WILFRED FORMS FROM 98L Leaving TD 22 Set to be The 1st Greek Named Tropical Storm of 2020 in the GOM.. Another Messy Set Up Close In. Teddy in the Atlantic Going North Towards Canada and Maybe Maine But Keep Watching Things Often Change. Invest 90L Red Again in the East Atlantic. What Lessons Did We Learn From Sally?
At the top is info on TD 22 set to be Wilfred and Invest 98L now back red again and TEDDY.
At the bottom by the PS are my thoughts on what we need to take away and learn from Hurricane Sally the way we should have learned it from Florence or Floyd, things chagne and they can change fast and neither models nor cones are set in stone days out because bottom line is hurricanes can be fickle especially this time of year when we move towards fronts being the important thing to watch vs the Bermuda High earlier in the year and again soon we will need to watch the Caribbean.
They had 29 Inches of rain in Orange Shores, Alabama more than they expected. People there didn't expect that much rain and weather and people left boats docked where they are usually are okay in a weak Category 1 hurricane as it was hours before it ramped up to a strong Cat 2 that slammed their region vs Louisiana and Mississippi as the media advertised for days before the turn to the right, to the right and the ships and various marine products associated with beautiful docks filled with beautiful sailboats slammed into homes and businesses after riding a wild surf, bobbing about in a hurricane wind on a rolling tide and as Sally made landfall at high tide it was even worse and when the water began to settle down the ships were dropped onto lawns, pools and dockside businesses. That's what a hurricane of any intensity moving at 2 MPH forward speed will do as people in North Carolina know only too well.
Yes, the NHC did move the Cone and yes late at night they upped the intensity way beyond forecast intensity and at 1 AM they did it again but people actually preparing for the storm and getting ready to evacuate a day before or hunker down did not prepare in a way that normally they might have had it been a Category 3 out in the Gulf of Mexico churning away vs a tropical storm struggling to find it's groove, becoming a hruricane and it's hard to discern center finally popped out as an eye in the same way this system popped up seemingly out of nowhere close in as a home grown invest that slammed Miami with a long day of rain and flooded the Florida Keys as a minimal Tropical Storm without early model support. Sally was a problem from day one and when I saw that water vapor loop and the flow on the MIMIC I knew we would have a messy problem before the first yellow circle.
The problem of perception is a huge problem for people trying to convey the dangers of a weak tropical storm or hurricane that can and often does intensify as it comes on shore towards landfall moving slowly over warm water in the cradle of the Gulf of Mexico where storms often slide around a bit as seen currently in the long term forecast charts for TD22 soon to be Wilfred forecast to trace the Texas coastline and possible aim for Louisiana or Mississippi dependong on long term steering currents. Time will tell what Wilfred will do but we know what Laura and Sally did and in 2020 when the infrastrucure is so huge even in small cities the power outages are large and it takes a long time to put it all back together again. Miami learned that after a weak Katrina hit us and took out power out for close to two weeks, then Wilma did it again... most of October we had no power in parts of Miami but not from a Major Hurricane.
Yes, the director of the NHC says, as many do, always prepare for a category stronger than what is forecast but that's easier said than done. Some over prepare and others seem unaware a close in storm can shift two states to the East and ramp up 20 MPH in 2 hours in the middle of the night when they were trying to get some sleep before it made landfall at sunrise as was the general preception was by many who were now in the path of landfalling category 2 hurricane close to category 3 moving slower than a fast turtle could walk.
We need to do better at forecasting intensity and the media needs to stop hyping every early cone as if it's set in stone and highlighting sexy, well known cities such as New Orleans and Miami because cones change and Homestead can get Hurricane Andrew directly and Gulf Shores can get Sally after the media hyped New Orleans and the second coming of Katrina and talking incessantly on possible levee failures and playing up the Covid angle when they should have make the public aware that a storm still trying to develop and pull together close in moving slowly in weak steering currents can go anywhere near or in the Cone and things change fast and as much as we think we know so much about Hurricanes Forecasting there is so much more we need to learn and we learn more with each storm or problematic forecast for a storm that refused to follow the forecast the way Sally and Hurricane Georges did years earlier.
Hurricanes happen and they don't always follow the forecast and even in a time of instant communication there is often so much misinformation. And, models are not better than humans they help humans make a forecast and they change as fast as the storm does when it pulls to the right instead of the left and then the models try to catch up as do the forecasters. Stop talking on geting a 7 Day Cone Package out and let's try to get the 3 Day Cone down a bit better and find a way of explaijning how one storm will leave a legacy of flooding you can't imagine and another like Andrew is so dry and moving fast it hits land like a buzzsaw or a Tropical Twister.
I'll update the blog this afternoon with new model data, thoughts and any changes in the Cone or status of any Invests trying once again to get the attention of the NHC for a name. Note a man died in Hurricane Sally and there is trouble in Virgina Beach as I type this as the remnants are still producing heavy weather and flooding issues. A lot we don't know still even though we know much more than we did in 1900. And yes I purposely used the term "so much" because there is "so much" we need to learn to get better and warning people to prepare for the fickle nature of hurricanes.
posted by BobbiStorm @ 7:12 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home