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!
Monday, February 26, 2018
Bryan Norcross Signs with Channel 10 in Miami For the HURRICANE SEASON . . . Just a Few Months Away. Bryan and Max Mayfield. Impressive. Forecast to be a Busy Hurricane Season. But This Week..... Winter Makes a Come Back
Okay that happened.
Bryan Norcross signed with Channel 10 in Miami.
He'll be on during the hurricane season....
...with Max Mayfield and the rest of the ABC crew.
Not sure how that affects his TWC contract but time will tell. For people in Miami who were there back in 1992 it's a homecoming that's long overdue. It's fun to have him on TWC but it's not the same if a hurricane is coming straight at South Florida. All the stations in Miami do a great job during the Hurricane Season; they were tested last year and they didn't disappoint giving viewers the best advice and information while being knowledgeable about the local concerns not always understood on the larger scale.
The hurricane season is less than 100 days away. So keep it in your mind while out there when you see things on sale (now during the slow time) that you might want to have this coming Hurricane Season. Because.... whether you are ready or not the Hurricane Season IS coming.
Most of the East Coast is all a buzz about the new Winter Storm or more so the return of Winter. The first 2 weeks of March are forecast to have a return to cooler temperatures more in line with what Winter is supposed to be... it's been more like Summer in the Carolinas and Spring a bit further up the coast.
Cantore asked what many have been thinking the last few weeks as trees are dressed in floral blooms and snow and ice have been a no show for a good part of the East Coast this February. Spring like wild weather has showed up early. The problem with a warm February is that when a cold front dives down the air masses clash and often people die. It's that simple and it happens every year. Yet we fear the Hurricane Season where we have more time to prepare; I'd rather have the lead time to prepare personally.
As for me I'm baking cupcakes for the Jewish Holiday of Purim. We give treats of all kinds and trying to put together some packages for loved ones. I was cold today in Raleigh and kept setting the AC to a higher setting (yes Miami girl runs the AC when the Heat is not on) and then I stopped and asked Alexa what the temperature was and "oh it was 46 degrees" and that's about 30 degrees colder than yesterday. It was a nice illusion while it lasted.
So.... keep watching that system as it powers up and unleashes itself over the next few days. Rumor has it the weekend will be crazy in some places. As for me I agree with Cranky on Twitter as now is the time to watch and wait and see how things come together; where specifically the details get hammered out and trust me someone is going to get hammered.
Here's the satellite loop.
No don't get distracted by the Low in the Atlantic.
And to be honest the storm is going to the NE of me.
Well real winter weather.
I'm tired of rain.
Raleigh has been so gray the last few days.
One tease on Sunday in the morning.
Then poof back to rain and gray clouds.
Stay informed.
Be well ...
... Be happy!
Besos BobbiStorm
@bobbistorm on Twitter
Ps... When it's cold and gray I turn the sound up and pretend I'm back in Little Havana in Old Miami. Way before Castro came out of the mountains Miami was a suburb of Cuba in many ways. My Great Uncles went back and forth to Cuba buying tobacco for their cigar business. Stores on Flagler Street in Dowtown Miami in the 1940s were filled with people from Havana visiting their American cousins and shopping. When you grow up where I grew up in Miami you are part Cuban in music, foods and culture. Great video really. Wondering whether hurricanes will visit Cuba this Hurricane Season.
Weather, Politics Both Locational .... Some South Florida History - Back From Florida in NC Thinking on Friends I have in Parkland. #AlyssaAlhadeff Columbine Almost 20 Years Ago. Much Needs to be DONE.
Hard to believe it's been a week since I posted here. This is "off season" in the tropics and when I usually am quiet. I've been traveling and that traveling is going to continue for the rest of the month. I jokingly said I should just rent an apartment down in South Florida for this period but no we are going back and forth so I'm sort of in a mental Jet Lag even though I'm not switching time zones. Speaking of switching time zones I wish.... I want so badly to go to Seattle and visit with the family there however my priorities currently are in Florida even if part of my heart is in Seattle. It's late February but it feels like late March and if that continues the tropics may wake up early this year. Just something to think on so putting it out there....
