Hurricane Harbor: May 15th Start of EPAC Hurricane Season! May 15th Start of the South Florida Miami Monsoons aka Rainy Season. Hope & Pray El Nino Lowers Your Chances of a Landfalling Hurricane. But Stay Prepared. Analogy to Keep Your Inhaler on You IF U Have Asthma... Only Takes One....

Check that out!

Cantore doing a Tropical Update.

Highlighting EPAC ....

...which begins TODAY!

Nothing for the next 7 days!

But on May 15th NHC begins TWO

Tropical Weather Outlook for the Atlantic.

Nothing in the next 7 days!

Atlantic Season officially begins June 1st.

Sometimes May systems slip in early so...

...we always watch.

This worries me this year....

as El Nino it pulling it together.

Keeping the season slower than normal.

But there is a window early on.....

...before El Nino is in control!

In other news...

...related as it's part of the weather cycle in Miami.

Rainy Season begins.

Humidity climbs horribly high.

Rains begin.

Pressures drop.

then ...

Hurricane Season begins!!

The two are intricately tied together.

On X Florida Rainy Season also trending!

That's a thing.

My favorite pic online below:

I took this pic chasing with my best friend!

Miami Monsoons.

End of May through August.

June is usually epic.

Every year is different tho....

Growing up in Miami the Miami Monsoons that begin usually in late May are often stronger than most Category 1 Hurricanes. Okay, they don't last as long, but the sky turns ten shades of black with some purple and dark indigo thrown in and a few highlights of purple rambunctious! The wind begins to howl, thunder and lightning snap loudly and the rains are monsoonal and create a deluge just as you are about to leave school at dismissal. As a child growing up in Miami at 3PM on the dot the dismissal bell would ring and the loudest thunder would boom and the sky would suddenly let go and drop torrential rains as you run to the car if your parents picked you up or run for cover if they did not. Sometimes they'd hold off until we'd get halfway home while walking over the catwalk that took us across the Palmetto Expressway where we'd stand too long watching the violent line of storms moving closer debating how much time we had before we were in danger of being zapped by lightning or drenched in rain.

When I grew up in the Roads Section the timing was never for sure, but often sometime in the late afternoon. When my parents moved further out West to Westchster when I was 7 you could literally tell the time by the wild sky and thunder and lightning at exactly 3 PM. Years later they moved to Miami Beach and again sometimes you get them sometimes you don't as the severe thunderstorms with cloud to ground lightning strikes would move more to the North and let loose over North Miami Beach or more to the South and slam into Coconut Grove and Coral Gables and some would actually make it to Miami Beach. They usually build up over the Everglades, deep in the interior of Florida and move with the wind flow. Sometimes they go West towards Naples and other times they move East over Miami. Either way, one way or the other someone is gonna get slammed with afternoon thunderstorms with the intensify of a Tropical Storm of weak hurricane! Probably why local Miami people don't get nervous until the hurricane intensifies or there is an actual Hurricane Warning as often a weak category one doens't have the punch of a Miami Monsoon!

And yet......local, old Florida people KNOW they need to stay prepared. They don't pay much attention to El Nino Hype anymore than they do worry on an Invest or a Tropical Storm Watch. Infact, a Tropical Storm Watch means you call in sick and hit the beach to watch the waves and feel a bit of wind. Just being honest. But they know and you should know you must stay prepared and stay aware even in an El Nino Year.

Seems some of the people on X think I am a denier and don't believe an El Nino is coming our way. They must be newbies. I know, I'm watching and juggling analog years in my head as I wait to see what kind of El Nino we actually get in the end. And, that's important as often an El Nino builds in fast and the media jumps on it promising a Hurricane Free Pass for the Hurricane Season. That is really unwise, but hey everyone clicks on the links. El Nino is all the rage!! Why? Because sometimes an El Nino builds, then digs in to one particular part of the Pacific and depending on where the El Nino drops anchor makes all the difference. And that we won't know for sure until it happens in real time. Many times models have been wrong in some degree about El Nino and sometimes despite El Nino the water stays warm in the Atlantic and we end up with a busy season despite El Nino. Yes, El Nino often shuts down the deep SW Carib, but it isn't a "Get Out of Jail Card" and you all need to remember that.

Let me explain it like this:

Say you have a mild problem with asthma. You don't often get a severe attack, but you have once in a while. A random bad asthma attack happens and you reach into your pocket or purse and grabbed your inhaler, take a few puffs carefully and the attack begins to wane and you were glad you were prepared and didn't leave it home thinking you'd be fine. All of us have done that at one time or another and often gotten we get lucky. Once at a wedding when I danced like crazy I felt an asthma attack coming on and realized I didn't take it as it didn't fit in my little purse and tried to remember who in the room had asthma and quickly asked them to borrow theirs and luckily that worked. Sadly, it doesn't always work.

Recently my daughter went to a funeral and saw a huge heart sticking out above the other tombstones and it revealed that the young teen died young. She felt bad, she asked me to find out who the girl was and how she died. Shayna is like that, if you know you know, so rather than argue I did some fast research and saw heartbreakingly it was a beautiful girl who grew up on Miami Beach near where we lived and she had been out without her inhaler and before her mother could get her to the hospital she died. Really sad. Her sisters had a business where they made jewelry and often they put butterflies on them in her sister's memory as she loved butterlies. Very sad, only takes one time without your inhaler or some other medication some are prescribed.

I'm being serious, take hurricane season seriously and hope and pray that it'll be a quiet season and no Major Hurricane will find it's way to your door, to your home, to your loved ones.

video below...

Andrew was an El Nino Year.

Michael was an El Nino Year.

Florence was an El Nino Year.

Camille was an El Nino Year.

Yes, sometimes they were weaker or waning and other times a hurricane found it's groove in an area where El Nino wasn't a hindrance. Sometimes the water was so warm that hurricanes still formed and made landfall. Every season is different. They set up further West in the Pacific and sometimes they are short lived or are not as strong as models had forecast. Sometimes they are even stronger than they were forecast as in 1997 when a huge El Nino developed fast and furious.

So no I am not in denial. I am watching. I am studying the situation. And, I am hoping that people take the 2026 Hurricane Season seriously as they would normally. Especially as it's possible for a hurricane to form, get into the Gulf and close to the coast where water is the hottest they can intensify fast and make landfall as a Cat 3 or Cat 4 while you weren't paying attention because you thought you had a free pass because El Nino. It only takes one!

Again think of it as you would IF you had asthma and take your inhaler with you always, even if you have been lucky and rarely get an asthma attack. It only takes one asthma attack to kill someone and it only takes one hurricane in an El Nino year to cause you tremendous trauma, destroy your home and if you are lucky you will have hidden in a bathtub with a mattress over you while someone stronger held the bathroom door from flying away as happened to several people I know in Huricane Andrew. Note they don't feel "safer" because El Nino and the moment a Hurricane Watch is posted they are on the first plane out of Dodge or int his case Miami Dade County.