Tropics Quiet Today. Life Goes On. Get Ready for a Busier Time in August. FIU PROUD :)

I know I've been out of it lately or rather taking a break from posting on the tropics as I've been on vacation and the tropics have been pretty dead. As many of you know I've been in Miami where my youngest son graduated last night from Florida International  with a Masters in Architecture. This is the same son that was in China participating in a program this summer at Tongji University in Shanghai; he certainly gets around. Glad he's home and it was wonderful to celebrate with him and the family as he passed this milestone in his life as he sets out on his chosen career. I wanted him to go to NC State in Raleigh where they have a great Architecture program but being his mother's son he loves Miami and said he needs to lean how to build for hurricanes and FIU is the best place to do that. I graduated from FIU so it's even more sweet to come back and watch my son do so as well. Like my "little" son, my old college has grown up as well and it's impressive as it is now one of the higher ranked Universities in the country. It also is where the National Hurricane Center is located so well you knew I'd bring this back to hurricanes didn't you? His architecture class actually got a tour of the NHC building and complex; thank you to those involved in that nice field trip across the campus.

There are none in the Atlantic Basin today. There aren't even any Tropical Storms or Tropical Depressions and the models aren't even waxing poetic on possible hurricanes so I took a good time to take a vacation. If you don't believe me you can look at the models yourself below. Not much to see.

http://moe.met.fsu.edu/tcgengifs/

There are very long term models that suggest tropical development will begin later in the first week of August going into the second week but they are stabs in the dark and yet they are in line with Climo so know that hurricanes are out there down the road and waiting to take their turn onto the stage.

So many people wonder this time of year while they wait for the season to find it's groove and some seasons are much like this season where something sputters up early and then things die down while we wait for the real season to begin. Putting up a link below to a site by someone who over the years... I've come to enjoy reading his thoughts. For those of us who have been online for a long time we have long memories and well that's all I'll say.

https://www.cyclonicfury.com/2018/07/31/cyclonic-furys-final-2018-atlantic-hurricane-season-forecast-slightly-below-average-activity-anticipated/

There are many people, agencies and organizations that put out updates for the Hurricane Season. Giving you the link to one above that is easy to read and lays out for you in a more compact (but detailed form) the reasons we think this may be a less than active hurricane season. I'm calling it "normal" whatever that means personally (average is such a vague word) and many are calling it a bit below "average" or "normal" so you can read up on this while I finish my Florida vacation.

It's a good read.

It's going to be a real season.

At some point down the road.

It's hard to say exactly where and when a hurricane will threaten some town this year, but even in quiet seasons the threat is always there and hurricanes always appear. I don't like forecasting numbers and making predictions that way because it's a story that has not been written and we are just beginning the chapter called "Prelude to September" and that doesn't count out late August or early October. You can see from the image above there are well defined tropical waves moving West. The loop below shows the process where waves get stronger and remain intact crossing the Atlantic despite the dusty, dry Saharan Layer that reigns in June and July and wanes in August and September. That's why the Atlantic comes alive in September.

There is nothing expected for form but I would not put it past the tropics to offer up some close in, home grown system along the SE coast over the next few weeks while we wait for the waves to be viable. With this much convection lingering over warm waters pressures tend to lower and trouble can begin to brew up somewhere. So never shut the lid on the tropics because they are quiet, just check back every day or twice a day to make sure something surprising doesn't spin up when you least expect it. Models are not perfect, they are getting better over time but prone to missing small systems that spin up fast along the coast. There are always possibilities even when they get very little press before developing. 2018 has been a year of surprises so I'd expect to be surprised.

Note the purple and blue in the Atlantic.

Also over the GOM.

Don't let your guard down.

As for some family pride as well as Panther Pride I'll add here many people were responsible for helping to raise my youngest son aside from me.. his mother...who worked very hard sometimes at two jobs while still managing to have a life and study the tropics and write about them. While attending the Hebrew Academy on Miami Beach my youngest son stayed in Miami at my brother's house and then continued living there through college. My daughter-in-law's parents live out near FIU and they had him sleeping there by their house many nights when he left the Architecture Lab at 3 AM before going back to classes at 9 AM and I really do owe them even though they always say they "barely noticed him" but I know they kept his favorite snacks in the house and made him feel loved and cared for as well. 

Being the youngest of a large brood of kids is never easy as every other older sibling thinks they are "in charge of you" and "knows more than you" and the kid who was put into gifted early on at Greynold's Park Elementary when they told me "your son is very smart" at a late night parent teacher meeting where for some reason his teacher seemed to want me to know that fact as if I didn't realize it but as a child he loved cars, NASCAR and rock music. He had some vibrant older teenage siblings and their friends always coming and going. At his Bar Mitzvah his brother's arrived with their friends and they looked like the mob had walked in to a Hollywood movie with a Bar Mitzvah scene. Other older siblings lived far away in New York in Crown Heights and other places yet my youngest son and his close siblings grew up in Miami and Miami is a wonderful place to grow up... and grow up they did.