So back to weather. Much in life is locational whether we want to look at things that way or not. My spell checker doesn't like the word but it's a popular word in International Relations and as that is one of my degrees I'm going with it. Politics is locational in that issues are felt stronger in some areas than in other areas. Places where people hunt for example view gun rights differently than they do in a quiet suburb filled with strip centers that feature sushi restaurants and frozen yogurt shops. The name Parkland brings up a multitude of places where young men decided to take their anger out on a general population of students that often had no idea who the shooter was or why they hated them so much they needed to be hunted down and shot. In Columbine many of the students knew the killers; in Sandy Hook many of the small children had no idea who was shooting at them as if they were in a movie their parents or older siblings might be watching. In Parkland everyone automatically knew who was doing the shooting and surprisingly they were not surprised as many had known the deranged killer since they were in grade school with him. If you live in Oregon or Indiana "Parkland" is now part of the lexicon that opens the discussion on Gun Control and brings up the forever question of "just why" and "when will this stop?" In South Florida "Parkland" is where your sister-in-law lives or your cousin's kids went to that incredibly good school or where your best friend's wife taught and hid in a classroom with your friend's children.
South Florida is an interrelated area that blends together in a megapolis of small neighborhoods that culturally are one. From Kendall to Coral Springs to Boca to Miami Beach it's one general area geographically. Look at the map above and you will see what I mean. They were cities built on the Atlantic Coastal Ridge immediately to the East of the Everglades. Some people love living closer to the Everglades in beautiful homes that though expensive are much more affordable than living in Coral Gables or Miami Beach. Suburban sprawl looks prettier out there in carefully designed places such as Parkland and Weston where there is the illusion of being separated from the sometimes grittier world of Miami. But again everyone eats the same foods, hangs out in the same places and roots for the Miami Dolphins to have just one good winning season. Kids in Parkland root for the Miami Heat and kids growing up in Hollywood Florida get on the expressway and race up to their cousins in Coral Springs to hang out on a Saturday Night. Only people flying overseas or tourists who don't know better fly into MIA if they live in Miami Beach, North Miami Beach, Aventura or Walnut Creek...they live in the Northern part of South Florida just as kids down in Kendall and Coral Gables do fly out of MIA unless they want to fly JetBlue or Southwest in which case they drive up to FLL in the Hollywood area.
South Florida is one general region in the same way people who live in Tampa are aligned with people who live in Sarasota. And, south of the Lake the weather is different than it is up past the Lake as it is a Tropical Savanna Climate Zone prone to tropical weather more than winter weather. Rarely do snowflakes get anywhere near South Florida. Rarely does this sort of school violence get anywhere near South Florida. To be honest Miami has many problems with gangs in inner city areas or not such inner city areas. To be honest Miami has gang problems and some neighborhoods worry on drive by shootings and because of that people when they can afford it move North and West often to the suburbs such as Walnut Creek, Weston and Coral Springs aka Parkland as those neighborhoods basically blend together hovering just up near the Broward County Palm Beach Line.
Small trivia on Broward is it is named after a Florida Governor Napolean Bonaparte Broward who yes you can check out his Family Tree on Geni but the real trivia is he ran for office on the promise to "drain the swamps" literally. You see back at the turn of the century in the 1900s people thought the idea of draining the Everglades was a really good thing providing more farm land and a wider Atlantic Ridge to build homes on and create new cities. Previously in Miami everything West of 27th Avenue was basically swamps, however after dredging canals and using dynamite they blew up the Miami River Rapids and the water table lowered over land once under water and well it was a different time and place. The Everglades that Marjory Stoneman Douglas loved so much were seen as a menace by many that needed draining vs saving as an ecological safe, serene, natural place to protect. Another wonderful character who lived down in South Florida was Ralph Middleton Munroe who lived in Coconut Grove, built sailboats that he sailed up and down Biscayne Bay and spoke out to save the environment. I've quoted him in my blog often on Hurricane History.
The latter two wrote books you should buy, borrow or read online they offer an awesome, unique view into South Florida life when people first moved down and loved the beauty of nature and spoke out to preserve it. I'm pretty sure neither would see the beauty in suburbs such as Weston or Parkland however they would enjoy the beautiful sunsets and the closeness to nature. Times change, what seems good in 1910 doesn't seem good or smart in 2010 but it's where we are at in 2018. If you are a developer with a vision then Weston is beautiful and peaceful yet if you are a conservationist you feel sad that the Everglades are eroding from both sides as both Miami and Naples dig deeper into the Everglades every year that goes by with new subdivisions touting living at the edge of the Everglades. Florida's map looked very different when the 3 people above lived and loved life in Florida.
