A writer and a tropical muse. A funky Lubavitcher who enjoys watching the weather, hurricanes, listening to music while enjoying life with a sense of humor and trying to make sense of it all!
Friday, April 19, 2019
Hurricane Michael Upgraded to Category 5
Image I screenshot of Hurricane Michael before landfall.
Category 5 Hurricane Michael.
Rarely have I ever seen an eye look so real.
The big news today in the world of Tropical Meteorology is that as expected it might be... Hurricane Michael has been upgraded in retrospect after much analysis to have been a Category 5 Hurricane. A very rare event to have a Category 5 Hurricane that close to land and even rarer to have a Category 5 Hurricane make landfall. Everything has been changed now, all those lists of the top five strongest hurricanes to ever make landfall in the Atlantic Basin. And remember again this was a hurricane season that was forecast by many to be relatively quiet due to cooler than warmer temperatures in the breeding grounds of the Mid Atlantic. This is an excellent example to remind you this season when you read headlines and see that mitigating factors may suppress hurricane activity. They are academic discussions and nothing more because hurricanes happen in real time and only in the rear view mirror can we really know what any said hurricane season is after all the storms have ended and the post analysis has been finished. Again the NHC always goes over the storms after the season and decides whether a downgrade or rare upgrade is in order and in this case Hurricane Michael that seemed to almost take on human like features doing things that no hurricane has ever done before... making landfall in that location that late in the Hurricane Season the hurricane with the eye that seemed so real, so intense has not been upgraded to Category 5.
Obviously the excitement in the meteorology community is real and despite today's wicked weather traipsing across the Deep South and East Coast.... everyone stopped staring at radars to talk Hurricane Michael. The picture I screenshot from my computer shown above is from the blog post when Michael was intensifying and concerns on destruction at landfall were becoming more real, more obvious and more terrifying. Sadly that terror played out and the destruction was as expected if not even stronger than originally thought it would be. You can see the destruction yourself below.
I'm short on time today as I am busy with preparations for Passover as is my family and many of my friends as well as some of my friends who are busy with preparations for Easter Sunday. It's just that time of year to be honest. As much as we worry on climate change to be honest tornadoes and Easter Weekend have come together too many times to list; the two that come to mind are shown below. I'm hoping and praying the weather will come and go without much trouble but wishing doesn't always make it so.
As for me home in Miami after a nice road trip South.
Today is Easter Sunday and Passover for many people reading this so going to talk a bit about the seasons and holidays. The weather is in general okay, however you still need to be on guard in some parts of the country for severe weather to blow up as we are headed into record warm temperatures in many areas. Nothing like the Tornado outbreak in 2000, but somewhere it might rain on your Easter Parade.
This post today is about the seasons on parade. The march of time, of humanity, of Uncle George and Great Aunt Samantha and possibly your second cousin once removed Melinda who shows up at your family dinner totally wasted talking on Wicca and you wonder "oh my gosh where are her pills??" Someone told me once they had an Aunt who thought she was a lighthouse and occasionally climbed onto the roof and stood there trying to ward off ships from the reefs. That was sweet of her, but they lived in Nebraska so.... well....yeah we have all been there. You fall asleep in Church or at the family Passover Seder. Awkward.. But life does go on even if you have to change churches or find a different family to go to next year for the seder..
Sometimes it's an experience you remember forever...
Whatever holiday you are celebrating or not ... enjoy the day, enjoy the seasons, enjoy your family or friends or quiet time. Perhaps you have dogs or cats or a fish. Maybe you have a fake fish.... whatever rocks your boat. Pray for what you want, desire, need and remember to breathe. To everyone there is a season and I sincerely pray you are enjoying yours.
Seasons:
For some people the holidays feel like this song above...........
Seasons come and go like the holidays. Each holiday is layered upon another holiday memory that adds up in our brain like some colliding collage of good times and bad times. Happy holiday meals and quiet conversation and times when that strange lady who married into the family spoils the fun or Uncle Gary wakes up at the table and starts trying to relive some wild battle from World War 2 and there are times we pray there is no World War 3 around the corner.
The seasons turn... time turns.... weather seasons turn from one to another. Winter, Spring, Summer... then comes Hurricane Season.
Old timers remember a time when people put on their Easter Bonnet and took to going to parade their clothes like it was a fashion show for Coachella now days.
