Tropical World. Watching Caribbean For a Possible System... Models Showing What We Have Been Talking About. Give Thanks the Tropics Are Quiet Today. They Won't Stay Quiet. October M Storms.

Many people think this is my world.

It's our world.

From June 1st to November 30th...

...it's a view I choose to view often.

Watching the tropics.

The Hurricane Season.

October often brings storms out of the Caribbean.

Sometimes hurricanes form from dead fronts.

Anything can happen in October.

November gets a bit flakey.

Suddenly a storm in the deep Caribbean...

...slices across the basin moving ENE.

The 1st 10 days of October are dangerous.

Today nothing much is happening.

Leslie is there.

I am NOT going to talk about Leslie.

Just showing her.

Fully tropical currently.

Small kinks in the wind field in the Caribbean.

Remember that.

It's not a straight flow.

Note the image below.. only Leslie.

This will change.

Yellow and orange circles will pop up one day soon.

A look at the Caribbean shows us....

A tropical wave westbound mid Atlantic.

Remnants of Kirk in the Caribbean.

Moisture in the Gulf of Mexico.

Leslie out there...

Whether the remnants of Kirk....

...or the new wave in the Atlantic provide the spark.

Something is forecast to light up our lives soon.

Coming out of the Caribbean.

Kirk so far....

His "final" graphic.

Is it final?

Maybe. 

I'm not sold one way or the other.

But til the last rain shower is gone for more than 24 hours.

I'm watching it.

From a friend online.

He's good at sniffing out tropical trouble.

Even before the models show it.

Actually many of us do.

It's basic meteorology more than modeling.

But when the models see it ...

..everyone wants to see the models.

He speaks on this concept often.

It's actually well put.

There is a great map on Cranky's blog shown below.

You see here what I am talking about.

You have tropical waves... 

You have an area you have to watch.

Fronts start pushing down.

The set up screams "something tropical spins up"

Where?

When?

Somewhere in that box.

Note the map below.

Water temperatures.

High. Still high along the East Coast.

Not out where Leslie is spinning.

But along the coast red hot.

This is not a good set up.

Something may form out there and it's very possible it will but where will it go? I don't know. Telling you that plain and simple, but I'm pretty sure by October 4th I will know and I'll go long on discussion. Remember Wilma? Remember Mitch? Remember Matthew? The list goes on and on. There is a reason we watch the Caribbean for the M storm and in the super crazy hyper year of 2005 you flip the M to a W and you get the same system just too many letters down the road in that very busy year. There is a reason North Carolina fears storms that start with F .. Fran, Floyd, Florence and there is a reason people in Florida and Cuba and the Bahamas watch the deep Caribbean when in an average busy year we get down to the M storm in early October. Michael is the next named storm. IF Michael gets anywhere near that oceanic fuel along the East Coast we could have a serious problem. That's a real IF but it's a IF that should make you stay alert and not eat up all the Twinkies in your Hurricane Supplies just yet.

In Raleigh today the News and Observer put out a special section on Hurricane Florence. I knew they would and I knew it would remind me of Hurricane Andrew and it did. But mostly I wonder if the house where the sweet Irish man tends the garden every summer filled with many flowers and varieties of sunflowers will be there next summer. Will someone tear down the house and build a new larger building or will life go on a little longer the way for those of us who drive in from Raleigh, park the car near the house and walk over to the beach by Johnnie Mercer Pier. Routines and traditions are so important to us in this part of the world.

I'll update later today on this.

My world is large.

I have kids in England, Israel and Canada traveling.

I'm watching them online ... virtually traveling with them.

This week is a big Jewish Holiday.

Some days I'm online.

Some days I'm off.

My son backstage with Benny Friedman.

They have worked together for a long time.

Watching him in concert in Jerusalem.

As my world turns.

Do a good deed today ...

..say Thank you to someone.

Be kind.

Besos BobbiStorm

@bobbistorm on Twitter

I'll update later today.

Probably during the Carolina Panthers Game.

#keeppounding.

Ps.... Toda means Thank You!

Tell someone Thank You today.

I got to watch this video as it was being put together.

One of my favorite songs and videos.

Toda!

UPDATED! Tropics .... Kirk Exits Stage Left, Subtropical Leslie Got Her Name Back. Rosa Off Broadway Coming to a Desert in the SW USA Soon. Where Does Her Moisture Go? Tsunami in Indonesia, Hurricane in Mediterranean? Earthquake in Caribbean on Island Dealing With Kirk.