I have a cousin who loves living out near the Everglades in a small place that backs up to a canal where he smokes a cigar if the weather is nice on his patio and stares out at the sun setting into a more pristine world than the one he lived in when he lived in North Miami Beach. Both he and his wife have friends who live in Parkland due North of where they live. Their Stepgrandson (is that a term?) went to Parkland yesterday with other classmates to protest and join in unity. I watched him on Facebook Live. He's a kid, a good kid and he wants to make the world a better place. We all do yet we all end up arguing over the details involved. Gun Control vs Mental Illness vs the System Letting Down OUR Children ..... so many places to start and so many things we need to fix. We need to build high schools that have the population of small towns where our children live most of their day as safely as we build other large government buildings. Dry wall doesn't stop bullets for example and most of West Broward is built with Dry Wall. I know that a few years ago when I lived in South Florida full time there was a school set up in both Miami Dade and Palm Beach for children with special needs and that special need being anger. Broward County did NOT have that school in their school system. To be honest, Broward County School System is often the ugly step sister to Miami Dade and Palm Beach school systems. When I taught for Miami Dade County Schools in North Miami Beach most of the teachers drove down from Broward County where they lived as Dade County paid significantly more money than Broward County paid it's teachers and they had better benefits.
Weather is locational and in my location today the sun is not out but it's going to be in the upper 70s. It feels like summer, it looks like winter.
Marco Rubio got slammed by students for not responding the way they wanted last night, but he had the guts and compassion to attend the CNN event and try to listen to the students. Parents who lost children in the Parkland Shooting spoke about their loss; I have friends who are close friends with the parents who lost children... some knew the children who were slaughtered. It's emotional and real in South Florida and the nation watches between a lack luster Olympics and reruns being shown by other stations that didn't want to go up against the Olympics. It's today's new story. Will it be eclipsed by war with North Korea or another school shooting or a large Earthquake or Tornado in the heartland? Stories in the media only have legs until another story comes along that eclipses it. Today being National Margarita Day pushed Parkland off the Twitter Feed in popular hashtags.
In North Carolina the death of the Rev. Billy Graham is the lead story on all local news channels and the details of his life and the expected funeral are being talked on during most of the time allotted for the news. He was a North Carolina Son.... North Carolina loved him greatly in a different way than people in Oregon or Idaho even though he was loved everywhere. He may have taken his calling across the world to distant arenas to spread the word of God yet he came from and lived in and will be buried in North Carolina. He spoke of God and Love and his message was not one of hate or anger. And, Ill add something unpopular in some circles but we did take God out of public schools and I think on some level that was wrong. A moment of silence in school didn't kill anyone, however it was replaced by moments of silence while students hid in closets waiting and praying the school shooter would not enter their classroom and kill them. There was a lot of prayer in school the day that the shooter killed 17 people and made the name Parkland synonymous with death and destruction not a park like paradise on the edge of the Everglades to raise your family in a safe, secure place. That's sad. That's very sad.
Something to think on while parts of the country are having ice threats and other parts are facing flooding . We are moving fast from Winter to Spring and the Hurricane Season is less than 100 days away. Hopefully the Parkland story will have long legs and somehow, somewhere, someone will get something done so that the system will not fail our children and their teachers, guns will have more checks made safer by a system that records mental illness and numerous police visits for violence and a way to fight the mental illness that we have not yet been able to achieve. It's easy when a child is 10 to give them drugs but what happens when they are 17 and stop taking the drugs or tell their parents they are and flush them down the toilet? It happens... trust me. And, why.... why are our young children, especially young men, so prone to violence and personality disorders in 2018? A lot of questions.
Excuse the typos.... this post is for my own need to write, a few friends who know who they are and anyone who surfs in on the Internet. Much love.... many prayers and let's communicate with compassion not diatribes about political parties we are one human race and our children go to school together and face the same fears no matter what our political persuasion is in 2018. And, I'll add many of these young soon to be voters are not affiliated as the democratic leaning ones liked Sanders and didn't like the dirty party tricks used to ensure Hilary be the candidate. And, many of the ones that leaned right did not like Donald Trump and preferred other republican candidates. This may be the largest group of young soon to be voters who have no real love for either of the dominate political parties and that is not locational it's an issue from Florida to California to Washington State to Washington DC. Soon this will be their world. I hope and pray they make it better.
Besos BobbiStorm
@bobbistorm on Twitter
Ps... A disclaimer here in that I am not affiliated with either party. Some issues I lean right and other issues I lean left. I vote for the best candidate for the office not a political party. I do not own guns and do not want to and do believe weapons of mass destruction should not be in the streets yet I also believe in the right to own a gun. I don't understand how there are rules and age limits on drinking beer, buying energy drinks (really), condoms, cigarettes, cigarette lighters and yet no age limits on the ability to buy these types of weapons that are the weapon of choice in most school shootings. Mind Boggling.
April 20, 1999 was the Columbine Shooting... why are we still trying to figure out how to fix this problem? Trust me the mother of #AlyssaAlhadeff will not give up, neither were her friends and neither will the students who were studying the Holocaust that day they lost their History Teacher. I have a lot of friends who were friends with Alyssa. It's personal for me not just a news story waiting to fade away.
Trying to Make Sense of It All. Parkland Florida, Coral Springs... Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School. How did we get here? How do we fix it?
Parkland Florida.
A beautiful place to live until yesterday.
My thoughts. Aside from the horror that so many young lives were taken from us yesterday ... it really bothers me that the shooter who took their lives escaped into the crowd. Thankful that he was picked up by the Coconut Creek officer who went looking for him down back roads looking for the suspect.
He "looked like a typical high school student" so much so that it would have been easy to keep driving looking for someone who looked "evil" vs "a typical high school student" walking along a road near a high school. The school named after one of Florida's most iconic environmentalist Marjorie Stoneman Douglas became the scene for horrific bloodshed, terror and death; add in panic and an attempt by the staff to try and follow protocol without knowing what was really happening. Schools today are trained in how to handle an active shooter situation but few are tested in the way they were yesterday when someone who looked liked "typical high school student" became the face of pure evil. As people from the school identified him and passed messages around on social media the press tried to keep up with the ever flowing river of information found on his many social media sites. If it was that easy for students from the school to find his YouTube and his Instagram sites it should have easier to stop this from happening. His classmates were not surprised it was him, he was ex-student most likely to do something like this and they verbalized that on social media all day yesterday while trying to make sense of it all. Perhaps we need to start taking social media more seriously? Buzzfeed did a better job finding out information on him than Fox, CNN or MSNBC.
The FBI and media is still trying to catch up and learn what his fellow students knew. Yes, his name look the same and yes it looks like him but .... They were asked today at a Press Conference ... it was painful to watch them act as if there was another person with his name and his face posting violent images online while making public threats on Youtube to become a high school shooter. We are all so politically correct these days. We worry on our personal liberties getting lost yet the freedom to send our children to school and protect them at those schools from a student who decides to go down in violent glory as a "high school shooter" seems to get lost in the shuffle. I don't know what the answer is but as a parent it's kind of ironic that my kids were safer at North Miami Beach Sr. High a school considered ghetto and dangerous vs one of the best high schools in South Florida in the safe, idyllic world othat Parkland Florida was before yesterday. I have several friends who live there, pray at Chabad there and send their children to school there. It's a nice place to live. It's a huge school more like a college campus than your typical "high school" and yet something went terribly wrong yesterday. There is a place you hear about on the News where a shooting occurred to random people in a far away place. Yesterday was not so random for me nor for others who have never been to South Florida.
The world is very small and we are instantly connected often to news events both good and bad, though the sad ones travel faster through our WhatsApp feeds than the good ones. It was pretty obviously last night around 9 PM when the prayers for the 2 girls who were missing Meadow Pollack and Alyssa Alhadeff and had not been seen or found in the hospital could only be two of the five students who remained at the crime scene not yet identified. I prayed but I was afraid the morning would bring sad news and it did indeed.
