Hurricane Harbor: Quiet Today - Week to 10 Days Maybe Not Sooo Quiet. Tropical Thoughts on How We Go from Quiet to OMG Fast.

State of my world in the Carolinas.

State of our world ....

Frontal boundaries across East Coast down into the Deep South is bottom left. Top left is the ITCZ off of Africa. Lots of LINES here. Bottom right is the NOAA graphic that is more generous with innuendo than NHC's main page. ITCZ wearing purple and blue for the day. Area in GOM highlighted today but tomorrow it's on either side of Florida so that very small chance of some surprise close in system is connected to the cold front that has gone dead in the tropical waters around Florida where if it festers too long, something might spin up. Not a given, but something to watch for and in the Carolinas it's in the low 60s and it's awesome beautiful and the promise of Summer ending soon is a little closer and the sneak peak of Fall is making our air feel crisp not humid. YAY!

Remember that while Hurricane Season "officially begins June 1st" we often have named storms in May and some years it doesn't wake up til August the way it did in 1992 with Andrew. Andrew was a weak, wave wandering westbound that attained designation and the NHC almost downgraded it but waited a little longer as they felt it would do better soon and it would be too confusing to the "general public" a phrase they use there, I know... and it did better and after making a turn West close to the Bahamas and slamming into South Florida as a Category 5 it never lost strength and slammed into Mississippi and Louisiana as a very devastating hurricane that had two epic, historic landfalls filled with misery, tragedy, death and destruction and yet...........long run on sentence here - kind of like Andrew's early history...remember Andrew started out as a weak wave, barely there times with a circulation they could barely find or defined circulation and yet it persisted. 1935 Hurricane formed just East of Florida close in before landfall, probably visible with satellite imagery but it was 1935. Katrina a hurricane that copied Andrew came alive East of Florida slammed into South Florida as a Hurriane (incredible eye experience in my front yard) and then moved on to the ever popular second landfall location of Mississippi and Louisiana.

Highway 90 - Pass Christian

If u ever get a chance to go there.

Go, stand there and look across the street at the

Gulf of Mexico looking oh so tranquil.

But oh my gosh...when it wakes up.

Old time locals can tell you....

....it's a force to be reckoned with!

Before and After

Let's do another one.

Before and After

Hurricane Katrina.

Assisted care facility not a plantation.

Something we do Down South.

All that was left was the columns

Long lines of frontal boundaries and ITCZ

Clusters of storms in GOM

Tropics Quiet Today

Weak tropical waves sometimes come alive closer in, in the way that Camille didn't form until she made it across the entire Atlantic as a non-entity just a wave being monitored and then she wrapped up, swirled up towards the very hot waters of the Gulf of Mexico and slammed into the beautiful homes, apartments and world on the other side of Highway 90 where the beautiful blue Gulf of Mexico sits across the street from those previously mentioned homes, apartment houses and nothing was ever the same.

I'm in a run on sentence mood today so going with it. Usually it means my mind is working faster than I can type and I can type really fast as anyone who has sat up with me on AOL Messenger knows because they could not keep up :)

Point here is that as Dabuh says "Round the Corner" often happens when an area of weak spin, barely there spin hits an area that's warm and so welcoming it sets out a Buffett of hot water and tropical energy that invites spin to spin up and do what Katrina did and the 1935 Hurricane probably did and Camille did so just because it's quiet doesn't mean nothing is happening.

Late August. Early September.

Just before Labor Day.

Football Games.

School Begins

Summer Ends.

Fall Begins.

Hurricane Season comes alive!!

You can see where we go from practically nothing to a steep climb up towards the peak and prime days of hurricane season in September. We can go from quiet to "oh my goodness" like that and suddenly there's colored circles on the NHC main page and not just ensemble models showing landfall.

Speaking of those ensemble models if you watch the short YouTube video from Eric Burris today, he shows them at the end of his weather discussion. I have a close friend who owns property in Chiefland Florida and lives there often during hurricane season and she loves Eric Burris. So I began watching him too and he is good and he is real and is he very helpful to answering questions to those who regular watch his morning updates Live. Old Florida girls like us know who to follow and pay attention to and who to ignore and he is not one to ignore.