June 1st Start of the Hurricane Season. Will Your City Have a Hurricane Make Landfall Near You? Can PR Get a Rest to Continue Cleaning up from 2017?

Rarely do I do this but I am reposting much of yesterday's post as it is the most relevant information I can give you going into the 2018 Atlantic Hurricane Season. Prepare, prepare, prepare. But before you prepare you must really stop, think and take note of what your particular concerns are regarding health, property, family and any business you have in a hurricane prone area. Every person has different needs though the basic ones such as non perishable foods, emergency medical supplies, medicine, water, gas in the tank and the always valuable hand operated can opener. Do you have children or pets or elderly people living with you? Are you elderly and your kids live far away? Do you live near or in a known flood zone and be aware sometimes an area not known to flood... floods anyway. So stop, look around and make lists of what your concerns may be and then PREPARE. Hurricanes are one of the few "natural disasters" that can be prepared for and unless you are the Island of PR facing a Category 5 Hurricane you almost always have a chance to protect your family and your home!

Small chance something pops in the Atlantic.

Epac finally woke up and shows potential.

There is talk that down the road something will try to form Alberto like down in the Caribbean again and as the models have been popular this year with that spot that is within range of climo then pay attention and check in once in a while to see if the Euro comes around to what the GFS is selling. And, this year New England down to the Mid Atlantic is at especially high risk so keep your eyes out to the East to see what might be brewing there. There is model chatter about something that could affect that part of the coast. We call it model chatter when models indicate, spin up "something" and everyone online in the meteorological world begins to chit chat about it. Chatter is innuendo mostly, however sometimes where there is smoke there really is fire.

Again the best advice I can give you is to take Hurricane Preparation seriously.  Take it to the bank.  Prepare.

I also believe GOM will continue to be in play as well as the East Coast from Florida Georgia line to Maine this year. A cooler distant Atlantic doesn't stop Home Grown from developing.  And usually only the strong waves survive the trip and can turn into deadly storms that make it to higher latitudes.

Many meteorologists make predictions as do government agencies. They can tell you why this year is different from last or the one before the last one. They can tell you there is a cool pool of water out by Africa in late May going into the season and that would inhibit tropical waves from developing into Hurricanes in the MDR. That is true, it also inhibits the development of strong, early hurricanes that become Fish Storms and curve gracefully out to sea. They point to a ton of factors all of which exist and all of which are part of the mathematical problem they are trying to solve that being predicting what the 2018 Atlantic Hurricane Season will be like. 1985 and 1989 were years with similar conditions and they brought Hurricane Gloria in 1985 to the East Coast and Hurricane Hugo in 1989 to South Carolina. The rains from Hugo spread far inland into areas where mudslides and flash flooding were caused this week by residual tropical rain from the remnants of Alberto. This May in North Carolina was one of the wettest Mays on record and it reminds me of interviews I have had with old timers who always tell me that the year of Hurricane Fran was a very wet year when the soil was already soaked before Fran made it to landfall and kept on going all the way to Raleigh.

No meteorologist, not even the best, can tell you which city is going to get impacted until after the final Cone from the NHC has been posted and after the last reporter leaves town. Jim Cantore can tell you where he's going and where he's been, but the season unfolds in real time in the rear view mirror. Andrew was the first named storm of the very slow 1992 Hurricane Season and no one in South Florida will ever tell you 1992 was a slow season, it is synonymous with Hurricane Andrew a worst case scenario that happened.

This is the truth, real truth, take it to the bank .... the ONLY thing you CAN know for sure is that you have prepared as best you can for your particular harbor ...or home. Each person has a different priority and each home has a different priority. If you are elderly and have special needs or if you have 3 small children under the age of 5 you have your own particular needs. A big house with large windows has special needs that a small condo with one sliding glass door facing the ocean on the 18th floor might have. An ocean front Studio Apartment with an awesome view or a 13 room 2 story house with multiple windows and a leaky roof each have their own point of entry where the wind could get into their home, their lives and leave memories. Many kids who went through Hurricane Andrew have ....and they were the FIRST to get out of DODGE when they thought Irma was coming to Miami.

Trust me... being Hurricane Strong is the best thing you can be to give the best chance of making it through this Hurricane Season. Do not be distracted by exotic scientific words in reports explaining why this may be a weaker year or why it is comparable to such and such a year. Prepare as if this is the year that you get your Hurricane Andrew, Fran, Hugo or Gloria. And remember far from where Subtropical Storm Alberto made landfall near Panama City, Florida people were killed in Interior North Carolina from residual effects of intense, tropical rain that caused their homes to collapse, a tree to fall on the car of two reporters covering flooding and there may be more to come.

I'm in Florida.

Speaking to some people.

Doing some research.

The house down the street....

...still has a blue tarp on it.

Few here are excited about this being June 1st!

I'll update as things develop.

For anyone who wants to go deep in some thoughts on the 2018 Atlantic Hurricane Season this is a great read and a valuable source of information. It has a glossary in there and you can Google terminology as well online. You can learn much from this report as to the many factors we look at as to weather this season will or won't be busy. But we will only know looking back on October 1st if this season was or wasn't busy for sure. 

https://tropical.colostate.edu/media/sites/111/2018/05/2018-06.pdf

Besos BobbiStorm

@bobbistorm on Twitter