I'm Jewish and I'm involved with the Chabad movement so I knew that their local Rabbis were trying to comfort their families and tried to get them information at the same time. Heartbreaking videos by Alyssa's grandmother were passed around my kid's WhatsApp sites and it's very personal for me. I have family members who knew families who went to that high school and I have family members who teach in schools in South Florida. My daughter in law works with special need students who were afraid to be in class this morning; totally panicked that they were safe and no gunmen would get in to the school. She's about 8 and a half months pregnant, she took them to the office and had the staff show them all the cameras that watch all the entrances and exits to assure them they are safe. She works at a rather large Jewish Private School that takes security extremely serious. My son who lives in Broward County just south of Parkland kept the news radio off while driving the kids to school today. He didn't want to have to explain to my 11 year old granddaughter or the 6 year old grandson what was going on as his phone rang nonstop with text, Instagram and WhatsApp messages as friends passed information back and forth praying, hoping for good news for Meadow or Alyssa. Several students showed up at prayer services by Chabad this morning to offer up the prayer that is made to give thanks for avoiding death or a dangerous situation. Many people are giving thanks in many different prayers today in a community known for a safe, tranquil place to bring up your children and live. Safety is sadly often an illusion.
How does a girl with the beautiful, peaceful name like Meadow die in a grizzly school shooting when she should be thinking on graduation and college? It's mind boggling. We worry on hurricanes and natural disasters yet our system allows people who have been thrown out of a Public school to avoid further surveillance in the name of privacy and freedom and liberty. He was thrown out partially for continually bringing weapons on campus and making threats; perhaps law enforcement should have become involved? He wrote posts on the web that he was going to become a school shooter, he posted graphic pictures of animals he killed and commented on other sites with his name that he was going to kill students in school. Someone notified the FBI and were questioned how they knew him when they told him they didn't know him but they saw it on YouTube in the comments.
Among the dead were two teachers who were killed.
Aaron Feis protected his students.
He put them first.
He died.
His students thanked him with tears in their eyes on interviews. He shut the door so the girls could hide yet he stayed in the hallway to help others it seems and he was shot. It's a small world there; a large school but a very small world. He was Facebook friends with the media face of this tragedy BSO Sheriff Scott Israel on Facebook. Everyone I know in South Florida is shaken. The clerk in Rite Aid in Raleigh today wished me a good day and added with a sad, far away look in her eyes and said "I just hope and pray we don't have to hear about any more school shootings today."
I don't want to hear about "gun control" as if that would be the magic bullet to end school shootings. I'm not a gun lover. When my kids were growing up we had a "no gun" rule in the house and I mean toy guns or games with guns; water pistols were allowed until we took them away when the kids got too wild. As a child my cousin and I grew up playing Cowboys and Indians and pretended to be Napolean Solo and April Dancer (Google Man from U.N.C.L.E) and there were no school shootings. What changed? How did we get here? Shoot outs were seen in spy movies or Gangster movies from the 1920s and we weren't allowed to see them until we were 17 or with a parent. Spoiler alert my parents didn't take me to R rated movies.
Before blaming "guns" for the violence as a mother and grandmother I'd blame Hollywood. I know it's not a popular cause for liberals to blame Hollywood vs guns for school shootings but the one thing that has changed since Columbine is the quality of video games kids today play that are on par with virtual video games the military uses to put the shooter into the action and perfect his skill. Movies are more violent, TV is more violent and various shows on Netflix and HBO that are the most popular are the most violent. All it takes is one alienated kid with any one of many mental health disorders to get lost in a maze of online violence and social media groups that feed on young alienated bitter kids. There is something about teenage boys and being bitter, depressed and alienated that brings out the need to "go out in a blaze of glory" vs a bitter, vengeful girl who does online bullying or writes nasty "anonymous" notes in group chats.
I don't know what the answer is but I know there are answers out there. I know we need to find those answers. I know we cannot settle for "just the way it is these days" because it's not supposed to be this way. And for those of you are want to scream gun control you might want to check into his school record "incidents' since Middle School when he not only brought large knives into his school in his lunch boxes. And, yeah a knife would not have killed as many people as he was able to with guns but if he had no guns he would have sliced and diced those young girls to death had he wanted. And, it seems he wanted to.... and he was quite verbal about it online before yesterday's killing.
He took the lives of young girls studying dance and preparing to go off to college next year. This has to stop. We can prepare for hurricanes and evacuate from a Major Hurricane (and get sued by Arkansas State University for not showing up for a football game...see previous article) but we cannot prevent our children from going to school and not be in danger from some copy cat shooter who wants to go down in history by shooting up the most people in a high school.
These children are gone today.
Some 14 year old Freshman.
Some 17 year old Seniors.
Some teachers at the school.
