Tropics Wednesday. Invest 91L Not Doing Anything Yet. BOC Bound? Will Energy Transfer to the E Coast of Florida or Florida or Bahamas? Maybe. It's June.. .Watch & Wait. Euro Watching Florida Today? Hmnn Some Thoughts on Why We Shouldn't Live or Die By the Models Especially in June. Being Unique and Who We Are Online...

Tropics Today.

Watching the tropics in June to see if something will or won't develop isn't for the faint of heart. It's especially dangerous to live and die by the models as this time of year due to "feedback issues" the models often produce vigorous tropical storms just to lose them once people take the bait. Simply said the models in June are basically "click bait" and that's why I watch the satellite loops and other forecasting tools to see what I really think will happen rather than click on "you should see the so and so twins today" and spoiler alert clicking on those links never ends well.

That said I do look at the models, but only after carefully examining what exists and contemplating the shear maps, the water temperatures (that change daily sometimes) and low and high pressure patterns. I watch cold fronts that ooze Down South enough to wear jeans vs shorts on a cool June evening out in Raleigh. I watch hurricane history and use many grains of salt when dealing with anything down in the SW Carib that is forecast to develop in early June or late November.

MOST IMPORTANT TAKE AWAY HERE TO REMEMBER.
Never ever rely on or believe in ANY model until the area being investigated has a clear cut, verified center of circulation. And if there are multiple centers vying for control think twice on the model until that one center becomes the real thing. Only with good data from recon and a good starting point do you get a good end result. And, even then models change in real time as the storm itself senses new atmospheric steering currents and conditions that may alter the track or intensity of the storm that no model noticed. The next model run the model will adjust to the storm not the other way around!

To understand who I am and how I think it's worth understanding I studied dance at a young age and cannot stop myself from moving to the beat of a song I love. I studied meteorology in college as to how it relates to the larger political structure of the world as meteorology and it's boring uncle Climo has dictated time and again over and over why one country went to war with another country. Even in the ever changing world in which we live... weather affects everything. If you don't believe me follow Commodities for a while and you will see how weather can make or break fortunes.  So this blog post today is inspired by Ed Sheeran and Sting as we will keep on making the same mistakes as we follow the models refusing to be the leader vs the follower.



A case in point is the word "regardless" was used in official discussion and suddenly every weather person on air or online wove the word regardless into their forecast yesterday for the heavy rain fall Texas may receive regardless of a name or just a large mass of tropical rain moving into Texas. Yeah... how did that work for you all? Yes, with Harvey fresh in everyone's minds millions of people clicked on links wondering if Invest 91L would be the next Harvey like storm. Get a grip gang. And think for yourself a little bit and learn to wait and watch and see what will or won't develop especially this far out.

NHC above.

X marks the spot.

Below... close up map.

Ledge of Honduras.

I don't understand the rush by "pros" to be the first to post the first model run when the EURO follows the GFS and produces a possible storm and then just the way most divas the GFS suddenly leaves the scene of the crime leaving everyone upset and dismayed that the EURO made the same stupid mistake. Since the beginning of recorded history messy blobs of convection have sat down on the ledge of Honduras and shear blows off their convection to the central Caribbean and models dance about as if they are in dress rehearsal and meteorologists follow every frame that the models put out jumping to conclusions. Models do not TALK they infer, they imply and they often lie. If you are going to follow a meteorologist who talks on models make sure they really understand the nuances and are not just repeating the party line regardless of what may actually happen. Models are really not as simple as they look and not for the faint of heart. Always believe in models AFTER a true center has formed.

It's always good to be a leader rather than a follower. Find a few good mets who know how to lead vs follow and know what the heck they are doing vs following the pack. I've had more than a few people ask me how Mike became so big online and especially on Facebook where people wait to see him to do Facebook Live. The reason they do is that they have not been burned by him with bad information and he is the first one to say he could be wrong. He talks on the models, shows.... no teaches people how to use the models and then gives his own thoughts peppered with what the official line is while reminding people the NHC is the bottom line... even if he doesn't agree or see how it will play out. He is very honest and knowledgeable. Yet jealous long time on air types make fun of people like us who are popular online and seem dismayed that people actually enjoy reading a blog or going to a weather website run by someone who didn't get an online meteorology degree from MSU. We are who we are and we don't pretend to not be who we are and I believe people respect that honesty.

Great song...



