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!
Sunday, November 29, 2020
Sunday Night. Listening to the Rain. NHC Orange 40% Near Portugal & North Africa........ Cold Front Crashing Thru the Carolinas & Virginia
You know the child's song "this little piggy"
This little piggy has 40% chances in orange.
Autumn Shades across the Atlantic.
I'm sorry apparently it's difficult.
To be serious.....
I love when they use the "regardless" word.
It's still hurricane season.
They are working hard for the money.
Seriously it's kind of interesting to look at...
like the little snowbird that forgot to fly South for winter.
Looks better than several short lived storms this year.
So that's the story of the NHC Orange Circle.
In the Southeast we have strong storms.
A front moving through.
Cold weather clashing with warm sultry weather.
Gee it looks like a G.
Okay seriously we may have severe weather tonight.
My stepson in Morocco has been having stormy weather.
Did you know they have surfing resorts in Morocco?
11 PM Updated! 2nd Area Near Portugal Mentioned Earlier in the Blog - Why is There 2 Yellow Circles in the ATLANTIC? What's Up With That? Watching Winter & Tropics on the Models.
As I said below earlier.
It's an active spot this year.
Have a Happy Thanksgiving!
I'll update sometime during Turkey Day!
From earlier on Wednesday below.
***
So what is this really about?
30% chances down the tropical road.
Or really the SUBTROPICAL ROAD
The front comes down and runs away with the spoon as the old nursery rhyme goes but it forgets to grab the little shrimp fork when it steals the silverware. So a sliver of moisture may remain left behind and then there is a chance between frontal progressions that a subtropical system forms for a bit before moving on. It's model driven and the models are also driving the possibility of snow in the Texas Panhandle and the Applachians getting the white frosting that winter delivers while people living in the Piedmont and along the coast watch longingly at snow falling out near Asheville and Tennessee on the other side of the mountains. The Euro delivers more than the GFS and basically we are just watching models so let's look at some models. Using www.windy.com below and remember when you use it you can change settings, layers and models.
Yes it looks as if the front grabs it all.
Oh ... look there's another front!
There's snow up in Canada.
And the Rocky Mtns.
If you look carefully........
...there's a closed low in the Atlantic.
It's model driven down the road.
Models show snow edging into the South.
It's one model run...
And that's what this is all about. Models.
And then we have a LOW by Portugal.
Because 2020.
A long slicing front...
Snow a week from now...
Flirting with the mountains of Georgia.
Winter on it's way.
So that's it.
Honestly this time of year there are things to check out in the Tropics but it seems the progression of Louisiana bound hurricanes are gone thankfully and yet weather doesn't end it just evolves into a different sort of beast or friend... depending on if you love snow and ice or you hate it and hit the road south to St. Pete to get some sun on your face and heat on your feet as you cross the hot Florida sand thinking "I'll fly back when the snow is gone" and I'm just the opposite because I love winter up here. I'm a Capricorn, a winter baby so maybe that's why or maybe I just like this unique form of precipitation that turns white and falls from the ground unlike anything I grew up with in Miami.
The Carolinas are a great place to be if you love hurricane season and wintertime.
Love what you do... love where you live. Give thanks for whatever you have this year and well I suppose you can thank the NHC for decorating their maps with yellow decorations.
It's a beautiful world really, even with all the things we complain about so give thanks you're here if only to complain ;) or be grateful!
There was a restaurant in Miami Beach for years on West Avenue next to the school where I taught and not far from a place where I lived and it was open seasonally. That means most of the year it was boarded up and then suddenly they'd start cleaning the exterior, the driveway and signs of life appeared. Locals with money loved it, movie stars came and went and supposedly the mob loved it and well rumor had it that's where they ate when they wanted good food and to feel safe. Who know? Not me because I was kosher and just walked by peering in a bit and wondering. The chef though was my neighbor and my friend who lived downstairs had him cook for us often (in her kitchen after buying him whatever ingredients he asked for that we could get at Epicure Market) and gotta tell you those people at Gatti's ate really well.
