't interested in having less clearance items and less products in favor of name brands.  Shoppers... real shoppers like the game of shopping. They like seeing coupons, having special sales and seeing large racks with tee shirts on CLEARANCE.  JC Penneys was  getting a bit like today's "every child gets an award mentality" in that "all the clothes were on discount in some way... " just didn't cut it.

CNN has a story on right now that has nothing to do with defending Obamacare. The Kelly File on FOX is doing a story about the newest dead lead on the missing plane.

Life goes on and sometimes it seems it corrects itself... go figure.

I hope so.

I'd like to see a little more weather on TWC and I'd like to see a little more NEWS on FOX and CNN. In an election year I don't mind the political banter, but in a world where Ukraine and Russia are doing a dangerous dance and Syria is falling deeper and deeper into a dark abyss I want more news.

And, I have to admit I sort of like all the maps and satellite imagery and oceanography regarding the Missing Malaysian Plane. You see when they are talking about that missing plane.. I know that it's been a slow news day and nothing else horrible happened in the world. Doesn't bother me ... it's a mystery. A bigger, more interesting mystery than most reality TV shows.

As for Obamacare.. only time will tell..

Besos Bobbi

Ps.. oh ... here's some weather info ;)

SPC Products Overview

Available on the main page of www.spaghettimodels.com

Saturday, April 19, 2014

Easter 1927, Praying for Recovery After the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926



These images are not just another set of pictures of people at the beach in the Roaring 20s...they are so much more... they are about the spirit of Miamians who refuse to give up after the devastating 1926 Great Miami Hurricane.

You see...these pictures were taken on April 17th, 1927 on Miami Beach where approximately 25,000 people gathered today to pray for the recovery of the City of Miami. They gave thanks for surviving the Category 4 Hurricane and they said prayers to remember those who died and they prayed for strength rebuilding again after the storm.

These are the people who made Miami what it is today... the ones who remained and rebuilt the city from the Hurricane that slammed into Miami just 7 months earlier on September 18, 1926.  Newspapers called it a "death knell" to Miami... but it was more a rallying point for those early Miamians who do what Miamians always do after a hurricane...they clean up, they rebuild and they give thanks for living in a tropical paradise.  I'm a Miamian. born and raised... I know how the story goes.

Just 7 months earlier Miami Beach looked like this:



Homes were washed away as well as people clinging to debris as the young city dealt with the strongest hurricane that ever made landfall directly upon the City of Miami. Andrew hit Homestead and spared the downtown areas of Miami and Miami Beach. We've been lucky... luck doesn't always hold out.

On the morning of September 18th, 1926 Miami's Magic Luck ran out...

Many left. The railroads sent coffins in on trains....and offered free rides to anyone who wanted to leave town and head north. Some left, many stayed. FPL offered men jobs who hopped on the back of their trucks to help work and put back together the power lines that were down....all over town.

Here's a picture of a couple posing for a picture as they sat on a downed electric pole on Collins Avenue in front of the once iconic Roney Plaza Hotel.




 The Roney Plaza was to Miami in it's day as the Waldorf Astoria was to New York City once upon a time... the Ambassador in L.A. in the Roaring 20s... the Fountainblue in the 1960s.. or La Concha to Key West as it still is today.

You can read more on that beautiful hotel that suffered tremendous damage in the 1926 Hurricane and... kept on going.. much like the rest of Miami did.

The 1926 Miami Hurricane was a big blow... a punch into the gut of the young city, but far from a death knell. The truth is the boom had busted the early winter of 1926 and it was easier to blame the hurricane months later in September than to blame bad press on the true value of swamp land, new federal rules regulating real estate transactions in shady places like Miami beneath a palm tree not to mention a railroad strike, a capsized ship blocking the harbor. I have to tell you. 1925 in Miami was the absolute bomb... the party to end all parties... the height of the boom.