Her grandmother prayed all night she'd be found alive.
She died in a pool of blood.
We can make a difference by not ignoring the obvious and erring on the side of safety even if it means putting someone under close inspection and supervision to try to help them and others they may harm. A grandmother in Everett Washington turned her grandson after finding his journals and a rifle hidden in his guitar case.
Picayune Lawsuit Threatened at UM For Not Going to a College Football Game Because of Hurricane Irma.
Arkansas State is threatening to sue UM.
Over a college football game...
Why?
Because they couldn't make a game due to Irma.
You remember Hurricane Irma....
I'm just going to put this here and let you decide what you think but you can imagine what I'm thinking. Obviously the school of higher education in Arkansas needs an education in what a Major Hurricane is when it is moving towards your home town and what it's priorities should be. I know... earthquakes and twisters must seem real to them with an occasional ice storm but they seem to know nothing about Major Hurricanes in the Ozarks.
I suppose the day before the New Madrid Fault comes back to life and shoots out a 7.5 earthquake you will be able to play a college football game. But luckily, Major Hurricanes, give us a small heads up time to try and prepare for death, destruction and catastrophe.
Personally I have never seen anything so asinine or picayune as Arkansas State saying a Major "Hurricane" about to make landfall is not a reason to not play a college football game! It reminds me of the US government trying to excuse themselves for a poor response time to Hurricane Andrew by saying they were waiting for a Fax from Miami; spoiler alert the power was out and the fax machine wasn't working....
I'm sorry that they don't understand how you have to prepare for a Cat 4 or 5 hurricane as if it is going to make a direct landfall on your college, the dorms, the apartments your college students live in and their family homes that might be in the area as well. I do so love college football but let's get real here I'm pretty sure this is ridiculous. Possibly UM thought it was redundant to put "hurricanes" into their document or it never occurred to them that some one worrying on the New Madrid Fault coming back to life wouldn't understand a Category 5 Hurricane is a dangerous "act of God" sort of disaster (duh) but this reads from any point of view like a bunch of thugs trying to bully someone into paying up like in a bad Mobster movie from the 1930s.
We were lucky in Coral Gables as only 75% of the roads on campus had debris covering them and about half were strewn with large trees making it impossible to navigate by car until the cavalry came in and began the long clean up process. We did lose power for a long time during the height of our summer. It wasn't all a big Hurricane Party. Had Miami been hit dead on would they still have sued? Would they have sued a college in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina? Pay up or else? Seriously?
This has to be my favorite quote below:
“Despite these offers, accommodations, and a number of other unilateral efforts on behalf of Arkansas State University, Miami refused to appear. This refusal caused Arkansas State University, the community of Jonesboro, and others significant harm.’’
Significant harm????? They don't know what a catastrophe is but they think they had significant harm by not playing a game while the students, coaches and staff at the UM were facing a Major Hurricane???
Time to Spice Up the Hurricane Name List with Names like Mateo and Morgan! May I Suggest Gender Neutral Names!
WINTER STORM MATEO
Up North moving East
Dipping just a drop South but not much.
Taking a short break from tracking the Stock Market and sharing a random thought here with y'all this morning. Somewhere between dueling memos and hype on the Olympics I decided to check out The Weather Channel. I know it is hard to believe I don't watch TWC all day. Let's face it and admit winter is here for a little while longer and then we start hearing about early Spring Storms and then we move towards whispered discussion on the 2018 Atlantic Hurricane Season.
Winter Storm Mateo is having it's day as snow is causing pile ups on major highways, some travel delays and it's bringing winter weather to places where there should be winter weather. I looked up at the screen and thought, "wow, Mateo... that's a great name! A real waste on a winter storm"
I've got to be honest without Googling I'm not sure who all these people are but they definitely have me smiling. Of course to the rest of the world that doesn't live or die by TWC and their naming winter storms this would just basically be called "another bout of winter weather" nothing expected to make the record books or take attention away from memos, the Stock Market or the Winter Olympics.
My husband walks into the room and hears TWC talking about Mateo and he says, "wouldn't that be a better name for a hurricane?" and I laughed as basically I was just thinking the same thing. So what is in a name?