The moral of this story and trip down memory lane is that you gotta have the ingredients to make a hurricane and generally the Tropical Atlantic has a season when it is open. Stray storms can form the way hotels in Miami opened up for a specific holiday even though the majority of the snow bird tourists had not flown South. I asked my father when I was young whey they call them "snow birds" and he said because "they leave as soon as it snows and fly South" but added "usually they wait til after Thanksgiving with the family and then hit the road to Florida. That explains why I never had Thanksgiving with his side of the family that came down from the Bronx and when I think of Thanksgiving I think of my Uncle who was an old Jewish Southerner Cracker who loved Thanksgiving; my earliest memories of Thanksgiving are him talking to me as we set the table with little wax Pilgrim figures my Aunt kept and well that's the story of...that's the glory of the memories of people we love and their impact on our life. They might have been candles that were never lit in retrospect but I digress.
So..... not saying it's over because things "pop up" this year but this area off the coast that looks like it's getting dressed to go out and party is going to be carried away from the cold front so maybe the area near Portugal for Subtropical? My gosh that area has been almost as hot as Louisiana.
Wishing y'all a beautiful Thanksgiving week! It's not the Thanksgiving movie scenes are made of but make the most of what you got and share and tell people you care and give thanks for what you got if only the reality that we are here to celebrate Thanksgiving in whatever way we do. And, look at it this way ... with few family members there you can do it however YOU like!
Besos BobbiStorm
@bobbistorm on Twitter and Instagram
Ps... a good article on November Hurricanes from a newspaper that was always weather friendly way back when in the old days of the Internet.
November 19th, 2020 - Tropics Casually Quiet. Will That Last? Truckstop Memories.
This is late November on Spaghetti Models. There's a picture of Fall (Mike so loves the seasons) and a front is draped across the Atlantic and as in the beginning there is a yellow circle off of the coast of Florida but it's not going there in November. Oh and an area in the Caribbean that is already washing ashore as I type this but it did look quite put together last night on satellite imagery below. My phone is dreaming of snow and Seattle lately as it changes words often to what it thinks I mean. The wonder of a smart phone is awesome but it's frustrating beyond words as it's always trying to correct the color in the sky and fix your words to what it thinks you are really thinking on. Life in the fast lane.
Look at that delineation ... crazy.
Dry air to the North. Moist to the South.
Yellow circle, too little ...too late.
Waiting on his video to be finished...
...he's a good writer also aside from everything else.
Doesn't this picture look wintry to you?
Or is it just what I want to see.
The front almost looks like snow...
....definitely chilling off those tropical waters.
2020 sure has been life in the fast lane and this week I've felt badly that it's been hard to actually blog, write or think and I've been lazy in good ways. Sometimes you need to be "lazy" or more so work on other things that seem not to be priorities but are and then at some point you gotta snap out of it and get back to work. So when I went on Facebook briefly and read @iCyclone's post I smiled and thought well it's he's slacking off for a few days I definitely can. I lived in California quite a while in the 80s and I loved it but I did missed "the South" which is something you don't understand unless you have actually lived here versus passing through or watching some movie playfully making fun of it. When we'd drive back to Florida on I-10 or I-20 and I'd get out of the car to run into the gas station the "air" the "summer night air" would wash over me welcoming me home. I fell in love with some sky scene in Jackson Mississippi one night when I looked up at the stars, felt the feel of the South embrace me and looked up into the sky and saw a meteor flash across the sky or as we like to call them a shooting star and I smiled and exhaled and I knew I was home. And, yet California was home too and I loved it but it wasn't "HOME" in the same way. Another pit stop in New Iberia made me totally fall in love with that part of Louisiana, as much as I love New Orleans for other reasons.
What do you love? Where do you love to be? What do you love to do?
We all seem to have Pandemic Fatigue this time of year and I've noticed everyone's response is to decorate for the holidays and long for a new year. "Feel the love of the season" as the song goes and may we have hope and joy again even if it's on a smaller scale that doesn't feel right but make a Wish List for what you want to do when this is all over. Also make a list of what you can do now. But, while here ... enjoy it, somehow and yes I'm gonna put up my Chanukah LED lights I bought last year in a Target in Florida with my kids last year this time. And, I then I found some in a Target in North Carolina and bought more so that's what I'm going do. Apparently I'm not going to Miami for Thanksgiving and that's upsetting because there is a small family birthday party for my 3 year old grandson that I'll watch on Zoom and I'm gonna cook Thanksgiving dishes for the next week and maybe eat something else on Thanksgiving because I may be tired of pumpkin pie by then. Who knows?
