Hurricane Harbor: Hurricane Season Slowly Ending. Fronts Are on the Move. 2025 Delivering an Early Real Winter for the USA! Thoughts on Life in Miami Watching Airplanes Land and Ships Going Out to Sea.

Fronts.

Some convection in EPAC but nothing from NHC.

Fronts draped across the Atlantic...

From the Yucatan across Cuba and beyond.

Westbound waves that didn't get the memo.

The door is about to shut on 2025 Hurricane Season!

Regular readers of my blog or comments of mine on X will remember I have been mentioning "fronts" for literally months. Fronts barely ended as Summer took control of the tropics and they resumed their movement across the satellite imagery that we all watch and to me that was a sign we would have an early, real Winter. Early weather people watched the skies, the slight differences in temperatures and the movement of the air as well as the trees, the crops and the animals. Everything is connected when it comes to meteorology and as for hurricane season everything is connected to oceanography and the currents in the ocean that in small ways change the way the atmosphere flows different from year to yeat. Had Katrina not hit the Loop Current in the Gulf it may never have become as strong and memorable. The Canary Current in the Eastern Atlantic this year had a strong impact on moderating our hurricane season until Melissa slipped through and made a historic Cat 5 Landfall.

One year fronts deliver fronts to cities along the coast and in other years fronts sweep them out to sea and act as the great defender of coastal cities. How the fronts flow be it fromWest to East or after a while once they begin descending a bit more to the Southeast from the Northwest and you feel the air a bit drier and cooler and then you begin to dream on Fall and Winter. In Miami you begin to dream that a cold front will actually make it down into the area that is strong enough to wear boots and your rarely used winter weather wardrobe. It's a brief window trust me in Miami. When the Arctic suddenly decides to fly South for the Winter you begin to notice all the "snowbirds" that literally jumped on the first flights out of New York and rush to their "Winter Place" and the traffic overnight goes crazy and lines appear at all the restaurants and local kids basically hate the tourists...especially from certain places.

I'm staying by one of my kids who lives on the Northern edge of Hollywood Florida and I regularly hear the planes coming in for a landing at FLL airport and the familiarity of it is a bit wild. It's a memory from my childhood from the years my parents moved out to the Suburbs from the Road Section of Miami near downtown and life was punctuated by the steady flow of planes to our North descending towards landing at MIA airport that was just to the NE of where we used to live in Westchester. I spent hours as a kid sitting out on the front porch that faced North watching planes when bored descending in their landing pattern as they would seem to glide slowly a bit lower, lower and then out of view behind the tall pines trees. In those days that part of Westchester and West Miami had no tall buildings, just one story CBS homes and one story neighborhood stores on the Tamiami Trail now known as Calle Ocho or just 8th Street!

Note West Miami Middle just South of MIA.

Not much happens weather wise in Miami. Kids don't have Fall nor Spring nor Winter, just an almost eternal Summer and any changes in the weather is a big deal. Some winters it's so warm you don't even realize it's Winter at all. Fall means Football! Winter means Christmas Lights on houses that twinkle pretty in the tropical balmy night and everything is decorated at the Mall. Spring means Mango trees are in bloom, everyone complains but they love the fruit when it's ripe. Then comes Hurricane Season a Summer Fall Blended period when you know something might happen, but probably nothing will.

Watching planes take off and land if you lived near the airport was fun. They didn't fly over your homes disturbing your daily life, they just were there to watch when bored or daydreaming where those planes may be flying to or flying in from. And the kids who were especially observant and weather oriented would watch for the planes to note if they were suddenly taking off to the West and that meant a cold front really, really, really was coming into Miami. A "Cold Front Coming" is often featured on the news the way Miami is often in the Cone 7 days out and by the time the hurricane really gets going we are no longer in the Cone and the Hurricane went somewhere else; such was life with cold fronts as well as they were often advertised but generally a no show when all was said and done. But when the planes landed at MIA out of the East and there was a chill in the morning air and they were taking off to the West we all knew the cold front was real and here!

Then my parents moved to Miami Beach not far from the Fountainbleau near 41st Street aka Arthur Godfrey Road and the North runway at MIA directed the planes down 41st Street as they took off to the Easst and out over the ocean. The Taxi Cabs would suddenly be filled with passengers clogging up the small town feel of Miami Beach growing up as the "Snow Birds" were flying in on added flights. Note most big streets in Miami have multiple names, gets confusing when you're given directions but I digress.

When a few of my kids moved to Brickell downtown the planes would fly over the top of their beautiful Condo with the pool on the roof and would pass ridiculoulsy close to the top of the Intercontinental Hotel next door! Suddenly, after years in Raleigh in the suburbs, I was watching planes take off again from their balcony facing North.

