Leslie Makes Landfall near Portugal and Spain After Being Downgraded Just Prior to Landfall. 1842 Also Had a Hurricane Hit Spain... After 2 Similar Strong Hurricanes in NC and FL and a Quiet MDR. Thoughts on the NHC CONE and a 1970 Datsun.

Leslie made Landfall.

I know. 

I can't believe it either.... 

So many different cones the last few days.

One of them got it right though.

(I'll discuss the yellow area in the MDR in next post)

See that little red dot on the top right of the page?

It says LE... 

That's Leslie impacting the Portugal and Spain.

Here I'll make a close up for you...

Maybe it changed it's name to Lee?

Anyway...

It went extratropical suddenly.

That's all that's left of it.

It still had 75 MPH but it was no longer a "hurricane"

I suppose we can continuing saying Spain didn't get hit.

Just slammed by a wild storm with 75 MPH winds.

Hmnnn.

It's possible that they may see more weather down the road.

That's the track for Michael.

Maybe France won't get a tropical storm.

Wherever the remnants go they will be strong.

Storms that travel that fast don't fall apart quickly.

Leslie may get back over water by the way...

Accuweather obviously has an opinion.

http://time.com/5424104/hurricane-leslie-portugal-spain/

I'll update tomorrow with information on what happened.

But I'm pretty sure it was one stormy mess.

So you think Spain doesn't have hurricanes?

They do. 

They have.

This is an animation of the 1842 Hurricane Season 

It's a best guess based on DATA.

Note what is missing?

Nothing forming in the MDR.

Different but similar landfall locations to this year.

NC got slammed.

Florida Panhandle got slammed.

Weak systems into Texas

Florida Keys into Panhandle. 

A storm in October goes to Spain.

This is what I mean by history repeats.

You learn from history.

No huge Caribbean storms.

MDR was quiet it seems.

Other areas were not.

The real reason I wanted to come on tonight was to talk on the 1842 hurricane that hit Spain which may or may not have fulfilled the rules of the NHC but it goes down in history as a landfalling Hurricane. Why this is so important other than random information is that the 1842 Hurricane Season bears an uncanny resemblance to the 2018 Hurricane Season.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1842_Atlantic_hurricane_season

In Alphabetical order are the locations that dealt with tropical weather in 1842. The video below is what it would look like IF we had satellite imagery and cones out the wazoo. Note how similar the tracks are and remember this year Texas got hit by a few crazy "no name" storms that were worse than some of our named storms. They had the impacts of what would have been a strong named storm without the name including serious flooding.

In 1842 NC had one of it's worst storms in history.

Massive flooding, towns destroyed. 

It's always in the history of NC storms books.

There are no reviews.

Remind me to write a review.

It's an awesome book.

From Google below:

In September a storm was around the Florida Keys.

The Florida Panhandle had a severe tropical storm later.

 Ludlum the best of the best early mets..

Discounted it being another storm near Texas and believed...

...it was a continuation of the storm down in the Keys.

Sound familiar?

Gordon?

In October.......

A storm came up out you know where.

And made landfall in the Florida Panhandle.

Read Wikipedia or click on the text below.

Sure sounds a lot like Michael.

Locations a bit different.

Track a bit different but the pattern was there.

What happened next?

A hurricane hit Spain.

You can't make this up.......

They showed Vince from 2005 as an example.

See history does repeat.

This was 1842.

I bet you are wondering what happened next...

One formed off the Florida coast... to near Bermuda.

It brushed the FL coast and Charleston area with gale force winds.

An earthen dam had damage along the Georgia Coast.

It would be very logical to believe that formed at the tail end of a front.

There are fronts moving across the country.

Moisture in the Caribbean.

The last of the tropical waves moving West.

Caribbean is favored by Climo through November.

As much as we are watching the Caribbean for some system to form that could be a weaker version of Michael or some November storm that cruises ENE or NE out of the Caribbean threatening the Islands and or the Bahamas it's just as easy to believe now that we have fronts on the move that one will falter and stall out off the Florida Coast and another system similar to the last system of 1842 could happen this year. History repeats and obviously there was a similar pattern that year as this year. If we didn't have satellite imagery the way we do now and models an old time meteorologist would probably connect the dots and say some of the storm that was Kirk went West into the Caribbean and eventually reformed and moved North into Florida. In 1842 there were no models, radar data or satellite imagery.

So keep watching.

As for my thoughts tonight on Michael there is just so much I cannot wrap my head around and I'll discuss it another day. But for tonight this is all I want to say.

Look at that picture.