Perhaps if we deviated from the overly anal way the Hurricane Center does their naming system we could move away from Mindy and Michael and move on to some way different names for hurricanes. The list below shows the following M Hurricane names in rotation and as there are storms as mean and violent as Maria was they get stuck there way too long. Michael is a great name and Melissa is one of my favorites, Marco is iconic from One Life to Live a show the NHC seems to have watched considering many of their names were famous characters on the show. Moving on we have Mindy and Martin waiting in the wings and at some point they will add a name to replace Maria that will be retired. May I suggest Mateo?
I'm pretty sure a name like Mateo would attain Cat 5 Status late in the season and not slam into Central America like Mitch nor would it want to do San Juan like Maria. An ocean spinner perhaps to end the season?
The problem with recycling the names forever is you get a name like Hurricane Emily that produces multiple memorable storms but which one were you referring to? When someone says Donna or Katrina or Andrew we know. But then there are those ongoing repeat offenders with minor crimes coming back over and over confusing those of us that like to talk about Hurricanes. "Oh that Emily? Yeah I was talking about the one that drew Alfred Hitchcock's face in the Atlantic" to which someone goes "yeah that was crazy" and well you get the idea.
Perhaps the NHC should update their list a bit to get more interest on Snapchat. How about making the list a neutral gender names? We can use names like Morgan and Marley which is actually a great name for Hurricane. Can't you see the headlines and graphics if it got into the Caribbean?
So yeah it's time the name list gets an update from it's early 1950s names and the forever wonderful One Life to Live names (Katrina, Larry, Marco, Karen, Victor, Vickie, Wanda) perhaps they should spice up the list a bit more with some new names to make things more interesting and less confusing. Some great gender neutral names are shown below.
Just something to think on while waiting for the Winter Olympics to begin and before we worry on what the 2018 Atlantic Hurricane Season will bring as we move on through Alberto and Beryl once again.............
Financial Storms - Stock Market Watching the Dow Jones is Similar to Watching La Nina and Wondering on the 2018 Atlantic Hurricane Season. Time Will Tell. It Evolves in Real Time... NFC Won the Super Bowl but the Market is Going Down? Hmnnn
I'm going to talk about the financial storm that hit us yesterday affecting people everywhere in all parts of the country and the world beyond. Watching the Stock Market and the financial world is much like watching the weather. A lot of maps and graphs are used to show what is happening in real time and to predict what might happen tomorrow; there's also a lot of graphs on what happened in the past. Also the Stock Market goes up and down in real time the same way a winter storm forms or a tropical wave begins to roll off of Africa and develop into a significant tropical wave and then an upgrade to Tropical Storm status appears imminent. Note things in the rear view mirror are often distorted in the short term and what appears to be happening may not play out exactly the way we hope or fear. I'll talk more on fear later...
Why the Market plunged yesterday is the big question today and worse than just one day it has been doing the Downward Dog Pose for the last several days since last week.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/05/why-the-stock-market-plunged-today.html My husband sent me several links this morning as it's a question I wondered on much yesterday. He's a Financial Planner and he as well as others are watching and wondering and many have their own thoughts. Is this merely an aspect of everyone fearing a "correction" and giving in to fear and selling when the market plunged yesterday the way snow begins to blind drivers on a busy freeway?
When a Hurricane is making landfall the fear factor kicks in and people panic doing odd things such as evacuating out of a safe area in a well built home and get stuck on the road for hours when there wasn't really anything to fear. People jump on a plane and take a vacation to see Aunt Martha in Maine when Miami appears suddenly in the 5 day cone on the 5th day of the cone. People who swear they won't go shopping until there is a Hurricane Watch suddenly stop on the way home at Publix and spend $300 on toilet paper, bottled water and junk food while picking up a Publix Sub for dinner. Was yesterday's sell off in the market a matter of being so nervous about the coming "correction" that the fear factor took over and made a bad situation worse?
“Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself”
Hmnn?
The Eagles won the Super Bowl.
The NFC team won!!
We were supposed to see the market soar..
The Eagles did won but the Bear showed up?
Say it ain't so Tom....
The Market is supposed to fall when the AFC wins!
How could this happen?