Embrace "who knows" and "enjoy the little things" and in truth we don't know 2021 will be any better but we sure hope so. As for the Hurricane Season it's slowly slipping away and yet still we are watching yellow circles that could come near Bermuda. It's there. We watch and I'll update the blog if anything happens. But at this point that anything that really has my heart racing is the hope, the dream of snow falling. Okay I do love the Seasons too. And, I love meteorology and geology and yeah I'm an Earth Science girl with a lot of geography thrown in there too!
Leaving you with this beautiful picture that I found on Twitter. It really does look like that. Often I'm traveling in November and on a ride back from New York we pulled into a truck stop on the Virginia North Carolina border (because we're friends ya know and we share a border) and a field looked as if it was covered in snow at sunset. Somewhere I have a picture of it lost in some old phone that would need to be charged to find because it was a long time ago but it's still in my mind's eye perfectly; the setting sun illuminated the cotton and I knew it was cotton but it looked like snow but it was only in the 50s and there was no way it was snow but the eye sees what the heart wants.
So dream of a New Year.
Dream of a better year.
But enjoy whatever you can however you can.
As for the holidays this year...
...they will be a bit different.
I'll be fine and dandy...
Besos BobbiStorm
@bobbistorm on Twitter and Instagram.
Ps... enjoy this song from the 80s and life in California...
I listened to a lot of Dolly Parton then..
..watched a lot of movies at theaters on Hollywood Blvd.
Iota Moves On.... 2 Yellow Areas with 20% Chances in the Atlantic. 2020 Geography Question of the Day: Where is the Island of Providencia?
Iota is moving on into the Pacific as two areas are being monitored in the Atlantic by the NHC. Both areas have a 20% chance of forming and well that is so 2020 right? Right. Hurricane Season ends on November 30th for a reason but on occasion tropical systems form in December so this is within the realm of normal but kind of normal on steroids. Starting with the one closest to Iota and land I'd say it's worth understanding nothing huge is expected to form here, however any kind of tropical event on top of 2 serious hurricane hits where people are homeless and search and rescues are probably going on adds a layer of misery to the pain inflicted by Eta and Iota. Also, it's worth nothing that while we all obsessed on the coast of Central America most of us forgot to talk on how Iota that was impacting a part of Columbia. Yes I said Columbia as the island of Providencia is part of Columbia, but more on that later.
It's worth noting currently the EPAC part of the NHC doesn't have a yellow circle for further development from Iota in the Pacific, though this whole season has been a moving target so it's possible they will put one up later today. Time will tell but for now
As for the area in the Atlantic, we will see what will happen with that but with cold fronts coming one after another it's pretty sure the East Coast isn't expecting anything more than more cold weather interspersed with bouts of warm ups and then more frosty weather on the way as we slide into December.
Always watch the end of dangling fronts.
Remember that.
See the front draped across the Tropical Atlantic?
Cold weather clouds to the North.
Iota is a faint cloud swirl entering the Pacific.
Even Miami got some today and it's more temperate.
"Winter" for Miami is on the way.
In the world of weather history here's an interesting fact.
That's it for today or at least for now.
My daughter in Airmont NY has ice in her driveway.
UPDATED 160 MPH - Cat 5 Hurricane Iota - Moving Slowly Towards a Deadly Landfall - But History Teaches Us As a Tropical Storm It's Still Deadly from Flash Flooding
Excellent Tweet from NWS Miami.
Says it all.
Look at that solid ring inside the eye.
That's a hurricane.
Powerful one... moving slow towards landfall.
''
160 MPH
West at 9 MPH
Precision is best seen in black and white.
Actually pretty looking Cat 5.
Usually they are not as "pretty"
Banding in circular perfection.
Pinhole eye.
Color is dramatic.
Distracting because you state at the red.
The eye really pops here, doesn't it?
Almost looks like it's going in backwards.
As if it doesn't want to...
...wants to spin over water longer.
New track comes in even lower.
Might miss the little town I wrote about below.
Then again once inland there's more cities.
NHC now forecasts 165 MPH.
Please continue reading it's just from 3 hours ago.
No way to sugar coat this landfall.
Pray and stay tuned for any slight changes in forecast.
* * * *
Cone below. Cat 5 currently.
155 MPH
Actually Iota is now a Category 5 Hurricane.
One of many this year.
And should trek across Central America...
..and land in the Pacific as a Hurricane still.
A picture from a little earlier on Twitter.
Picture Perfect.
Very deadly.
A bit of hurricane history above.
Much more hurricane history below.