The purpose of this blog this morning is to highlight how much watching the clouds, the satellite imagery and the actual day to day movement of planes, taxis and restaurants filling up will tell you about the weather and what may be an early winter or a late barely there winter.

I was told my Great Grandfather who I never met would sit on his porch in Tampa and look out over Tampa Bay watching the tall thunderheads climb into the sky. Apparently he was a sky watcher, and loved weather and clouds. He'd tell my Grandma who was terrified of thunder as they once had lightning come into the house through the chimney when she was little in Tampa and "dance all around the parlor" and he'd tell her when there was cold air coming and when a tropical storm might be on the way. While walking the dog with her a little girl she'd show me how the wind was moving in all directions pressing down and it was going to rain in a little bit and in a little bit out of nowhere there was a rainstorm. Got weather genes ;)

Imagine my Great Grandfather was always sure when a tropical storm was going to rock Tampa's world and knowing that and being accurate without the use of the GFS 10 Day that offers you a landfalling Hurricane always on the 10th day, tho the hurricane never shows the way the cold fronts often fizzle no matter how much talk there is on the weather that a cold front might be coming. Yet apparently my Great Grandfather was always right. Most often the tropical storm would slide by in the Gulf, but he knew from the way the wind blowed and the air flowed it was time to board up.

Miami life is about fishing so everyone who fishes knows the moon phases and checks the weather. Miami life is about boating so as soon as you have a boat that you park behind your house on the Coral Gables Waterway as my son does...the boat owner suddenly has Weather Apps, Tide Apps and doesn't have to have his mother call him and remind him not to take the boat out to Stiltsville because a bad line of storms is coming in because he knows. I could go on and on but I think I made the point and for anyone here who grew up in Miami whether it was in West Miami, Hialeah or even Miami Beach they can tell you we all watch the clouds, the weather, the sunrises and sunsets and wait for that much heralded day when a Cold Front will drop-down into the 40s and kids go giddy while parents hunt for their winter clothes.

Hurricane Season is on it's way out the way a plane descending just North of Tamiami Trail is about to land, we know Hurricane Season is about to end. Sure, surprises always happen but so far we made it through another year without a landfalling, hurricane slamming into South Florida. Life is good. Kids go "Shrimping" in Biscayne Bay in Winter about ten days or so after a full moon and then bring them home to serve at a holiday party. In the old days I had frends who went with their family out into the Glades hunting on their Air Boats aka Swamp Buggies and yeah big block parties.

When you live close to the water, near clouds that are always changing and weather that can get wild during Monsoon Season you pay attention to the little things. If you are really observant and know you can tell the exact moment it's going to actually rain like crazy from the drop in the air temperature. You just know.

I am sure I drove Mike crazy responding "fronts" back in June and July .... because it's all about the fronts that are for real stronger now and what appears to be a Winter to Remember across the USA. Hopefully, I'll be back in Raleigh soon and I can begin my prayers for snow again. I'll be honest, as a kid I'd pray for hurricanes much to my parents chagrin and my Grandma Mary would say in her very Southern Accent "oh you don't want one of those terrible storms, when I was a girl they........" and I'd think to myself quietly "Yes Grandma I do" but I'd just listen. In Raleigh I rarely hear the planes except for one that takes off every night on some International Flight just before Midnight or I hear helicopters flying low towards the National Guard Armory in Youngsville.

Listening is good sometimes.

Writing is good sometimes not being sure where you are going but knowing the message you want to deliver.

Like the Old Time Seminoles who would take the canoe down the Miami River in the early settler days and warn the Brickell family that they traded with that a "Big Blow Is Coming" because they'd watch the way the Sawgrass out in the Glades would blow, lie and by the direction and they knew a hurricane was coming without the GFS telling them they'd get hit in 10 days but not really. They were definitely more reliable than the GFS and maybe as reliable as the EURO though they could not give specifics, just a "Big Blog is on the Way" and that was appreciated by the early locals that knew them. My family was living in Key West back then before moving up to Tampa and they watched and waited on those tropical cyclones too as it's part of life in South Florida.

Wild being back in Miami and Hollywood going between kids and friends and family and watching the little things I did as a child and remembering how much knowledge I gained by the way the clouds looked, and the direction the planes were landing in this city built around airport travel and how the surf looked in the Bay as to what weather was coming down the tropical road.

No Hurricanes currently being talked about except for the College Football kind at UM of the Ice Hockey ones in Carolina.

Good video below where Joel Franco shows where to watch planes land at MIA. This honestly was a treat for kids to go with their parents, get out on the car hood and watch the planes land. Hey no video games, no Internet and no Game Boys ......this was a big deal. Funny because my son who lived on the Bay had an App that showed him which boats and ships were coming into port. That's Miami always watching people come and go on planes, boats and trains. Trains is another blog for another day.