1926 was a mess in more ways than just tropically, however it was a bad year for South Florida, the Bahamas and much of Cuba. After the hurricane it looked like a bomb hit. The Venetian Causeway and most causeways took a bad hit, the debris slamming into it today would be much worse as the city has grown exponentially larger than any Miamian in 1926 could ever imagine.



And, in 1927 the people who stood around months earlier trying to get water, food or anything they could get their hands on to rebuild... went down to the end of Lincoln Road and held Easter Services praying for Miami's continued recovery. People from Miami traveled across the causeway to join friends in one of the most historic Easter Sunday ceremonies ever held.

This is a picture from the archives of the Community Church on Lincoln Road of some of it's early parishioners getting water from the nearby Spanish Village area now known as Espanola Way. Note the trees in the background stripped of all vegetation by the hurricane.


Seven months later the families of the Community Church on Miami Beach were joined by families from other churches to celebrate Easter and life... and rebirth. Today, 87 years after that service they are still meeting on the beach for Sunrise Services. Pretty amazing considering all the obituaries written for Miami and Miami Beach after the 1926 Hurricane.


It took awhile for the vegetation to grow back and for normal to return... 
and the 1927 Atlantic Hurricane Season turned out to be very kind to South Florida.



You just never know in the tropics which year will be the one to deliver a Major Hurricane to your door.
But, with the spirit of Miami... no matter what we will go on.. remembering the past... building for the future and as always giving thanks for all the beauty South Florida has to offer.. 

http://miamibeachcommunitychurch.com/new-to-mbcc/our-history/

With special thanks to the very generous time given to me over the years by the many different people at the church on Lincoln Road (as most people know it..) for sharing their pictures and resources with me.


Besos Bobbi
Ps...

http://learningfrommiami.org/?p=1649
http://hurricaneharbor.blogspot.com/2013/09/3-systems-in-atlantic-memories-of-1926.html

Rooms were cheap in the summer of 1926 at the Spanish Village just off of Washington Avenue.. it's still there today known as Espanola Way used in many a Burn Notice episode ... as almost every country in the Caribbean.



Miami...got to love it... 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoX2lvSMZ84

Still going strong..  
:)




Friday, April 18, 2014

IF Today's Pattern Persist It Poses the Threat of Early GOM Tropical Storms

So much to say and so little time. So, going to let this loop tell the story for me with some facts that are not carved in stone ...yet ... they point to a story unfolding as the Hurricane Season unfolds.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TtdW--jhAQ

One of the greatest songs ever written...or should I say lyrics ever written. It's a good version. I know, because my friend sent it to me and they only send the best.  Then again they know I like Sting.

See the storm forming across the Southeast... starts down at the bottom of the front in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico... drags wicked weather up through Florida starting at a line around Tampa... the low spins it's way into the Atlantic off the SE Coast.

That pattern has been carved in stone for the last several weeks if not months and as that pattern continues it's way into May and early June it lends a danger zone to Florida for the beginning of the Hurricane Season. There is a danger in years like this one of storms forming close in ..off shore.. rather than far away and staying out to sea.  If a storm forms in that part of the GOM.. it makes landfall, plain and simple though usually as a Tropical Storm or Category 1 Hurricane that comes earlier than usually expected.

Look at Alma from 1966... an early June Hurricane.


The first week in June... a Major Hurricane on the maps.
Happens... read on and find out how and why...

http://www.wunderground.com/data/storm_radar/stormwalletold/atlantic/atl1966-prelim/alma/Alma.pdf

snippet that is important to read :) in case you didn't click...



Seems to happen often with the name Alma 



Yes, it formed down in the Carib... ziggled around a bit south of Cuba and then moved north...

Why did it move north like that and cross North Florida where it did?

Let's give equal time to Wikipedia..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Alma_(1970)

Now.. look at the satelite imagery.. 
Does it look familar?

Alma 1970



Look at the image at the top of the page...further north but way too similar...

Here I'll post it below again in a different form...


 Similar... but different.