The long awaited for Subtropical Storm Leslie is back.

Officially.

Updating the blog for the upgraded status of  Subtropical Storm Leslie at 5 PM. You can see how it began to really fill in and convection wrap around the center in images I posted on Twitter while talking to friends about her and her potential drama. You can read the discussion on the logic of the NHC but the image below tells the tale.

https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/text/refresh/MIATCDAT3+shtml/282047.shtml

Convection totally wrapped around the center.

Currently Bermuda might watch Leslie carefully.

We will talk on Leslie more down the road.

I think it's very possible she becomes a hurricane...

...later after transitioning to a tropical system.

As for Kirk....

...he's on borrowed time.

Some interesting news from the Caribbean.

The same island dealing with Kirk...

...just had a fairly strong earthquake.

As Jim reminded me.

He has a link on webpage with news from affected islands.

Duly noted and sharing that information.

I was on the phone with one of my kids.

I do have a life besides weather you know....

Another interesting story comes from the Mediterranean.

Crazy surf.

Look how neatly that fits in the Mediterranean.

How impressive is that?

Further away but just as interesting.
There was a Tsunami in Indonesia...
.... after a strong Earthquake.
Mike posted this on his webpage.

Video found online. 

Been passed around on Twitter all day.

Seems there's a lot going on.

Tropics are active geologically and meteorologically. 

Stay tuned....

Should get more interesting over the next week.

Sweet Tropical Dreams.

* * *

Tropical Games.

Late September of 2018.

Cooler water temperatures initially.

Strong, long lived Saharan Dust.

MDR shut down for huge Canes.

So what happens?

Mother Nature turns things around.

Shakes things up.

Plays by her rules.

Tropical energy goes elsewhere.

Tropical energy finds a way.

http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/sal/g16split/movies/goes16split.html

Watch that loop.

What was Leslie and will be again...

...is encapsulated by SAL.

Florence was as well.

And yet Florence found a way.

She took the far North path ....

...she went where few have ever gone.

If you loop that loop.

You will see the way shear...

..cleared out the Caribbean.

SAL not getting in there.

Neither have been hurricanes.

But they may form somewhere there soon.

The long term models show lowered pressures.

The pattern as we move into October hints at it.

Good Tweet from a good friend.

It's not locked in.

But most likely something will develop.

October and November...

Are about the Caribbean and GOM.

Often storms that fall apart....

...come back to life or more so..

Their moisture goes elsewhere.

Weather is about flow.

Look at the flow between Kirk & X Leslie.

You wonder where Leslie is getting that moisture?

In a sea of SAL?

Look at that long leash.

And Leslie is whipping the leash.

Slowly a center is filling in.

http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mtpw2/product.php?color_type=tpw_nrl_colors&prod=natl&timespan=120hrs&anim=anigf

Long tentacles of moisture being sucked up...

Into the huge vortex that was Leslie.

That is being tracked by the ....

High Seas Forecasts.

Please refer to the NWS.

The new methodology of the NHC...

...is an extension of the NWS it seems.

That's my thought.

The culture there seems to have changed.

More people from the NWS move into place.

It's their way of doing things.

It's their call.

Jokingly I told a friend...

..they won't name Leslie...

..until they kill off Kirk :)

We joke a lot in meteorology.

We compare things to football....

...or movies or science fiction shows.

So where do we stand now regarding Kirk?

Still there moving WNW now.

Movement has been erratic for last day or so.

Generally West into the Caribbean.

Cone shown below.

Models show:

Truth is Kirk will battle shear as he tries to move Westward. He will fall apart, his movement will slow down and his convection will be displaced. The problem with Kirk really is that his convection is constantly being displaced and that convection will cause flooding over a longer period of time for some of the islands. A fast moving, small well wrapped storm would have whipped it's moisture with it deep into the Caribbean... but that is not happening. So there has been some minor flooding that could become worse in the Islands. That IS Kirk. That IS WEATHER and that is what this is all about. It's not all about finding the one wave that will become a Killer Category 5 Storm remembered for all time, though that does happen, it's about weather and in this case tropical weather. So all jokes aside and I do love the jokes... Kirk is causing trouble in the Caribbean Islands now. XLeslie is slowly building back to being Leslie and another cyclone in the EPAC named Rosa will move up towards Mexico and her moisture will move deep into the desert SE causing more flooding and then her moisture will mingle with westbound frontal systems and that is what weather is all about. You can Google it or look it up on Twitter but it's not being shown much on the news today. Remember the Islands have elevation so water runs downhill there often so you have flooding and more flooding and it's not as bad as North and South Carolina from Florence but much troubling weather from a minimal tropical storm.