My brother and his nephew.

Or as he likes to call him..

"his partner in crime"

They've traveled together many places...

...many Marlins games ;)

My son Moe proud to watch him graduate.

Me and Zalmy at a wedding last year...

..wedding for his older brother Mendy.

You want to hold onto them forever.

But then they go out... and discover the world.

They travel to Spain and Germany and Shanghai.

They walk the Great Wall of China.

But they always come back to Miami.

He was actually a Season's Ticket Holder one year!

My son... his name is up on the wall.

His sister posing with him.

His older brother Moe taking pictures.

Sometimes life seems to move slowly, day by day, and it feels as if you are getting no where fast. Thunderstorms pop up in the afternoon and summer slowly moves towards the football season and dreams for the Miami Dolphins to rise up once again . . . and hurricanes begin to roll westbound across the Atlantic while we watch and wait to see what will happen. My father used to always say to me "you got to do what you got to do" and I did and so do my kids. So should we all... 

Just as my son knew that if he wanted to live and work in Miami he would need to know how to build for the Hurricane Season so to do all of us who live in Hurricane Country need to remember that those busy days are out there even while Mike is on a cruise and I'm in Miami in my daughter's bed under the big poster of Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's I know that this is the quiet time, a day to relax and remember and enjoy the memories. Soon I'll be back on the road back to North Carolina a place I truly do love even though it's different from Miami. I've always been good at loving different places and different people ... appreciating the beauty in people and places the way my son appreciates the angles of buildings and landscapes. 

This is his explanation of what he did this summer.

What do you love?

What's your passion?

Follow it.

Do what you got to do.

Besos BobbiStorm

@bobbistorm on Twitter

Ps... I'll be back as soon as something happens in the tropics.

You can bet on that.

Miami and Miami Beach Flooding ... Remnants of Moisture from Emily, Frontal Boundary, High Tide and New Convection in the GOM ... a HOT FLOODED MESS

It started with a friend posting on Facebook.

This is Mid Beach... 41st Street area on Miami Beach.

Not an area that floods all the time.

My friend said she has heard stories of roofs caving in..

Water getting into people's homes...

And she's a good source.

I believer her.. 

Live Video 

https://www.facebook.com/anita.wills1/posts/10159099448535203

It's worth noting this happened in a short time.

Almost minutes according to many in the flooded zone.

More information is needed and it's a developing situation.

Emily is far away.

This is not from Emily.

This is a messy cocktail of misery.

The trof previously associated with Emily.

More Tropical Moisture moving in from GOM.

A tale of tropical moisture from below.

High Tide.

Notice how everything is funneling moisture to S FL.

A hot mess of moist elements causing serious flooding.

Miami Beach is also under a warning not shown above.

The area being watched in the GOM...

..is leaning over towards Florida.

It doesn't have to be organized to add to the problem.

This below is just by Bayside.

I've stood there a ton of times.

It's a block from the Bay.

The Bay has risen.

Heavy rains, clogged drains.

When we ask tourists not to put things into drains..

..we mean it.

Every street drain there feeds into the Bay a block away.

The intense rain storm that caused the flooding shown below.

Lincoln Road and West Avenue.

Floods ALWAYS.

I lived a block from there.

Flooded in 1973.

This is I believe Miami Beach but I could be wrong.

You get the idea...

HIGH TIDE + Heavy Rain.

Extremely heavy rain.

More than 5 inches I believe but not sure yet on totals.

It's still raining.

https://www.facebook.com/7NewsMiami/videos/vb.29790827612/10154921180822613/?type=2&theater

You might check out Facebook Live by putting in Miami Beach Flooding to the search browser.

This an ongoing issue. As I said yesterday when a storm is tracking in one direction and the weather mass is moving into another it usually becomes a flooding mess for someone. And Miami is getting flooded after days of regular rain Miami got slammed by the heaviest moisture from Emily in the same way it did in 1999 from Irene. As I mentioned yesterday.

And more is on the way from the area in the GOM that is not yet highlighted. The wave in the Atlantic is yellow again.

Besos BobbiStorm.

Tropics Thursday ULLs Dance in Atlantic. Waves Keep Coming Off of Africa. Back Story Drama Going On...

A quick look at Mike's Spaghetti Models shows nothing happening.