I didn't write nonstop Tweets using the world "REGARDLESS" yesterday as I'm not going to wax poetic on a storm that hasn't even formed a center before warning people all across the coast of GOM that they need to worry on huge amounts of tropical rain just because everyone else is doing so. Yes, I will say that IF this forms we need to worry on the set up and explain why we watch weak tropical storms in June by using Tropical Storm Allison as a history lesson. We need to pay attention more to historical analogs and possibilities and less every new model run promising bigger and better cyclones then pretending it never showed a hurricane. And the NHC said 20% chances in the 5 day so why was everyone looking for development yesterday or today????

Another person who some mets like to make fun of is Dabuh who often sees what could be, may be and posts cryptic posts showing areas where something may develop way before the GFS or EURO show them. He doesn't pretend to be head of the NHC and he is very much who he is and not afraid to be himself. As a weather community online we are richer for his presence and participation.

Hmnn.....

Oh.....

Hmnn just one frame of the EURO.

Don't sell the farm ....

... just one frame.

But nothing in GOM..

And now it's watching Florida.

Okay...so we watch.

We watch, wait and go on with life

People ask how Dabuh does this?

Pulls tropical rabbits out of his hat?

Inquiring minds want to know...

Again it's important to be yourself. No one else can be you and everyone else can weave "regardless" into their own tropical discussions regardless of the fact that currently nothing is going on but everyone is talking about it so regardless of reality let's repeat what everyone else is saying. Ex Director of the NHC Bill Read was so right when he told me people must come from sheep not monkeys.  I do show models early on because people ask me about the models and because that's the name of the game in 2018. But I take those models with a lot of salt the way I take my margaritas.  If there is one thing Dabuh knows it is the East Coast of Florida as he lives there, surfs there and pays close attention to every sign of trouble or good waves.

So there's your model discussion for the day.

http://moe.met.fsu.edu/cgi-bin/ecmwf-opertc2.cgi?time=2018061300&field=850mb+Vorticity&hour=Animation

GFS shows nada.

I try to share info.

I try to educate on hurricane history.

I try to inform and amuse.

I do my thing.

You don't like my ending...

Make your own ending.

Great advice from an original.

Who makes a soap opera in a video?

The tropics are a soap opera.

The best show on earth.

Reality Show.

Mother Nature does the Tropics.

Stay tuned.

Again be an original!

Don't be a copycat.

Find your own stage.

Watch and learn.

91L is not developing NOW..

 because of strong shear.

Diving ULL.

Shunting convection off... 

Watch it...

...but watch the Bahamas.

East Coast of Florida.

And any other area that bubbles up.

It's June this is how June works.

Besos BobbiStorm

@bobbistorm on Twitter

Join Twitter.

Follow me for faster updates.

Join in the discussion...

You want a long read?
Read Cranky I do... 

He's ALWAYS been an original!!

Ps......

Sting is who he is....

who he has always been.

Unique.

He's a leader not a follower.

Great lyrics.

Awesome stories.

I can relate.

State of the Tropics in the Atlantic Basin Monday Morning While Hurricane Dora Dances In the Eastern Pacific.

Hurricane Dora is in the Epac moving WNW out to sea. Pretty hurricane and not expected to a problem for anyone and of course no one is really paying attention. Like in Real Estate it's all about location and Dora is in the wrong location for Atlantic Basin people. If we had a hurricane in the Atlantic moving WNW at 13 mph the islands might be in it's way. Just the way of the world in that we tend to ignore the hurricanes in the Eastern Pacific while counting 5, 6, 7 days until our side of the world becomes active again.

Pretty quiet on our side of the world.

There is some cloud clutter in the areas known to show June development in most years. Storms flare up and die out in the BOC and down in the cradle of the SW Caribbean near Panama storms pulsate and go flat just as fast. It's part of the ongoing process. SAL is strong in the Eastern Atlantic as if someone remembered suddenly to turn the switch on. There are waves but they are not overly exciting waves unable to do battle with cousin Sal. We ( a group of weather friends online) like to call him "cousin" because well you know how those difficult cousins are in any large family. Everyone's got one or two or three and you can't live with them and you can't live without em. With any luck they are loyal good friends as well as partners in crime but they have a tendency to take all the air out of the room at a family gathering by reminding everyone about the one thing no one wanted to be reminded of...

This blog should be subtitled...

"Don't stop believing..."

Note far to the right, down low is a wave that looks interesting. That's why we call this "wave watching" in that it starts with a wave. You thought I was gonna say "kiss" didn't you? And that wave has to catch the eye of the right people at the exact same time as the models suddenly close off Lows and show moisture congregating in all the right places with pressures dropping and well you know the rest of the story. Otherwise we spend most of our time studying old hurricanes to learn from the past to deal with the next big hurricane. Patterns, it's all about patterns. Whether we are talking about the news or the weather it's all about patterns. A friend put this image up this morning and in ways he's right especially as he knows waves of all kinds.

