Updated 6 PM HURRICANE LEE Moving WNW... Strengthening. What Will Be in a Week? 10 Days? 12 Days? NHC On It. For Now Concerned on the Islands Still... Stay Tuned. History of 1954 Horrible Hot Summer & 3 Hurricanes Danced Up the Coast .. Hazel Ending It in October With a Strong Lasting Cold Front.

Closed symbol = Hurricane

75 MPH

Note how far it is from PR

.How far it is from OBX

Long Island and NE not in pic.

Talking on models and steering currents, there really isn't anything conclusive to say that has changed. Some of the ensemble models have nudged closer to the East Coast and that's not surprising as with time Lee is closer to them in their modeling and the interplay between the high pressure ridge and a cold front is complicated and timing matters. Should Lee slow down, and often they do in that zone near the Bermuda Triangle, then it could miss the front. It is beyond the forecast period. I just chose Bermuda Triangle as a geographic reference not saying it does any hocus pocus tricks on Hurrianes, being clear there.

Models from Tropical Tidbits.

Short term as if they trace eachother.

Longer term they begin to break apart some.

There is discussion that Lee could look as if it's briefly moving NW ...or not, we are told to remember there could be a few baubles in track but it is going WNW. Honsetly, until we get planes going into Lee and we receive good data that is put into models that were only be that much better... we won't know much about truths regarding the most likely track in the 10 to 12 day range. Yes, there are models, the always ready to dance on the table at a disco at Midnight GFS is either doing the Can Can or sleeping like an old lazy hound dog. The EURO tends to be more reliable, the ICON is good... other models great, the NHC watches them all as we do. It's just so, so far away and we are over a week away from knowing what features that are now out in the NW Pacific that have not moved into place yet.

 

Better way to use Earthnull.

Turn it around. 

There's a Low near Alaska.

Note there's a big Hurricane in the EPAC

on the edge on this loop.

Time will tell.

We will learn much from Recon.

Lastly, tho Lee is very beautiful and organized it is still developing, it's a huge storm and has a bigger pocket and energy can move around a bit within that center. Until Recon pins the head on the center we wait and see what they really see. Currently using various tools to decipher exact center, wind speed and all that was talked about in the discussion from the 5 PM Advisory. Recon goes in tomorrow!

If you live in the Islands, keep your eye on it in case it takes the bottom edge of the Cone and you see more than just surf. Looking good but not out of the woods either. If you live in Miami ....yes i know it's there you can't believe how many people told me they saw there's a new storm from the Miami area. They are watching it, it's common for Miami to play chicken with a hurricane sliding by offshore at 77N and while it happens often, at some point Miami's luck runs out. In the Carolinas, we are watching it as it's too simillar to a few hurricanes such as Isabel that severely damaged parts of North Carolina with a similar looking track. Models infer it'll be close or slide by offshore going North. Up in NY, Long Island, NE and Maine you may see way more of Lee than you originally thought. Maybe it's possible but not within the realm of possible yet. In Canada.... you'll probably see it up close and personal. Time will tell.

Have a great evening.....anything big happens I'll jump on and I'll be on Twitter all night, off and on so hit me up there if you have a question.

Watch. Wait. Breathe. 

Keep reading if you haven't done so it's an important history lessons on Atlantic Coast hurricanes, especially in 1954 when the all time record for today was 104 degrees in a beastly hot summer and a hurricane season filled with 3 landfalls. Crazy hot, I was out today a bit and oh my gosh hot. Read up on a bit of Hurricane History complete with an old time New Reel! Storms hit NC and NE... and some hit everything in between in 1954 and again in 1955 though I only talked on a few in 1954 as the heat makes me think it's a similar pattern set up in ways.

NRL map.

Red circles in the Cone.

Shaded grid area... watch very carefully...

...for any changes in track or impact

5 PM Wednesday.

Comparing them... 

...they look like the Cone is on auto pilot.

It's not... forecast set in the short term.

Wide at the end of the Cone...

...less confidence in exactitude.