Note today's system looks like a cold front, but feels like a Gulf Tropical Storm wanting to form...if only this wasn't April... and it was only late May or Early June.

Note also this system today reaches far...far....far down into the Caribbean where the water is way warmer than it is off the coast of the Outer Banks.


Watch that loop...

http://www.intellicast.com/National/Radar/Current.aspx?region=default&animate=true

Listen to the music.... song that goes on and on with the little coda and then the really fast beat...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRwYQgk05DY

If the pattern today persists into Spring... the Atlantic Hurricane Season may not be waiting too long for Spring to finish....before it begins early and gets a head start before the El Nino to rival 1997 gets going later in the Hurricane Season. Sometimes.. Mother Nature gets the last laugh...

Time to start checking those tropical sites online if you ask me..

http://www.spaghettimodels.com/

Besos Bobbi
Visible Water Vapor - GOES East 12 hr Loop


Ps...to the little stalker who enjoys leaving spam on specific posts... thanks for reminding me how well I write somtimes ;) you are soooo annoying.





Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Passover Snow... Who Knows When Winter is Ending?? Snapchat Spring...


My kids in New York looked out the window and saw snow falling down....down....down... onto the cold, wintry ground on the 2nd Night of Passover. Later that evening after the meal as people walked home ... they walked through hail ... on April 15th...


May I remind you that April 15th other than being Tax Day is the Middle of April... way into what should be Springtime in New York and yet... winter refuses to go away.

This coming weekend is Easter... it makes me wonder who is going to get snow on their Easter Eggs this coming Sunday?


There is snow on the map... and rain... and only time will tell.

Spring comes this year...and spring goes... 
one day it's 88 in Raleigh..
the next day it's 34 with a freeze warning...

One day the buds are starting to bloom on the trees on Eastern Parkway..
the next day you are watching the snow fall on the benches where people played checkers the day before

Is it Winter?
or...
Is it Spring?

Sort of like a Snap Chat Spring. 
Not really enough time for WhatsApp or even a Twitter post.. 

If you see a tulip pushing up thru the ground...
take a pic FAST because snow will fall tomorrow...

We are officially one month away from the the EPAC Hurricane Season and 
6 months to go until the 2014 Atlantic Hurricane Season

Arthur
Bertha
Cristobal

are waiting somewhere in the wings....

wearing a Spring Coat in Pastel colors and white furry boots

Possibly this is Bertha...


or maybe this could be Bertha...


Or ...one of these cold fronts that move down south and linger around too long could be...

Arthur... or Bertha...



One of these days... whether Spring comes or stays or we go straight into Summer..
...one of these systems will develop and most likely this year it will be close in.
for a lot of reasons I will discuss in detail as we move closer to June 1st..
...for now... Keep Watching...



Besos Bobbi

Sorry I've been offline a bit while dealing with "Polar Pollen" apparently. If I didn't know it was from the pollen I would have thought I had bronchitis or pneumonia or sneezing hallucinations but they told me on TV that I had Polar Pollen. Luckily when the cold front plowed through dropping out temps down to 34 degrees it blew the pollen away :)  

http://www.weather.com/health/spring-allergy/not-again-what-pollen-vortex-20140415

Remember... if you see Spring... snap a pic fast and post it on snapchat fast... before it disapears again. 

Besos Bobbi

Ps... if you want feel free to blame it on the Red Moon... Eclipse of 2014... just prior to the return of the Polar Vortex..












Monday, April 07, 2014

More North Carolina Tornadoes... Eastern NC.. & Mississippi..




Good picture being passed around online tonight... 
If you didn't know better you'd think it was Kansas or Oklahoma.. 
trying to find out who took the original picture.. hate when people don't give credit where it's due..

Come on play the game.. 
Kansas, Oklahoma or Iowa??


Pic of the tornado from Mario Barolo in the Ponzer-Pantego area.


North Carolina...