The link to the article is below.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/13/us/hurricane-michael-wxc/index.html

The death toll climbs state by state in unique but predictable ways. A tree fell on a truck or a truck slammed into a fallen tree. Storm surge deaths come to light as teams get into the areas and go through debris and find bodies. The back side of Michael that intensified from North Carolina into Virginia as it became one with the front took many I am sure by surprise as so much emphasis in the media is on "landfall" and "storm surge" and "highest winds at landfall" and very little is talked about by the media on anything beyond landfall. The NHC mentions things and reminds people to check their local NWS office and as I've said sadly the local NWS offices get very little press as the media touts the cone showing where the storm will make landfall. Anyone reading blogs or following on social media knew that this storm was moving fast and within one day it would be make it from Florida to the Carolinas and into Virginia. But the average person watching the nightly news still or checking headlines will only see the CONE a day before they are blasted by 50 to 80 winds in North Carolina and Virginia.

My blog from Monday before Michael made landfall.

When it was trying to pull together.

Pleading people to remember how fast it would move.

And that people in the Carolinas and Virginia...

...would get impacts and they would happen sooner rather than later.
Dangerous impacts from a Tropical Storm.

The local weather people here talked on it's dangerous impacts but the general feeling was that they were keeping us in a Tropical Storm Watch out of an abundance of caution and that the Tropical Storm Warning was put up for the same reason. Few inland took it seriously and the only concern on the local news was to assure people Down East still cleaning up from Florence wouldn't have to worry on more flooding. Flooding in NC and Virginia was NEVER a concern with Michael, but high winds as the storm and the front blasted through after a solid day of rain with wet soil meant trees would topple and weather would become dangerous. If it wasn't for the NC State Fair canceling the Opening Day and postponing it off til Friday I don't think the locals here would have thought much on Michael. Everyone was in shock and it showed the possibility that high winds were there as they had to watch the rides and secure what wasn't taken down. If the Fair is worried, there must be something to worry on someone told me in their own words. Smart thing too that the Fair did that as two trees went down on the property or part of the trees and one severely injured one of the people who works the fair. Luckily no one else was walking through that area near that gate when that tree came down. His trailer was parked near the spot as he works the fair, otherwise there would have been hundreds, thousand of people in the general vicinity. The Fair Grounds are beautiful when the Fair is not in town as it's the site of the NC State Flea Market and it's a fun place to walk around on a Sunday under huge Oak trees providing shade on a hot summer day.

Cranky sent me the wind speeds as I had asked him on Friday. Impressive what the wind and gusts were that brought down huge trees and added in the death toll from Michael. I believe five people in Virginia died which is just so sad as they should have seen this coming as we talked about it online for days, however did the message get out to the media I wonder?

https://twitter.com/crankywxguy If you like longreads and you obviously do as you are reading this.. check out his blog. Spoiler Alert it's longer than mine. He has much good information to share.

Those are strong winds.

They caused death and destruction.

But the talk was mostly about where landfall would be...

... but people died far away from Mexico City.

Far from the Florida Panhandle.

So there are just some things I don't understand.

They didn't evacuate a Florida State Hospital which is used for mental health patients who mostly have been committed put there against their will and I'm sure there was some logic and they "thought they'd be okay" but they weren't and so they were dropping food and water by helicopter down to them for days. Seems odd. Strange story. Didn't they  know that it could easily be cut off and with the watches and warnings up for this storm when it was a Potential Storm why did they not evacuate them before or have more supplies?

https://www.thestate.com/news/nation-world/national/article219837535.html

Much I don't understand about how things work with regard to warning people of inland dangers from landfalling hurricanes and the NHC's refusal to update their cone to show inland dangers or flooding potential is just lame. They do a great job in general under difficult circumstances but when you ask them to modify the Scale they use and the cone they refuse saying it was "confuse people" even though these same people are on Facebook and Twitter that updates their format every month and people get used to it. They truly act like that old guy driving along in an 1970 Datsun because they refuse to sell it going 45 mph on the highway because the speed limit is 55 MPH listening to Iron Butterfly on a cassette player that they had to install when the 8 Track died on them sadly.

I get it. I hate when my phone says it wants to do an update. But it's part of life and it's time for the Cone to be updated. Again possibly put the cone over the satellite image and put an old fashioned symbol for flooding over the area that may lose all their crops, homes, farms, businesses and where many may lose their lives because they thought they would be fine because they were not "in the cone." Life will go on really and it will be a better product.

I'll write a full post tomorrow on the tropics and an update on Michael as in what was done right and what was done wrong that hopefully we can learn from and update the way we do things and do it better the next time around. They learned after Sandy they needed to put in good graphics showing where flooding would occur and they have put out some great products, but they are not on center stage and the only thing that gets shown in the media is the cone so it's time to update the cone. I'm pretty sure no one at the NHC is still using an old flip phone or refusing to update their iPhone so why not update the Cone?



Besos BobbiStorm
@bobbistorm on Twitter