He's a smart guy that's a little crazy. He probably doesn't mind being called crazy as much as a "little" crazy as he does things in big ways. But, he's right patterns are known to produce tropical cyclones. When we are really bored suddenly in the tropics after so much food at the "All You Can Eat Tropical Buffet" we start to watch the Canadian model yelling at it a bit "hit me with your best shot, fire away!!!"

Luckily for us crazy types the Canadian never disappoints. 

That's about a week out so don't hold your breath!

The EURO took a vacation to a beach in Majorca.

Watch out for sharks ....by the way.

The GFS long range model shown above in an image taken from www.tropicaltidbits.com shows a nice, large African wave setting sail on a journey across the ocean. That is very long range as in after you ate too much watermelon and drank too much beer over July 4th weekend! It's after a week of intermittent, weak waves trying to form with high pressure areas popping up for no apparent reason and then suddenly the MOTHER LODE... a big, huge, healthy wave riding low trying to avoid SAL. Yes, there has been whispers and chatter on this wave and the beginning of the CV season starting off in early July. Whether you insist on calling it a Cape Verde wave or you try and be politically correct and call it a Cabo Verde wave an African wave that's viable by any name is akin to a perfect rose for people who spend hours tending their garden trying to coax that one long stem beauty into perfection. A long range model is akin to a run on sentence that needs to be edited down or left alone under the guise of "my writing style" and if you are still reading this you must like my writing as...there is nothing happening currently in the Atlantic Tropical Basin.

I could wax poetic on the area of convection near the BOC but I'm really more of an African 

Wave girl who likes to ride a really long wave. I don't want to hear one great song and then leave the party I want to dance all night. I want to wake up in the morning and watch sunrise, then walk the length of Simonton (which makes no sense to you unless you have done it) and then watch the sunset. I want a long tracker, real tropical cyclone vs some sacrificial tropical depression offered to ancient Mayan Gods who refuse to let the season begin without one very mediocre named tropical storm. Please let that one be Don as I'm not up to the nonstop jokes the media will make on Hurricane Don. Let's just not go there. Make Don a fish storm and let's let this be the year that the name Emily is finally retired!!

And that's the state of the tropic this Monday Morning. Keep watching. If anything pops up on the models in the short term that was not there last night or this morning I'll mention it. I'd be very shocked if we don't have a healthy wave with designation after July 4th weekend and so I suggest you all do your July 4th thing and enjoy the end of June and early July before we start rocking and rolling again. The period from July 7th to July 13th looks ripe for trouble. 

I could be right, I could be wrong but the guy who liked that song was a lot of fun to dance with all night long ;)

Besos BobbiStorm

@bobbistorm on Twitter.

Follow me on Twitter 

Ps I'm not a big Billy Joel fan, really more an 80s girl but... 

... you might be the lunatic I'm looking for...

2 great names Billy and Joel

You can't go wrong with those two.

20% Yellow Circle in Caribbean. Why Hurricanes Form in June in the Carib and why they head North into the GOM and BOC. Tropical Birthing Lesson From BobbiStorm ;)

A 20% yellow circle has popped up on the 5 day page at the NHC website. This is the general area we have been watching for days now as models have consistently indicated where something could form. Think of this more as a "formation zone" vs where a tropical, named system will go down the road. There is nothing specific there now to see. The image above looks much like a yellow beach ball sitting on the ledge of Honduras which I speak about often if you read this blog from season to season. It's a zone where June named storms often form and is climatologically favorable.

You can see why in the loop below.

The water warms up fastest there.

Far from cold fronts.

It's a small womb like area.

Protected on most sides.

Yucatan to the North and West.

The ledge of Honduras below.

Cuba to the NE.

West bound tropical waves find this zone easily.

Try to edge outside your scientific box and try to visualize this area in another way. It's almost as if this area is a tropical uterus for June and July Hurricanes. It's a Neptunian womb where low pressure exists over warm water that acts as an incubator for any moist convection that lingers too long within that safe zone. it oozes tropical energy and right there in that protective cove like region where the water is hot on any given day when the shear slows down a bit the steam rises; storms congregate and it becomes the impulse for intensification up to the next level of tropical development. Then, after days of watching you blink your eyes as the area is suddenly blessed with a yellow circle on the NHC site. And, then you keep watching to see what happens and if this yellow circle might grow up and become Bret. Well actually first you wait for a floater to be designated to watch it endlessly for development into Bret. The floater and a designation as an Invest is the next stop in the birth of a tropical entity.