NADA in the tropics.

www.spaghettimodels.com

But there is a back story here going on.

Nothing on the surface.

No big yellow or orange circles from the NHC.

No Invests or named tropical storms.

Kind of par for the course in July.

Why does it look like those 2 ULLs want to do a Fujiwara dance..
...off the SE Coast near the Carolinas.

It's a strange time in the tropics. That in between time when the mean season translates to extremely hot days in the Mid Atlantic States and daily rain in Florida. People are hot, uncomfortable and once again another summer has us discussing OJ when we really should be drinking OJ often to stay hydrated. The NWS is painting a square sort of heart across the middle of the country and then those watches and warnings slide East towards places like Raleigh. 100 degrees possible on Saturday round these parts and I'm not talking "feels like" but what the thermometer may show.

And in the tropics the Upper Level Lows keep swirling round and round seemingly anchored as if they put down stakes on solid ground. Like huge wind mills in the Atlantic Ocean they spin and spin with seemingly no end. That's somewhat common though not really normal. Why? Upper Level Lows tend to ooze around a bit, expand, open up, tighten up and often then fade away while another one forms nearby taking over as if they are running a relay race. They rarely just drop anchor and refuse to leave; sometimes it happens but it's rare.

Note 96L flares up but has no where to go.

So NHC says NO... 

The NHC has taken the yellow circle away in the Atlantic despite the wave still looking healthy and being followed by a succession of tropical waves that rolled off Africa followed by an even larger one still over Africa today. Look how much moisture is visible in the image below. Remnants of 96L looks better than Don did on a good day and as good as TD4 before that. But we basically put up yellow and orange circles these days based on model forecasts and the models don't show much forming. The waves are doing their job though quietly without any fan fare. Juicing up the atmosphere.

In other places we see formation possibilities in purple.

Like amethysts strung across the Atlantic.

Yet NHC says nope, not happening.

Pretty juicy on what we used to call the OJ loop.

Look at all that orange in the Atlantic.

It gets pulled N by the tug of the ULL above.

But it's juicy.

Worth taking a look at that last model run for 96L

IF 96L stayed alive and was named.

This is where it would go.

Good to keep in mind.

Why you ask?

Because if you drop a penny in the gutter.

This is how it would roll... 

Same as the SAL moving across the Atlantic Basin.

A precursor path wise to later tropical tracks.

Named storms with cones and watches and warnings.

Where the SAL goes tropical trouble often follows.

People take pictures of sunrise and sunset in Florida.

They ooh and ah and post #nofilter pictures online.

It's the SAL as most asthmatics know..

And I'm telling you again where SAL goes in July...

...is where Hurricanes can go in August and September.

Beautiful sunsets.

Just type in #sunset #miami for beautiful coral colored pictures.

Yesterday the family group showed lavender and lilac in the sky.

#nofilter so true.

And Brickell is where it is at in Miami.

For smart retired baby boomers.

For savvy Milleninals.

(find Sugar, have a drink... take a picture)

And as savvy John Morales knows there's a sigh coming down the road.

Phil Klotzbach posted this for a reason.

"harbinger of an active Atlantic Hurricane Season"

Rainfall is up over the Sahel region.

Africa is firing off tropical waves.

1-2-3-4 there's more and more of them.

The purpose for tropical waves in July is not to get named storms.

The purpose is to juice up the environment for the real waves.

For the real season which begins in August.

August Look Out as the nursery rhyme goes.

As Jim knows...

See the loop below...

See the moisture getting into place.

The  SAL is seasonal. 

SAL comes and SAL goes.

It's the Upper Level Lows that remain the fly in the ointment.

Will they still be there in August and September?

Fronts begin rolling off the East Coast.

Each front getting successively stronger.

The switch gets flicked on...

Storms don't just go West but begin to pull WNW.

It's something to think on...

...during these quiet, hot days of July.

There's a back story going on ...

...while the media talks on OJ and Trump.

Stay hydrated, take beautiful pictures of sunset.

Stock up on hurricane supplies.

Besos BobbiStorm

@bobbistorm on Twitter

Ps ... Get a plan. But til then enjoy those beautiful pics.

The show many only get more exciting down the road.

I'll be home in August, back in the 305.

View in the daytime. Stunning.

https://www.compass.com/agents/miami/levi-meyer/

My sun knows where to go to watch the sun set.

At night the stars come out and you can see forever.

http://www.sugar-miami.com/

Fast becoming our favorite place to go in Miami. 

Drinks are good but oh the view.

As for the Upper Level Lows... Hmnnn

Will they remain through September.

Watching ULLs is like counting crows these days

I wonder..

Funny juiciest wave yet has no circle...

...cause it has no where to go?