Times change and yet climate doesn't really. Yes, we move from Ice Age to Warming and one thing can throw it possibly out of balance (meteor, nuclear war, invasion of the body snatchers maybe) but we roll with the punches. You raise the house up if you think the street will flood. You move inland. You build a bunker, you make love, you sip coffee and try not to put the news on....
You hide from Crazy Old Aunt Mary who wants to lecture you on life and you pretend Peter Rabbit is not hiding in the bushes with a basket of Easter Eggs that are some sort of practical joke. You lay low or you put on your Easter Bonnet and stride through the park while looking for portals while playing Ingress or looking for a Geocache somewhere in a forested dell. Or you pray like crazy in Church for the people out playing Ingress on Easter Sunday.
On Miami Beach in 1927 people gathered together to pray to have a good year, to rebuild the structure of life after the 1926 Hurricane the September before. They went on.... they prayed for a new future stronger than the past one that was blown away and they started over. As a good friend likes to say pragmatically "life goes on" and perhaps in a way Easter Sunday is part of that process. Life goes on, the trees come to life and they rededicate their lives to God, to their family and to their future. It's about looking back and looking forward.
Life goes on and on and on (well we pray it does) and there is always that chance, that dream of tomorrow being better than today. Of grabbing the brass ring or catching the girl you always loved or finding the perfect man or the perfect wave (not the first wave ever ...) and being blessed with an incredible sunrise on Easter Sunday for many is like winning the spiritual lottery.
In Europe after World War 2 people got together and made a Passover Seder. It's human nature to go on, pick up the pieces and move on or rebuild. To bless the new season, new growth, young love and to watch the waves breaking onto the beach as the golden sun slowly rises from it's night time Neptunian Mists hidden away while we sleep .....waiting to wake up and start again at sunrise.
Passover is about freedom....
After freedom there is a measure of freedom trust me. We go back to life as it was .... or perhaps as we wish to paint the future. How do you want to paint your future and who do you want in that future and do you want mountains or beaches or both?
Besos BobbiStorm
@bobbistorm on twitter... I'd say follow me but I'm in hiding mode right now ;)
Ps.... Dear Stephen I'm sure that Barbara is out there somewhere in an Easter Bonnet!
Dry Season VS Wet Season. Monsoons Then Hurricanes? Flow of Time... Time Keeps Flowing.
Random thoughts on random weather events and the coming Hurricane Season. In truth the "Hurricane Season" is a collection of events that really begin with the "May Monsoons" in South Florida. The set up of the Bermuda High and the movement of pools of moisture that pop up and appear out of seemingly nowhere in the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic. There are bigger long term factors at play here, however they do not appear on daily satellite imagery nor do they catch our attention.
But we go online suddenly and see color appearing in the Gulf of Mexico and near the Bahamas. Down near South America a blob of red readies itself to depart into the Eastern Pacific. People in South Florida begin whining about the lack of rain and drought and fires burn out of control in parts of Florida in need of moisture. Normally... Mother Nature hears the cries for rain and sends a drought buster with heavy, flooding rain in Mid May. Usually when the system works. Currently the High is anchored over Florida and the dry Southeast US and there is a weak, anchored Bahama Low that will in theory go out to sea. Welcome to 2017 a year that has yet to be reckoned with tropically speaking.
A lot of moisture and "energy" is caught in that Low.
Official comments from the NHC are below:
You know that old saying....
It's just part and parcel of the flow of this time of year.
Spring in Florida means they are playing baseball, but not football. The Spring Breakers have arrived, but snow birds have not left yet. Weather poets wax poetically on ocean currents, salinity and patterns in the atmosphere predicting a quieter than normal season while Mother Nature laughs and plans a drought buster somewhere that will wake everyone up.
People celebrate Passover or Easter as holidays that arrive at the seasonal mark awaken us to the spirituality of nature unfolding in not so subtle ways before our eyes. People pack their winter clothes away in parts of the country and in South Florida they go on partying enjoying the mild weather before the humidity that brings consistent rain back into the region. Snow is up where it belongs to misquote an old sappy song.
It's a process, it happens slowly over time.
And then one day there's an Invest.
An advisory issued on a weak tropical disturbance.
Location: Miami, Raleigh, Crown Heights, Florida, United States
Weather Historian. Studied meteorology and geography at FIU. Been quoted in Wall Street Journal, Washington Post & everywhere else... Lecturer, stormchaser, writer, dancer. If it's tropical it's topical ... covering the weather & musing on life. Follow me on Twitter @ https://twitter.com/#!/BobbiStorm