We will possibly revisit Kirk down the road.

Or the moisture remaining from X Kirk.

Now let's talk about Rosa.

Nice name.. I know.

Rosa becomes part of USA weather.

Weather flows always.

He makes great maps.

Models shown below.

PLEASE... be aware of the FLOODING threat.

Please know campers in the desert southwest...

May deal with strong, flash floods.

Tropical rain in the desert is never a good thing.

But rain falling over farmland is...

It's all about timing and location.

Rain is a blessing...

...it can be a curse too.

Cranky has maps he makes.

I write. I write and describe.

I'll show this map and remind you.

It's not over til the end of October.

The ap below shows where systems may form.

Atlantic has candy stripes.

North Atlantic has dark red.

Then our eyes turn to SW Carib....

..and the Yucatan area.

I'll talk more on this another time.

By Sunday Kirk should be gone....

... Leslie should get her  name back.

This is the time between Florence.........

...and the next big storm.

It's about Pumpkin Spice Lattes.

Football.

Politics.

Changing leaves, falling leaves.

Stalled cold fronts in the Carolinas.

Then stronger ones that push through.

And the Earth is always moving.

Earthquakes... 

Meteorologists love geology.

Geologists love meteorology.

My advice in this turbulent time in which we live.

Find some music you love ....

..and enjoy it alone or with someone you love.

Whatever rocks your boat.

I love weather and I love my friends.

I love my family.

I love.

I love the water vapor loop :)

I love the way everything flows.... 

My taste in music evolves.

Always evolve.

Always find your flow...

..and go with it.

(love love love this song)

Besos BobbiStorm

@bobbistorm on Twitter..

Ps... special thanks ... 

Kirk. Leslie. Storms ... Take Them as WEATHER Not Just About the Center or the Wind Strength. Kirk is a Huge Mass of Convection and Wind Moving Towards the Islands. New Wave Off Africa. Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel Beat's Out OBX on a Windless Day.

Ok, I am back home and watching the tropics along with all the breaking news of the day. So excuse me for not posting earlier. I slept very late and am watching the news like everyone while looping loops and trying to think just what to say here. I want to point out the reality vs the sublime, academic meteorological discussion that takes away from it the reality of life and what people are dealing with when facing any tropical entity. There are two huge systems below, both different and yet both similar in that they are easily recognized and compelling.

A storm by any name and in this case Kirk needs to be taken for what it is and not simply picked apart by academics living far away from the islands in it's path. The fact that it is a Tropical Storm vs a Category 1 Hurricane or God Forbid a Cat 5 is true, but this particular tropical storm carries with it strong winds far from it's center and huge amounts of tropical moisture. The center as always out runs the moisture but the problem with that this time is that where the center goes the moisture is going to follow. Out in the Atlantic it simply fell apart and then intensified again when it found warmer water and less wind shear. That's worth remembering as everyone is glad to stick a fork in Kirk and proclaim him dead as we had done that before and he's back again. I'm not saying he will come back if he falls apart as forecast but I am saying it's logical that him remnants can come back a second time until the last rainstorm dries up and his remnants can no longer be found. We are too ready to jump in and write off systems that have a history of pulsing up and down. I'm not hyping him, I'm being honest it just is what it is and that is how this works.

That is a HUGE area of moisture moving towards the islands.

We had flooding in the Carolinas from a similar set up.

A once powerful hurricane downgraded.

Falling apart....

...the huge pocket of moisture remained.

The rains came and followed.

So as always this is what I say.

A hurricane or Tropical Storm is more than it's center.

It's more than the cone that tracks the center.

It's more than how strong the winds in the center are...

...when stronger winds around found far to it's East.

The storm is one system moving intact across a region.

You have to view the whole system as a threat.

The Islands are threatened.

It's huge compared to the Islands.

So it will affect many areas with many problems.

Let's hope and pray it's just a strong few rainy days.

But knowing the problems of mudslides and flooding..

..we need to be concerned about those.

Not whether it's 40 mph or 50 mph.

Not whether it's running "naked"... 

... convection sheared to it's East of the center.

The whole mass is moving WEST.

Or specifically WNW at 14 MPH.

These are the facts.

Yes Kirk's between a rock and a hard place.