I could explain this in purely mathematical, scientific terms with my expertise in weather history, however then you would not be on my blog would you? I'll leave that to the young guns who develop models and apps and debate meteorological abbreviations on Twitter late at night. I'm trying to paint a picture you can see and feel for why this region is watched this time of year as much as the Bay of Campeche that is another womb like area that tends to easily incubate low pressure and deal with named storms often in June and July. I've been prone to joke that every season we need to sacrifice one name to the BOC before we can move on and deal with true Atlantic Hurricanes. It's historically accurate to expect something in this region to tease us with the possibility of advisories, cones, watches and warnings.

Let's look at this area in parts.

First let's look at the Caribbean above.

You can see the area lower left.

Also note a persistent westbound wave in the Atlantic.

Shear usually blows those early waves apart.

We look up below into the GOM.

The BOC is not ready just yet.

There's a spin South of Nola.

Shear is stills strong.

But it's a compelling loop.

But, nothing really there to see just yet.

Remember this is a 5 day Yellow Circle.

In 5 Days something might develop.

It's popular this year to call this region a gyre. 

A term last used for the missing Malaysian plane..

...and the South Pacific waters.

Never mistake a gyre for circulation is the rule here.

Another rule is that we count about a week to ten days after something forms in the Epac for development in the Caribbean. It's not a hard fast rule and it also depends if something else forms in the Epac. You can only have so much tropical energy in one region, one robs the other to develop and often in the wake of one's departure the other area to the East in the Caribbean pulls itself together.

Nice to be back home in Raleigh. I live in two cities, Miami and Raleigh and though I'm not the biggest fan of Raleigh if you can call the Carolinas your second home you are lucky as it's a beautiful place to be. 

The process of tropical development is slow in June and the models scream development, then whisper development, then they lose development and then they see it again. They are models that are used to forecast development in the long term. Remember that THIS SEASON we have NEW RULES and the NHC can, could and will issue at some point a cone for forecast development. Let's say an area in the GOM close to shore looks to be pulling together say just south of Mobile Alabama. Things percolate fast over warm waters close to shore. IF the models predict development and all agree on a tropical storm quickly ramping up before landfall to a Category 2 Hurricane (as has happened many times) AND the NHC forecasters believe the models are correct and agree on formation they can issue watches and warnings before a named storm is even christened on TWC with headlines and local news breaking into General Hospital to stay tuned for the local news and information on soon to be Tropical Storm Bret. The game is the same but the rules have changed this year and that's a good thing.

The loop below shows where tropical moisture is headed, moisture, precipitation and all those elements that come together to show steering currents or development. A strong ITCZ with moisture flowing west, sliding along the North coast of South America. That moisture finds itself in the yellow circle the NHC has designated for possible development in the 5 day time period. Then watch the moisture from the Epac riding North towards the Yellow Circle area and the BOC. it's a process and you have to wait to see something really form. The area is fed by moisture from both directions and then it sits, lingers over warm water and low pressure begins to develop.

Currently nothing has formed or is about to form.

https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/1000hPa/orthographic=-67.61,17.40,741

I know you want to know about the models.

Last frame on one run.

It shows a Low formed and hooking left.

Landfall south of the border on this run.

http://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/models/?model=ecmwf&region=atl&pkg=mslpaNorm

You can play with the link above. I'm not into discussing model possibilities and differences this morning as much as pointing out the overall possibilities. Just as easily as the above ending to the story of Bret it could also form elsewhere and head elsewhere if and when conditions are suddenly just right. This time of year things spin up fast close in be it the Yucatan coast, Florida coast or along the beach towns of the Gulf of Mexico so stay tuned. Oh..........and it's going to be a messy time for anyone vacationing down by Acapulco. But, it's that time of year so what else is new? I went a bit long on discussion this morning as I am finally home for the first time in two weeks and I really want to set the stage for the story that may unfold in about five days time or less...or more. And, I suppose I owe a few people a real BobbiStorm blog post. I'll update if anything changes and the next blog post will be about model discussion for that area and a few others I'm watching. Have a wonderful day...

Besos Bobbistorm

Follow me on Twitter at @Bobbistorm for faster updates.

Ps The region where the yellow beach ball is sitting covers the spot where divers love to dive. Watch the video below and you'll see why.