5 AM Wednesday

Cone remains the same.

End wide, short term narrow.

That's by design.

Larger difference in possible solutions...

Down the road at that time.

Models should make people in Miami feel better.

A bit better....

Not totally better for Outer Banks.

NE (and NY/Long Island) really watching

Goes without saying ...Bermuda.

The reality of the situation is there is short term agreement, you can see how tightly clustered those models. As it approaches the Islands some models take it periously close to the Islands, so we have to wait to see how this evolves later as there is no "all clear" for the Islands at this time. ALSO, remember size matters and the very size of Lee means that even far from the center (and these lines are for the center of the hurricane) there are impacts far from the eye and in this case should it take the bottom of the Cone those islands would get one big blow and I don't mean just high waves. The way this cone works is at the end of the Cone, it's possible (as of today's forecast) that the hurricane can be inside the Cone at the bottom of the Cone and still this forecast would verify.

So visually in your mind.....

...drag the whole storm down to the South.

And see how that would be a big problem.

Especially with a strong big Major Cane!

ALL THESE ISLANDS...

...have WIND probabilities.

Until we get a cone that clears the Islands by a good measure, this is far from over for those Islands. So while everyone online argues over whether this could hit Miami or Charleston or the Outer Banks or DC/NY/NE let's breathe a bit and wait to see what happens with Lee. For now this is STILL an issue of whether it avoids the Islands and the Bahamas. By the way the Bahamas are not just a tourist attraction, real people live there all year round and the Turks are very close to where Lee may be down the road.

Things to watch:

Forward Speed. Every time it slows there is the possibility of missing the doorway North.

Size matters.

Size alone can bring hurricane impacts far from the eye ...depending on the size of the eye.

A larger hurricane can cause more damage sliding by a small island.

THE FRONT

How the front moves, slows or dives is everything with regard to "catching" "grabbing" Lee.

THE HIGH

Is the High anchored or does it retrograde (move West) and block an escape route that Lee was forecast to take? Does the High move a bit more to the East and allow Lee to wave goodbye?

Bermuda is always in the path of a hurricane moving North.

There are other things like Upper Level Lows, but we aren't going there today.

There are many other things, but these are the things to pay most attention to for now.

Today my concern is the Islands and growing up in Miami I have many friends from the Islands whose families live there still and they are worried not about a direct hit in Miami but a hit in the Islands and I don't just mean PR and the Virgin Islands. 

So priority today ....The ISLANDS.

What does bug me is Lee slowed a little bit from last night, down from 16 MPH (looked faster) to 14 MPH and this brings us to the last thing to watch.

THE TREND.... slower, faster?  Climbing in latitude or going more like just N due West. Last night it was apparent that while you could say it was going WNW it was leaning a bit on the lower end of that degree wise and the NHC shows the degrees it's moving not just saying WNW and that's very transparent.

So bottom line. 

Watch, wait. 

NHC doing a good job of dealing with this and remember their job is the Cone and the next 5 to 7 days it is not their job to talk on unrealistic, always changing long range models. But trust me they are watching those models as well as many other things that most are not online. 

Breathe.

Breathe.

Below is a bit of history.

Could history be repeating?

Sometimes a front pulls a Cane to landfall.

Vs grabbing it and sweeping it out to sea.

Just putting this out here, while the map shows it most people don't realize Miami and the Florida Keys are much further West than the Outer Banks that get clipped more often than S FL. A good 5 degrees West, harder to hit direction. Then again Miami feels hurricanes that are stronger, further South and NC gets hurricanes. Either way they do horrific damage when Makor and even annoying, upsetting damage when weaker. Anyone who owns property, really doesn't want a hurricane to come anywhere near them. Renters have to rely on how good the owners of their property is to take care of it regularly, take the storm seriously and how able they are to do repairs. No one wants a Cat 5 as it's not about repairs but about rebuilding from scratch.

Andrew.

That's wind damage NOT storm surge.

Inland.

Fran at the ocean, anniversary yesterday.

You can hide from the wind.......

.....but you run from the water.

Why am I talking about history with a developing Major Hurricane? Because the short term is fairly set in stone, yes it may go a bit more W than WNW but not quite N of due West or it could pull up a bit more N of WNW but there is tight, total agreement. So taking time now to discuss something I won't have time for in say five days. 

This is from Martk Sudduth.

He knows hurricane history.

He lives in North Carolina.

He's watching the pattern carefully.

The pattern evolves in real time.

He knows what I know.
I know what he knows.

It's been beastly hot this week in North Carolina and up the road in DC. Feels like it may never cool off and yet it will, it always does but the year 1954 keeps coming up as the record temperature that many local towns have to break. It was a hot yeat with multiple hurricanes along the East Coast, yet the really HOT heat didn't break until after Hurricane Hazel hit North Carolina moving fast inland and after that the pattern did cool off a bit. Hazel caught a cold front, moved faster inland than the locals were told. And every single, older local I interviewed told me the same thing. I interviewed many as I knew there were less and less old timers over time who remembered the details as time went by. 

Below is a segment of the article linked to below also. It's a good read, you might want to read it. This is what happens when a hurricane races towards a cold front and it happens OFTEN from NC to  the  New England and Long Island.  Long link... putting it here first. The track is drawn by the orientation of the front itself whether it moves close enough to Virginia and Maryland or just clips the places that ut out such as Long Island and Cape Cod.

https://www.starnewsonline.com/story/news/2007/10/15/hazel-october-15-1954-remembering-the-hurricane-that-changed-the-face-of-southeastern-north-carolina/30325852007/#:~:text=It%20destroyed%2015%2C000%20homes%20and,how%20bad%20it%20might%20be.

"Connie Ledgett and Jerry Helms, newlyweds in October 1954, had heard a report that Hazel was near the Bahamas on Oct. 14, but they didn't think it would hit North Carolina. They were away from their cottage on Long Beach, now Oak Island, when emergency officials knocked on the door with evacuation warnings.

Virginia Williamson remembers walking out onto Ocean Isle Beach with her husband, Odell, and his brother-in-law, Sherman Register, the day before the storm. Mr. Register lived on the beach.

"Sherman was laughing and saying they make a lot out of nothing," Mrs. Williamson said. He stayed on the island and was killed with most of his family the next day. His daughter, Sonja, was the only family member to survive. She washed up on the mainland unconscious.

ANortheast storm warnings" were posted from Charleston, S.C., to Virginia on Oct. 14. Throughout most of the day, forecasters thought the storm was headed for the Outer Banks.

According to a post-storm report from the Wilmington office of the U.S. Weather Bureau, ominous clouds appeared the morning of Oct. 14. The barometer fell steadily during the day, and rain squalls began around 5 p.m. By 10:30 p.m., a heavy storm swell was breaking on Wrightsville Beach."

Patterns of hot weather are often broken but a fast moving cold front that flips the switch to Winter and while that happens in October more often, we just had what was called by many an "October like hurricane" when Idalia moved up the West Coast of Florida catching a front and slamming into Valdosta Georgia faster than expected. In fact that very night it was churning up the surf in North Carolina moving quickly with the front.

Hot patterns often invite a hurricane down the line over time .... there's many dynamics why that happens but that's a discussion for another day. What I want you all to remember is that what worries me is the constant heat and mentions of 1954's horrible summer that ended with Hazel, but only after others rode that same path up along the coast. Patterns concern me.

Here's an old fashioned film on video, about 12 minute about those three storms. 

it was a different place and time.

Now days we have graphics.

Anyway while it's 2023 not 1954

We should learn this can happen....

...will happen again.

Oh...note it's about NC and New England.

Think about this....

...anything can happen 12 days out.

Oh and it's possible Lee may stall..

...in the Bahamas where they love to stall.

Stay tuned.

I'll update later today.

Besos BobbiStorm

@bobbistorm on Twitter and Instagram

This song has many meanings.

Choose your own.

But it's stuck in my brain...

...so enjoy it.