That close up and personal cone threads Bilwi.
It's a very small coastal town in Nicaragua.
Images you can find on Google tell the story.
Sort of similar to those little coastal towns in Louisiana.
Low lying, marsh land. Fishing villiages.
Hurricane history is why the bigger cities are inland.
But Iota will visit them too!
Remember one thing this morning from this blog and that is that while the deadly, destructive winds will destroy anything in it's immediate path they are a small ring of hell swirling in motion, grinding everything down but a hurricane is a huge mess of convection and rain far from the center will also move inland and create flash floods and deadly scenarios. Category 5 Hurricanes don't last long over land and the slow movement inland will produce torrential rain way ahead of the arrival of the infamous "eye" so it's a whole huge package of destruction delivered in this case slowly, as in a slow motion disaster and remember when you hear it's no longer a Cat 5 or Cat 4 or Cat 3 and "just a Cat 1 hurricane" or a "tropical storm" know it will continue to deliver a deadly punch based on the torrential rain not the headline catching winds.
We know this because we know what the satellite images show us as relates to projected convection and more so we learn from past hurricane history and this region does have a hurricane past to learn from and hopefully people will find some way to stay safe in this horrific, unfolding slow motion tragedy.
The coastline of Central America is littered with the tracks of hurricanes that once made landfall there. Each similar in some way as a strong high pressure would not allow them move move to the North and kept them further South on a track West towards land and often slowly towards land.
While Mitch was not the first strong hurricane to move slowly inward there it wasn't the last and way before Mitch huge late season hurricanes slammed into small villages and created a pattern of tragedy that seems to come with every storm. I knew a woman in Miami Beach who I worked with who was from Belize and her earliest memory was the destruction of her city when she was a small child, yet she added "we don't get hit much" but added "when we do they are terrible" and we shared stories on our childhood hurricane memories.
http://consejo.bz/weather/storms.html I believe the hurricane my friend went through was Hattie but I'm not sure. It's a beautiful area and it does have a rich hurricane history and it is a beautiful place to visit but not during the hurricane season unless of course you are a storm chaser.
So lets look back at Hurricane Mitch from Wikipedia "Initially, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) and various tropical cyclone forecast models anticipated a turn to the north, threatening the Yucatán peninsula. Instead, Mitch turned to the south, due to a ridge that was not observed while the storm was active.[4] Land interaction imparted weakening,[8] and the hurricane made landfall on Honduras on October 29 with winds of 80 mph (130 km/h).[4]"
Mitch, despite once being one of our strongest hurricanes in that region, was a mirror of it's strong self when it did make landfall and moved slowly inland as a Tropical Storm and it was as a Tropical Storm that it caused so much death and destruction; even as a tropical depression it caused death and destruction. That said, the immense amount of moisture wrapped up in the storm that had been a major rained itself out slowly on an hilly area with small villages and the terrain could not constrain the convection that poured down hillsides and ravines taking homes, people, their animals carrying them away and claiming a horrific death toll of somewhere around 11,000 people. It's hard in such places to get an accurate number and even a guess shows how tragic Mitch was as a Tropical Storm.
Recently Eta did the same sort of track, dipping WSW and then bouncing back the way Mitch did but Iota is not forecast to do that odd dance. 178 people officially died from Eta that moved inland over a not so populated area and weakened fast, yet many remain missing and are presumed dead. Also from Wikipedia: "Eta peaked at 150 mph (240 km/h) and 923 mbar (hPa; 27.26 inHg) as it slowed tremendously off the coast of Nicaragua early on November 3. An eyewall replacement cycle then caused the storm to weaken, but it remained at Category 4 strength as it made landfall south of Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua, late that same day. Eta rapidly weakened to tropical storm status early on November 4. On November 5, Eta further weakened to a tropical depression as it moved northwestward into Honduras, before turning northeastward back into the Caribbean, on the next day."
With prayers for all those in it's path. And let's hope this is the last of this year's hurricanes for this region that has had enough of hurricanes in 2020.
Location: Miami, Raleigh, Crown Heights, Florida, United States
Weather Historian. Studied meteorology and geography at FIU. Been quoted in Wall Street Journal, Washington Post & everywhere else... Lecturer, stormchaser, writer, dancer. If it's tropical it's topical ... covering the weather & musing on life. Follow me on Twitter @ https://twitter.com/#!/BobbiStorm