That does not diminish the threat to the Islands.

Luckily it's a tropical storm and not a Cat 5.

Still it holds a threat of severe weather.

So when you see Tweets such as this...

...remember the weather is the problem not the center.

We should have learned that from Florence.

Good graphic.

It doesn't diminish the weather the Islands will see.

That's a lot of weather.

Down the road?

Time will tell.

Kirk has often found ways to escape....

... death and destruction.

Keep watching.

As for Leslie..........

She has a name from the past.

The blast from the past is coming back.

90% Chances at 2 PM.

Another big, huge system compelling.

Hard not to stare.

People are staring.

People are talking.

Everyone is talking Leslie.

Except the NHC.

Imagine at 5 or 11 that will change.

It's not threatening the islands.

It's not trapped in the GOM.

It's not threatening NYC.

So they can bide their time.

Figure out how to handle Leslie again.

What your take away should be here is this.

There's a new wave coming off of Africa.

The hurricane season is far from over.

It's not 2017. 

MDR is a foreign, unfriendly place.

But as we move into October...

..we begin to look at the Caribbean and GOM.

Or the Florida Straits and dying cold fronts.

And cold fronts are on the move.

Models for Leslie show it out there.

The old cone showed it moving West.

I know scares people who just dealt with Florence.

Take it with Sea Salt.

This is a Sargasso Sea Storm for now.

And what is different now from Florence?

We have stronger cold fronts.

And it should eventually go away.

When I can't say.

For sure?

I can't say anything for sure now.

We need to watch it.

IT as in the system.

Not the models.

Models are fun.

I love models.

But I look first at satellite loops.

Then the models.

Then wait a day or so ....

Note the two images below.

www.spaghettimodels.com

Bottom Line.

1. A large (size wise) tropical storm with winds stronger than just in the center of 50 mph is moving en masse towards the islands and people will be dealing with it. Kirk is forecast to die from shear in the Caribbean, but we have seen many a storm do this and then come back to life. This is NOT Harvey, this is Kirk but Harvey was counted out about this time in it's track while many whispered on worries down the line. I heard many people laugh it off. Never laugh off a storm that has come back to life stronger than it was in warm tropical waters. This is not 2017 this is not Harvey but the Western Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico are littered with storms that made landfall that were downgraded or fell apart or reborn from remnants of a storm in the same exact place that gave it up to shear and then came back. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Harvey

Read the link.

Look at the track.

Not all that different.

Except the pattern today is not what it was in 2017.

But it's a lesson or should be.

2. Leslie is far out to sea fun to watch but nothing to worry about today. Yes it has been an odd year. Do we get a Subtropical Storm or a Gale Center or a Subtropical Hurricane or directed to some other division that handles storms at sea that the NHC doesn't want to deal with ??? Time will tell.

3. It's that time of year that we watch any convection that moves into areas where fronts die out and collide and that can become players down the tropical road.

Here are the fronts and the weather across the USA.

https://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/basicwx/day0-7loop.html

Nothing is threatening the US for the next 7 days.

People are threatened in the Islands from Kirk.

What was Leslie and probably will be again..

..is a beautiful system to watch on satellite imagery.

Should something develop.......

...it will all be about timing and the fronts.

Fronts and the placement of the High.

Now....

7 days from now.

Have a great day.

It was nice feeling a drop of fall in Maryland.

Wednesday it evaporated and I took the leggings off.

The cowboy boots I haven't worn in months were fun.

Just wait it out and it cools off.

Between now and then....

I think there will be an October Hurricane.

Somewhere... where?

Keep watching.

The Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel is awesome.

So is that one by Kent Island.

You put the windows down.

Open the sunroof.

Feel the wind... the breeze.

Watch the pelicans flying about.

The ships gliding about.

If you haven't ever done it.

Do it.

Way better than the 7 Mile Bridge.

And I love the 7 mile bridge.

Watched the sun setting over it yesterday.

No reason to "chase" 98L

OBX had 1 mph winds out of the West.

Warm in the 80s.

No thanks.

I like wind, real wind.

And a great sunset.

Besos BobbiStorm

@bobbistorm on Twitter

Ps...the restaurant store was closed :(

Love that place.

Nice place to sit, get coffee and stare at the water and ships and birds.

A way better view during the storm.

Sandy.... now that's wild.

Driven it in quiet weather and real weather.

Windows down.... wild

Imagine if we had a bridge like that to Cuba..

...from Key West.

Just imagine.