What hits me is this a part of the world that got slammed with bad flooding after Hurricane Irene.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JwcQqlW77s

That's not a house at the beach..........just so you know.

Here's a map:


Wider view... what we call "Down East" sort of like the Mainers do... 



That little orange-red dot is where the tornado hit.  Down East in the Pamlico River Basin and Pamlico Sound. Farm land... down near the river.. a place usually visited by Hurricanes more than Tornadoes, but it's been that sort of year so far this Spring.

Mississippi also had a twister today.


And the threat goes on... nice map posted daily on www.spaghettimodels.com

SPC Products Overview


Wicked weather is revving up as Spring clashes with Father Winter who doesn't want to go..

Those clashes create big storms in places more used to hurricanes ... 

Stay informed on the weather.. this Spring has severe weather reaching out into odd places.

Besos Bobbi

www.spaghettimodels.com

http://www.weather.gov/ 
(like the NHC just not shown on TV as much...)





Tuesday, April 01, 2014

Earthquakes 8.2 Chile, Tsunamis, Mudslides, Tornadoes & Missing Airplanes... Busy Day on Planet Earth




The map above shows how 99 smaller earthquakes in the last month ...were in retrospect... fore shocks to the larger 8.2 Earthquake just off shore North coast of Chile. It's also worth noting the quake was deep below the surface and they are very used to strong quakes in that region. Whether they saw the 99 quakes as fore shocks or not I can't say just yet, but they should have seen it coming. What worries me a bit is that the numerous quakes in the LA area could and I do mean "COULD" be fore shocks for a larger quake down the road in the near future.

Mother Earth is shaking her way into Spring and she's moving into April like a Lion not a Lamb.

Sometimes a 5.1 Earthquake is as strong as it gets. Sometimes a 5.1 Earthquake is a prelude to a much stronger event. Only time will tell. People need to be aware that a stronger quake could hit the LA area or anywhere in the general region as you can see from the map above... we are in a very active period right now.

And, we are not even going to discuss El Nino that may or may not be forming off the coast of Peru, Columbia and Chile. Nope.. not today. Too much on the geological plate here today.

There were fears a Tsunami would form and so far as I write this Tuesday night the threat seems to be fading. Still this is what the map would look like......if a tsunami was reported. There was a 6.5 foot tsunami in South America.. not huge but if it slams onto your beach you notice it.

Evacuations have been going on for the region and there have been another strong 5 aftershocks in the last few hours which shake loose what the last quake may have weakened. It's a process.


Do not believe early reports of "no damage" and "no deaths" as it is just too soon to tell. Tomorrow morning will tell the story as we know how bad the situation truly is..or isn't.  Sites of damages have been streaming in.. a church, a store... some one's home. Only time will tell.. not early reports on the news wire before the real reports have even had a chance to surface. And, remember it is very easy to have an additional aftershock that is the same strength or just a bit weaker than the 8.2 earthquake tonight. Happens often.

The mudslide in Washington is truly heart breaking if you stop and read up on it. A man was getting texts from his sister who just happened to be driving down the only real road in the area and ... he never heard from her again. The randomness of it all is truly hard to comprehend. A grandmother's body was found near her grandchild. It seems we need to know how to respond faster to mudslides in areas far from large cities such as this... in the way that we respond to building collapses in big cities. We respond to earthquakes, to hurricanes and to twisters faster than we do an area where the mountainside simply gave way in a sea of mud that carried with it and drowned everyone in it...in a muddy debris of temporary graves awaiting help to dig out the bodies.  You know.. we worry on hurricanes and volcanoes and it's the mudslides in life that will get you.  Don't mean to be so dark.. it's just true. I haven't written much on it, because... I don't want to. It's truly tragic. 28 people have died, 22 are still missing and the whole area looks a lot like school books pictures I saw from Mt. Etna...



