Tuesday in the Tropics. One Small Yellow X with Little Chances. Still Watching SW Carib. Still Waiting on Fall to Really Show Up in Raleigh

 

1 lonely Yellow X with barely a chance even.

That's where we are today in the tropics.

Enjoy it.

It won't last forever.

It occured to me last night that I had not blogged yesterday. I had decided to blog late in the day and yet there was little news to blog on and though I can wax poetic on hurricane history that's not the reason most of you are here but that said we were dealing with Hurricane Matthew on this date in history in 2016! Seems like just a few years ago to me, wild impacts here with many trees down everywhere.

I can keep singing the "watch the Caribbean" song but if you are a regular reader you know that eventually, late in October the area produces something eventually. Where there is deep convection and warm water at some point things come together to make a deal maker. And, that's what those systems usually are in that they race out of the deep Caribbean bringing tropical moisture and energy and slam it up into the upper lattitudes and the flip to winter and true Autumn is flipped and something changes.  Sam on some level will enhance the next few fronts a bit because as Dave Schwartz often said when something goes up it must come down. And, that is the turn around that tropical weather adds to the march of the seasons and a cold autumn turns slowly into Winter in most parts of the country. 

Yes, there are frontal boundaries there, but trust me on this they were very weak and not so much deep along the East Coast. Colder, drier air is obviously dipping down deep into the Gulf of Mexico but these are not really fronts and Sam had a long tail that kind of hangs there and is fading away. If something did form now in the SW Caribbean you can see where it would go as it tried to get out of the Caribbean; there is nothing there currently not even a lonely yellow circle with 10% chances of forming.  Possibly we will get one down the tropical road in the near future but models have been inconsistent with development and the NHC prefers having more than one restless model screaming "something is going to form" and then the question is are we looking at a tropical event or a non tropical coastal low moving off the SE coast and moving into the Mid Atlantic yet again?

And, yes some model runs show something forming... moving up the Mid Atlantic from VA to DC to Baltimore and up into the NY area, but that could just as easily be a coastal low on a weak front mixed with some tropical moisture yet no real tropical development. Wisdom is the ability to discern what the models are hinting at on varoius runs and align that with synoptic influences currently and a bit of CLIMO mixed into the equation. The NHC put up the Yellow X, as if saying "yes we see it and there will be weather and we will watch to see if anything tropical forms" and nothing more. 

So again it comes down to these two images above taken from www.spaghettimodels.com that show the potential in both the deep SW Caribbean and just off the Florida coast near the Bahamas.  And, the purple splotch on this map I show so often usually crops up before a yellow circle forms on the NHC main page.

It's been a warm, but not hot, October in North Carolina. A bit of leaf color beginning, though I have to always every fricking year remind myself that the cicadas are worse here in September than August and Fall does not really begin until November and our peak is late November. Everyone gets all excited in October and we sip our Pumpkin Spice Lattes though this year it's definitely a Frappe! Too hot to turn off the AC, too many grass pollens to open up the windows and not cold enough for the heater to be dusted off. And, generally in Raleigh we have a fast Fall in that suddenly the cold air blows, the leaves fall off as fast as they change colors and suddenly it's winter. 

I get a bit tropically depressed this time of year or just frustrated, especially this year with the ongoing, seemingly never ending pandemic and though I don't obsess on it ... it's there impacting life in ways that limit our choices and freedoms no matter what we believe or don't believe or how vaxed we are in that even making a cheap ticket to fly to Florida (and fares are cheap again) you risk getting stuck on a plane for hours or you get there and they delayed the flight for hours. I've got friends with horror stories of being stuck on JetBlue for 8 hours on a plane wearing a mask before the plane actually took off and others were told to go home and come back tomorrow. Football is on, the Panthers lost :(  Red Sox are playing Yankees are playing tonight! I've got pumpkins on my table in an arrangement and a hurricane tracking map getting dust on the wall.  

I want winter. I want it to cool off. I want to open the windows without the dreaded pollen. I want a chance of snow and when I say a "chance" I mean a strong possibility. I'm glad no hurricanes are not about to make landfall and yes Sam was interesting but so far away and such a slow mover. 

Next 7 day rain forecast!

With or without a tropical system rain is on the way to most places in the South. So tropical or otherwise we will get some rain, our temperatures will lower and leaf by leaf the leaves will change colors and fall off the tree. And, I'm grateful for all I have and for all of you my close weather friends who make me smile, laugh and giggle even when I thought I was in a dark mood and nothing could make me smile.

I'll blog tomorrow. I'll update the blog if a yellow circle appears in the strangest of places.

Thanks, 

Besos BobbiStormn

@bobbistorm on Twitter and Instagram

Ps... sorry for being missing in action on some levels this past month but trying to get back into a good routine and back to the basics of life!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBPdNYfnCek