Hurricane Harbor: February. Will Winter Weather Do the East Coast? East of the Mississippi River and the MTNS? Maybe IF Models are Real. Hurricane Season is 116 Days Away.... Not Yet. Life in February Still

If you want weather and you live on the East Coast.

You're in the wrong place.

California would love to give it to us I'm sure.

East of the Mississippi it's been slim pickens!

This image at the top reminds me of the Country song "all the gold in California, is in a bank in the middle of Beverly Hills in some body's elses name" or something like that. We aren't getting any, and yet two blocking ridges to the North may set up soon and the Carolinas and parts of the South and Mid Atlantic and deliver some Winter Weather if the models are to be believed. Supposedly, according to weather experts I trust from a proven record, the doors will open up soon and allow colder air and storms East of the Mississippi and the Mtns and well time will tell. I can't even get a weather app to show me a snowflake in the 10 day currently.

It's not Hurricane Season and I have a general rule that I don't go there until at least March and I'm sticking too it. I'm not going to put up "how to survive a hurricane" guide in February as this is my off time, my time when I rant on things like my lack of snow and the sunshine on the naked branches and wonder on volcanoes in Iceland or Hawaii and watch the flow of news and Lord knows there's a whole lotta of news going on always. And, there's a ton of sites online all year that show that info if you want it. Sometimes when bored this time of year I watch an old movie like Star Wars, Grease or Sweet Home Alabama.... can watch Sweet Home Alabama eternally as not only is it a cute love story but it has a weather component to the story!!

Yes, NHC is going to change the maps a bit to try something new (YAY) and we will discuss that soon in detail. Some people are debating upgrading hurricane categories to Category Six and we will discuss that here as well. How do you feel? What do you think? I'll ask on Twitter or just watch the flow of people fighting it out there. My answer would be what would the parameters be? A long time ago in a place far away after Luke and Prince Leia and Han Solo there were rules and the rule was a "wind speed" had to be "2 minutes sustatined" otherwise it was a just a strong wild gust. This came up often during monster hurricanes such as Andrew where a windspeed of 164 MPH ripped the radar off the roof of the NHC and the building itself felt like it was shaking. It was also a tall building in an area not surrounded by other tall buildings and took the brunt of the wind so strong that they lost the radar at the NHC.

At the time it was said to be a gust.

Hurricane Wind Speed had to be sustained 2 minutes.

Those were the rules then....

...what are the rules now?

I want a rule book!!

https://www.noaa.gov/stories/hurricane-andrew-what-it-was-like-to-work-in-category-5-storm Link to article above and below showing how intense Andrew was far from Homestead.

So yes, we will discuss this endlessly down the road.

Down the tropical road.

It's not June it's not May it's not even April.

I'd prefer waiting til after Peter Rabbit hops on a bit.

Today...offshore storms and a cold GOM

Hello February!! I've been a miss.... missing in action. Fighting off a cold and or a sinus infection. Not Covid, not the flu but the ole blues that come with feeling not yourself unless you take medications carefully on time. Oh, and the meds make me spacey or silly, and when I'm that silly............I've learned from experience.........probably best I stay offline :) Smiling, true and so here I am and yet the weather is not here in any dangerous or wicked way in my world. Weather in California has been wild and wicked and as dangerous as it gets in an El Nino year that wants to show off before Mother Nature shows El Nino to the door! Keep that in mind, and remember how often our worst hurricanes come at the end of the season. All those M storms like Mitch and Matthew and Michael and never forget Sandy!

Often whatever signal pushes late Winter storms helps flip the switch down the road to the seasons, often the wild Sandy like storm pushing up the coastline helps flip the switch to move on to the next season. Like relay races where the one runner passes the torch to the next runner who passes the torch to the next. Mother Nature and the Seasons are like that and often the first BIG Winter Cold Snap is stronger than most of Winter and the last Winter Storm after a January thaw that crashed into February is the big storm after everyone took out their flip flops and shorts and debated planting tomatoes. Do not plant the tomatoes in the South, not yet. That's a huge thing in the South, it's like they are panning for gold or something everyone has to plant their tomatoes. Me.... I head to Whole Foods and Trader Joes and smile thinking "wow they got the good tomatoes in" as I am not much of a gardener or a farmer though I can manage rose bushes as my mother was big into rose bushes; my mother got skin cancer when older despite being olive skinned and blamed it on the roses so I buy those in Whole Foods too!

As for weather, let's take a look at the status of Winter 2024 in the first week of February.

If this was Hurricane Season...

...ppl would be pushing the case for a name.

Subtropical or Extratropical but it's Winter.

I had a friend who asked if one too many hurricanes carved out that "Georiga Bight" that goes from N FL coast up to the Carolnas. Cute thought but Continental Drift would tell you that's where the horn of Africa went. Just because something kind of makes sense doesn't mean it's true, and yet I'm sure the flow of systems going up the coast over time helped a bit in the erosion process. And, yet if you go way back the coast of Carolina wasn't where it is now, it's now where it once was..... as you can read in the detailed discussion below from a site online that I linked to further down in the blog.

"The Outer Banks are geologically young. The geologic framework of Cape Hatteras was constructed by the cyclic rise and fall of relative sea level. This framework controls the sediments available to the modern barrier island, and the ways in which the island responds to natural and anthropogenic processes. About 5.3 million years ago, sea level was much higher and marine sediments were deposited across much of what is now the coastal plain. During multiple glacial episodes (ice ages) beginning 2.6 million years ago, sea level rose and fell many times, and rivers incised the previously deposited marine strata, leaving a paleotopography that controls the estuarine geometry and bathymetry and the location of the barrier islands. These paleoriver channelswere then backfilled and buried by Holocene sediments during the last 10,000 years as sea level rose to its present level. As a result, the sediments underlying the modern barrier island are a complex assemblage of marine, coastal, estuarine, riverine, and other Coastal Plain deposits, ranging from compact peat and mud to unconsolidated to semi-consolidated sands, gravels, and shell beds."

If you understood this paragraph you may have studied geology in college or been a bit of a Geology or Geography hobbiest. https://www.nps.gov/articles/nps-geodiversity-atlas-cape-hatteras-national-seashore-north-carolina.htm

Great books on this subject.... geological time is a long time and Florida was under water and above water, Florida Keys were once under water before they rose and Atlantis may or may not have existed off the coast. I was always into geography, geology, meteorology and Atlantis books have great. I'm a map lover or as some say a cartophile! The water level in Florida these days can be a moving target and we are always watching and researching to stay ahead of the curve when building homes and waterfront communities there.

The world is always changing, rearranging and sometimes it's ignited by Mother Nature and some earthquake or volcano and other times it's something we as humans have added to the equation. Planet Earth is awesome and amazing and provides me much to read through when there's no snow in Raleigh and it's far from Hurricane Season. I have a book I love but I'm not searching for the link, but there's good info on the link above to the government site.

In other news I found out today that Toby Keith died and that was sad, as a Country Music Lover I loved his sons and others like him that would make funny videos when videos were funny and made you laugh or think on life or just hum along. Now days everything is so politically correct it's hard to get a good, funny country song without someone saying. It's good to laugh, it's good to smile, it's good to fall in love to a song that played in the background and then to love a song that makes you remember the pain of losing love. One of my favorites is Not Your Momma's Broken Heart....