Hurricane Harbor

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, June 08, 2020

Cristobal a Stormy Story Still Unfolding. Where's Dolly? Will Dolly Be a Deja Vu Storm in GOM? African Waves.... A Look at Hurricane History. Matthew, Florence, Sandy and the 1926 Great Miami Hurricane. Miami Beach History & Architecture




Cristobal inland and still traveling.
Has a passport to Canada...
..and no govt official can keep him out.

I'll do an End Game Post on Cristobal....
...when it's oveer. 
Because the story is far from over.

As for the Tropics today...
..what are we looking at?
Tropical Possibilities.


That's high latitude trouible for June.
June too soon but is it in 2020?
Below is the SW Carib.
Models show a Deja Vu storm forming...
...and moving up into the GOM AGAIN.
Is that Dolly? 
Say it ain't Deja Vu Dolly?


Time will tell.

In motion below.





Yes there is in area the Atlantic there is a yellow area.
NHC walking back it's chances so ...
....not gonna talk on it now.

But further out in the Atlantic is a Wave off Africa.
A wave departing Africa higher up...
..where they are supposed to be.
Where they need to be to develop.
5 degrees is too far South.
10 degrees and we have possibilities.

We will talk on that later.
Today I'm looking back a bit at history.
Why????
Because history repeats.
And we learn from history!

These images from Tropical Storm Cristobal isnpired today's Hurricane History part of the blog.

Currently Cristobal is moving up through the center of the Country, still in the South but on his way Northbound carrying with it the potential for severe weather and localized flooding. Honestly, that has been it's legacy as it's distant weather pounded Central Florida with thunderstorms and tornadoes and localized flooding in the delta regions of Louisiana along the barrier islands of Mississippi. People seem surprised because it was "only a Tropical Storm" and a pretty minimal one intensity wise but a wet, tropical storm can carry with it a whole lot of water.


Steve means lousy as in intensity.
But in watery misery for those cleaning up...
...it was a messy, crappy storm.
Not intense, but size wise huge and wet.


That's sand not sea foam.

I saw this picture from post Tropical Storm Cristobal coverage and it amazed me that people were amazed that this could or would happen. If you live in a beach town and the tropical wind brings in a tropical storm or hurricane it's common to have your streets near the beach covered in sand; adding especially if the storm has come a long ways to your door to deliver you that sand. It's often not how intense a hurricane is, but on the contrary, how far it has traveled to get to your destination.



Sand covered the boardwalk in Long Beach, NY after Sandy a once Major Hurricane going extratropical tore up the boardwalk and flooded homes, businesses and left a mess after traveling a long distance from the Deep Caribbean.



You have to think of a hurricane as a living breathing thing, that has traveled huge distances carrying with it a dome of water and moving endlessly until it can't travel anymore on the ocean and then it rams itself up onto your door like a wrecking ball. A storm such as Matthew or Florence will do more water damage than a storm that blows up immediately and makes landfall suddenly. Again, I said "water damage" vs strong winds or severe weather. Matthew made landfall as a Caegory 1 Hurricane in South Carolina as it's explosive water footprint stomped far inland into North Carolina a mere ghosts of it's intensity when it churned off the coast of South America as a Major Hurricane. The water pushed inland, far inland filling up every river basin in North Carolina covering farms, homes and towns as it flung itself onto land unable to make that turn away as the Hurricane Center had often predicted earlier that it would before going out to sea. Matthew's wet legacy just kept on coming, like a big, huge train unable to stop on a dime the way a fast sports car would be able to and that is common in such hurricanes. Nothing new under the Tropical Sun as they say.

Hurricane Florence, two years later, drenched the same region of the Carolinas with flooding rains and tremendous water damage as a mere shadow of itself, no longer a Cat 3 or 4 or 5 hurricane but one filled with rain, water and endless misery.

Matthew's track below.
Quite the traveler.


A wave that developed just before the Islands.
Sat on just off coast of South America...
...and had no problems with land interaction.

Below is Florence.
The Hurricane that refused to die.
A fish storm that kept swimming.
All the way across the ocean.


After being an intense Major Hurricane.
It reached it's destination as a shadow of itself.
And yet parts of the Carolinas are still cleaning up from it.


Old picture of Collins Avenue covered in sand.

Beware those long traveling storms.
Almost a hundred years earlier.. 
The 1926 Great Miami Hurricane shown below.


