Orange Area in the Atlantic 40% Moves Close to Bahamas Later in the Week - Tropics November. Fires Califnoria. El Nino Winning...

This will be a short post as I'm up north in Upstate New York where it snowed briefly today. Not very tropical like... but the Hurricane Season lasts until November 30th so we are still watching the tropics. The NHC has designated an area to be watched for possible development and it is not yet an Invest. So we watch it and it's worth remembering that as fronts are on the move a front is expected to catch this system before it makes landfall. However some effects could be felt if it develops and moves West, especially in the Bahamas and possibly later something for Bermuda to pay attention to...

This is the position of the Low pressure area.

Not the weak stalled out front.

Note more fronts moving South.

It's that time of year.

This is a long range map for this coming week.

At some point tomorrow (Sunday) I'll update the blog and we are all watching the models. But for now it's just an area that can develop and it's within the frame work of past storms that have formed in November. Many form, most are swept out to sea.

Again as I said on Thursday Night with El Nino in play and the current weather pattern we are having Fire Storms in California that are typical during such patterns but this particular fire is devastating and if Fires were rated the way hurricanes would be this would be a Major Hurricane. I lived in LA in the 80s and drove along fires on the side of the highway where the warmth could be felt the fire lit up the sky. Friends lost homes and there was little warning or a chance to prepare the way we do in hurricanes. They are horrible. It may be "fun" and exciting to watch "fire tornadoes" on social media but they are destructive, horrific and something from the devil. Pray for those people and pray they get the fires under control.

Lastly, I complained on the blog on Thursday about the ongoing mess in parts of South Florida especially Broward County though there are problems in other towns within the general region. Let me explain why this bothers me so much. 

One year I walked over to a polling place near my house on Miami Beach and presented by voter card, told them my name and waited for the really sweet gray haired lady to find my ballot so I could vote. It's awesome people give their time to do this, actually my mother did for a while. It was Early Voting and I wanted to get the voting out of the way as I was expecting a baby any day. I sign for the ballot to vote and realized she gave me my brother's ballot. My brother was out of the country and probably would have voted in that election differently from me.. he may have done so absentee. I told her that was my brother, he had a guys name I have a girl's name and I was 9 months pregnant. She asked me .."are you sure?"  Um, yeah... I was sure. The baby kicked as if annoyed as if to say "let's get this show on the road" so she spent a good ten minutes checking with someone and found my ballot. Mind you if I was the devious type I could have taken my brother's ballot, voted for whoever I wanted to be President and then gone down to the other nearby Early Voting location and voted again using my name. No one would have known the difference. The reality that happened was to be bizarre but as I was leaving a guy walked over to me and quietly said "she gave me my father's ballot" which really surprised me. He said..."his father had been dead for 4 years" but apparently no one notified the bureau of elections. I said naively, "wow what did you do?"   He smiled kind of jerky like and said "Oh I voted for my father... figured he'd be happy he still got a vote" and walked away laughing.  No words. Really no words. 

The  next election I was voting in Aventura... I was voting for Kerry to be honest and waiting in line as some man came at me with a sign for the other candidate and asked me if I was voting for Bush I believe... I said "not really" and he got angry and started yelling me in Spanish as I suppose I look Spanish?? and he spoke Spanish and I walked slowly away and he followed me way onto the area where they are not allowed to do that. I mentioned it inside, they said "he had been warned but they don't want to start up with him" and told me they had a problem with another guy pushing people to vote for Kerry. ... It was a zoo, people were afraid to walk into the polling place. When I asked as I was leaving if there was a receipt or something I was told that after the "hanging chad" problem they fixed it so that they can't do a recount and they don't give receipts. Understand you can't walk out of Walmart without showing a receipt but there was no way I could get a receipt and there was no way to recheck the ballots. Seriously? 

Then the next election there were voting inconsistencies in Broward and after much discussion they insisted they would fix the problem and find new ways to make voting easier, faster, safer and get results in a timely fashion. A good 10 years or so down the line we are still dealing with the same problems. That's just wrong. It's not about being a blue voter or a red voter.. it's about the security of each person's vote and those votes being registered in a timely way so as not to make people feel that one party or the other or one candidate or one person is trying to "throw an election" or perhaps just laziness.

My issue is not with Broward County who by the way has one of the better Library Systems in the State but with whoever runs the election process. Broward County is beautiful, it's people are wonderful as people in Miami and Palm Beach but there is an ongoing pattern of having problems and other big cities across the US have far less problems. I hope it's resolved and fixed. It's not about the beaches or the people who live there it's about the people who are put in place to preserve the integrity of our votes. 

So maybe that clears up my thought process. Not sure if the guy went and voted for himself at another polling place or just figured he's let his Dead Dad get a chance to vote. No words. 

I've lived in LA, NYC, Carolina, Minnesota and voted in those places and of course the Miami area and the only place where there has been consistently a problem is in the South Florida area and often Broward "finds ballot bags" or boxes which really is against the laws in place. Perhaps the people need to vote again and they need to hold the results and they need to try and watch the voting process there to get it right this time and in the future. And 12 sides of ballots mostly on referendums is crazy. I lived in NYC and had less pages on my ballot than the most recent ballot in Broward County. Makes for long lines in the hot sun waiting to get in and vote for the person you wish to have as Governor or Senator be a long, exhausting process. I spoke to a few people who told me they had to go home and feed their kids and it was impossible to even finish voting. In 2018 we need to get that better so everyone's vote counts.

So it's an issue that particularly bugs me as if something isn't broken it shouldn't be fixed but if something is broken it needs to be fixed. 

Thanks for reading.

If you live in Florida it doesn't hurt to keep your eyes on the area just in case but most likely you are praying for a cold front. I'll be back in Carolina later this week but the weather will follow me there. Miami will be a welcome burst of warm weather next time I'm in town. I vote in Raleigh these days. 

Sorry for any typos.

My daughter lives out in the country.

Service is weak and I have to sit on one spot on the sofa..

All the way to the left and not move or I lose service :)

Besos Bobbistorm

@bobbistorm on Twitter