I had a tornado warning the other night. One day I was in New Orleans grounded waiting for a bad squall line to pass through and the next night I was dealing with a tornado warning from the same system that blew through Nola. Mind you normally when I am traveling on Friday and I see a storm at the airport my first thought should be... I'm never going to make that connection. Instead my first thought was to drop my bags and start taking pictures. Instinct.  Weather Nation asked permission to use this picture on air.. told them to "go for it" and then it sunk in..


That's me just after they announced that they shut down the airport for lightning.. 
...it was shut down for a long time. I was an hour late getting out.

Luckily.....Orlando flights were also late and I caught my connection and got home.. 
.... just in time to enjoy the same line going through with a tornado warning.. 

There was two small twisters just south of Raleigh... happens.

To be honest..........I am going to write a long, intricate post on my trip to New Orleans where I gave the Keynote Speech for the Mariposa Cat Adjusters Conference. I had an amazing trip.. awesome. And, I got to meet a lot of the adjusters who work all the hurricanes I write about... and have tracked ...chased. 

Mariposa does a first rate, classy, professional job in all ways. I'm very honored to have been their Keynote Speaker. The conference was superbly put together. Incredibly, interesting speakers and presenters and it was all held on the Creole Queen. Afterwards we took a trip up the river or maybe down the river. Just so much to say. 

But tonight this is about the Earthquake in Chile. At least 2 people have died and am sure that number will climb higher. And, there is no way of knowing how strong the rest of the aftershocks will be...

When you live along the Ring of Fire.. you deal with earthquakes eventually. When you live along the Hurricane Coast of the US from Galveston to Maine... you get hurricanes eventually.

Will we eventually find the missing Malaysian Plane? I like to believe so.. but only time will tell.

It occurs to me tonight watching CNN's coverage that the "cone" so to speak for the search keeps getting moved .. no yanked around out in the South Indian Ocean faster than the NHC would EVER move a cone around the Atlantic Ocean.

The NHC prides itself on continuity, professionalism and caution when forecasting a tropical cyclone. 

This investigation on the missing plane has been just the opposite... poorly put together like 5 or 6 blind countries trying to find an elephant in an area larger than the USA.. and we have no real zero proof that it took the southern route. We have lots of hypothesis and no real hard facts. We have data from the pings... which is a word we have come to know much like the phrase "hanging chads" and I wonder what other data is not being shared or has not surfaced. 

It's April and yet this is not an April Fool's post.. it's real and its here. 

My dogwood tree is beginning to bloom and the Loblolly Pines are threatening to dump their  maize colored pollen on my deck and my dogwood.. It is supposed to be 82 degrees tomorrow as a high. 

Twisters and Severe Weather is here to stay and floods will be an ongoing problem this Spring. I heard someone say to me recently "no the forecast is not for bad floods just small ones" and I asked him what he meant. He said "not historic" and I smiled and told him that if the flood floods out your town and your home it is indeed historic. It's all a matter of perspective.

If you live in LA today you have to be thinking "oh Lord could that have been a fore shock" and if you live in Miami you are thinking "oh Lord we are almost to the hurricane season and we barely had a winter" and if you had are in Chile ... everything else is far, far away and not important as you try to put your life back together again.

Hello April... what else do you have in store for us I wonder?

As for me..........I ordered some summer clothes from Victoria's Secrets and I'm still recuperating from my whirlwind, wonderful trip to New Orleans. Beautiful city by the river in any weather it's incredible. 



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDDkUE8GjZI

I had a long talk with a lady at the Historical Museum there who went through Hurricane Betsy as a young teen about to leave for college in Morgan City, Louisiana. Great interview and another side of Betsy that I never saw... the side that hit Louisiana.

I'll be back tomorrow with hard facts on the Earthquake and the weather, but probably not the missing plane  My youngest son just keeps texting  "never gonna find that airplane' ... well ... time will tell... 

Besos Bobbi

Ps... look at a partial list of fore shocks that occurred prior to the 8.2 Earthquake. Did they see it coming? Does anyone see something coming they do not want to open up their eyes to see? Hmnnn?