Obviously this started from a wave off of Africa.
Ship reports showed there was a West Indies Cyclone moving WNW.
That's what they called it then...
 And it slammed into Miami as a strong Category 4 hurricane.
And aside from the intense winds, it was a very wet hurricacne.
The streets flooded, sand covered Miami Beach.
From the Ocean to the Bay it was covered with sand.
Locals had to dig out their Model T Fords.


Wait for it to load, it's worth it ... because nothing like a real obituary of a hero of Miami beach.

A mere snippet of the story...



Rose Weiss, the "Mother of Miami Beach" attained that fame after practically single handledly forcing the dazed and confused survivors of the hurricane on Miami Beach to get out there and start cleaning the sand off the streets and cleaning up the mess the hurricane made. Rose walked up to Lincoln Road and into the offices of Carl Fisher where people had gathered, numb, in shock at the horrendous damage to their beautiful paradise and bullied everyone into getting out there and cleaning it up insisting Miami Beach would be better than it had been before. And, Rosie who grew up as child on Miami Beach was prophetic on that one as I don't even think that Carl Fisher could imagine how amazing Miami Beach would be in 2020.

Rose Weiss believed in Miami Beach, she knew it when it looked like this below from 1925 and it's still going strong. Buildings getting bigger, higher and really I love it but too many people for a mere mangrove Island in the Bay.


That's up near the Deauville.
A narrow part of the beach.
A place where the ocean meets the bay often...
...in a real hurricane!




Anyone who has ever driven to Miami Beach...
...across the Julia Tuttle Causeway knows this building.

I worked in that building.
I practically lived in that building at times.
It's called the Giller Building.
My kid's pediatrician was in that building.
I once had an After Prom Party there.. really.
My son briefly had an office there but that's a movie.
Giller and Giller Architects had offices in their building.
A family that survived the 1926 Hurricane...
.... how I don't really know. 
Sounds impossible but true.
And then he helped design a city.
Miami Beach was a paradise once again.


The water covered Miami Beach.
The raging ocean covered Miami Beach.
People survived, Norman Giller survived!
Went on to become an Architect....
.... that designed the future Miami Beach.

Understand, the people who survived the hurricane survived it by climbing up above the first floor of apartment buildings and watching as the water met the bay and covered all of South Beach. To this day it amazes me anyone survived that especially when you consider there were waves and storm surge as the waters were not just high but calm, they were a raging ocean. I interviewed a friend of my Grandfather who as a young boy remembers climbing up to the 3rd floor of an apartment building on 3rd Street at the tip of South Beach and watching waves battering the building. He remembered his father leaving the building to walk over to the services for Yom Kippur and having to come back because "there was so much rain the streets were flooding" but it wasn't flooding from the rain but the incoming storm surge of a strong Category 4 hurricane that covered the whole of Miami Beach and yet somehow, miraculously I'd add, some people survived while others died. Many died during the eye when they tried to make their way back to the mainland and the back side of the hurricane swept them off the causeway to a watery grave. Sounds melodramatic but very true. The 1926 Miami Hurricane is called that because it was indeed the real Miami Hurricane as Andrew made landfall further to the South sparing Downtown Miami from a disaster one cannot even imagine.

But Hurricane Betsy covered Miami Beach with sand also as did Andrew and many other storms over time. Miami Beach is basically a barrier island that was just a spit of land covered by mangroves that Miami people rowed over to in their boats for a picnic on Sunday before rowing back before dark while admiring dolphins and manatees in the water that was once crystal clear all the way to the bottom. Oh what a time it was... 

Look at it now!
High up above Lincoln Road.
Where my father had offices.
Where my son the architect loves to hang out.



Me, standing on top of the world of Miami Beach.


You can take the girl out of Miami Beach...
...but you can't take Miami Beach out of the girl.
You know why?
I got the sand in my toes ;)

Have a wonderful day.
When I go long on the Miami Hurricane...
...know tropical waves are rolling off of Africa.
And I see hurricanes on the horizon.

So prepare, do what you need to do.
And we will follow them step by step.
Advisory by advisory.

Sweet Tropical Dreams,
BobbiStorm
@bobbistorm on Twitter and Instagram.

Know that Twitter is mostly weather.
Instagram is weather and anything I love.
Don't say I didn't warn you,














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1 Comments:

At 10:36 PM, Blogger Guardian Roofing said...

Thanks for the information

Guardian Roofing

 

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