Weather predicting is similar to the trying to see into a crystal ball what the Stock Market will do as wives tales and "sayings" are whispered about as random events are often thought to be indicators of what will happen in real life. You know those saying about how watching woolly caterpillars is supposedly a sign of a fierce winter waiting in the wings? Market analysts who keep a rabbit foot in their pocket are known to watch the Super Bowl nervously. As you can read in the article below football has often been seen as an odd indicator of how the market will do in any given year. The Super Bowl happens in the beginning of the calendar year and supposedly high scoring games bring a high climbing market. AFC wins are seen as an indicator of a Bear Market and when the NFC wins we all win or so they say. Well, that's been the often watched pattern by people who love to watch patterns as much as they love to watch the Dow and satellite loops. I suppose in any given year that rule can be broken. Or this is just an odd anomaly in the way that a weak hurricane goes Cat 3 for a day and then falls apart again for the rest of it's run limping along as a Post Tropical Storm. What goes up must come down and then after the correction could be another correction.
When they talk about the Stock Market they use words such as "barometer" while looking for a way to explain what no one can totally agree on and that is why the market reacted yesterday to what seemed to have no defining reason for dropping so dramatically. There has been much talk about a coming correction and I'd say we can definitely say that correction came yesterday during what had been a bull market for the last year. Bull turned to bear so fast yesterday it was as if it was a fast change artist in between acts of a long running play. And using the words "playing the market" is used for a reason as it is in a way a "game" of sorts however it's one of the biggest indicators of our economy and how our world works... how both our world and our money goes round. On days like today it's a "game" no one laughs about as they watch, wait and pray that it begins to climb again.
First of all there had been talk of a "correction" but no one expected this sort of diving correction out of seemingly nowhere.
To explain this in weather terms let's say it's January and it's obviously possible to get a snow storm in the Carolinas; but we had snow as far South this year as the Florida Georgia Line. A forecast is made that snow will fall in the mountains and to the north somewhere between Greensboro and Raleigh with rain along the coast and to the South. The cold front begins to move and every meteorologist watches their radars and Twitter feed. Models showed the general path of trouble and the models recorrected themselves taking away that threat of snow for Wilmington and the coast. The flakes begin to fall or in typical Raleigh fashion the snow didn't fall and a clear donut hole formed around Raleigh on the radar as the dry atmosphere took longer to moisten and allow snow to fall. Reports of snow in Pittsboro begin to come in and then oddly reports of snow flakes falling in the Pine Hills to the South of Raleigh. Everyone gets really excited as snow in the Pine Hills is rarer than snow in Raleigh. But oddly the snow continued to fall in record amounts on a town that didn't salt the roads and isn't prepared to plow.
We have gotten so used to being able to predict things be it the general movement of the Stock Market or just when snow will begin to fall and where and when yet weather like the Stock Market can suddenly become unpredictable sometimes for no apparent reason. In retrospect we can watch loops of what happened and see why Moore County got buried in an unexpected snow storm. It was winter after all and it's been an active winter storm track in the South. It's not as if Hurricane Sandy formed down near Cuba and the next morning it hit Wyoming; it was reasonable to assume that it would move North and follow the steering currents and it could possibly affect the New York City metro area. Bull Markets have corrections and at times go Bear in the same way that La Ninos suddenly begin to look more like a Neutral Pattern after months of warm water expanding on satellite imagery. In the rear view mirror of research, maps, loops and shared discussion we understand what seemed to blind side us in real time.
Maybe this was a problem with computers and algorithmic trading gone awry. Today the Market opened and after a shaky start the Market seems to be trying to correct it's correction though it's falling again as I type this blog.... in real time. It's a good day to watch and wait and not panic; do not sell wildly and do not buy an extra pallet of bottled spring water because the predictions for the 2018 Atlantic Hurricane Season are coming in on the high side. Mind you if it's a really good deal and you have the room... you can buy canned food on a good sale.
Did I mention La Nina?
Is this an anomaly or a pattern?
The same can be wondered about the Market.
Is this a trend or a pattern?
Much like the weather...
Time will time...
Was the record snow fall in Erie Pa such a big surprise considering they do get Lake Effect Snow and it was winter, however no one saw Santa Claus sending them a record snow fall this Christmas.
Yeah.... trying to figure out the the next week's weather is often harder it seems than seeing which way the Market is trending. Be calm, stay steady ... do not give into fear and wait a bit before doing anything you may regret. Was the fall of Bitcoin an early indicator of the Stock Market doing a nose dive? I wonder...
Besos BobbiStorm
@bobbistorm on Twitter
Ps.... It's going to be a long day for people watching the Stock Market.
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
