Remembering Hurricane Andrew. Hurricane Lane. Invest 95C Very Close to Lane. And a Tropical Wave with Low Chances For Development NOW but Can Things to Change Down the Road Close to SE Coast?

Warning a long blog today.

When I have something to write about in the Atlantic...

.. I can't write long or muse.

Today I'm musing.

Scroll down and find something you like.

Today we remember Hurricane Andrew.

First named storm of the 1992 Hurricane Season.

Slow season.

Tropical Storm Andrew barely survived.

But it did.

Then we barely survived.

The image I have on my wall above my computer.

Good Tweet below.

The last image after the radar blew away at the NHC.

Strong gust...

Today is that day when everyone remembers Andrew.

Well if you lived in Miami you do that's for sure.

Hurricane Andrew.

1992

(Same year Hawaii got hit with Iniki)

I feel like so much began in 1992.

But that's another story I'm not telling here.

Everything changed.

Like some huge meteorological earthquake.

What a storm.

Landfall.

Almost direct hit on Miami... 

... it bobbled just a bit to the South.

Slammed into Homestead and the suburbs.

Spared downtown that direct hit.

But we all struggled through the night together.

And we listened to Bryan Norcross in the dark.

On the radio.........

.......the battery operated radio.

Before the electric went out

...it looked a lot like this:

You know we live in parts of Hurricane Country and we know a hurricane can come and visit in any given year and yet whether it's Florida, the Carolinas or Hawaii life goes on until we have something aiming directly at us and then we all go into Hurricane Prep mode and do what we've got to do. If we are newcomers to an area and not familiar with hurricanes we do what everyone else does. We grab the water, the beer and batteries. And, in places like Key West that rarely gets hit we wonder on the magic that we barely ever get a direct hit and light candles and pray at the Hurricane Grotto and give thanks when the hurricane makes landfall somewhere else. People keep thinking it's odd that Hawaii doesn't get impacted more than it does and rarely does it ever get a direct hit. It's a rock in a huge ocean and it's not hard to hit a rock as the people in Key West can tell you but even then the stubborn WNW bound Hurricane Georges found a way. Lane is finding a way to bring tropical weather to Hawaii today. In the Atlantic we are remembering Hurricane Andrew and relieved there is nothing out there like Harvey or Irma or Maria as everyone is still a bit shell shocked from last year. 

Zero Percent changes for the next 5 days.

Something to watch though down the road.

A possible Home Grown problem?

Still watching the Wave Train...

...and this wave as well.

www.spaghettimodels.com 

Collage above shows today's story.

Lane in the Pacific.

Nothing much in the Atlantic.

Yellow X just off Africa with very low odds.

But we are watching it.

Cold front with another disturbance behind it.

If the wave only looked as strong as that disturbance...

...over land, inland over the US.

... it would keep it's yellow circle longer.

Been this way all summer and continuing...

...as we slide slowly from Summer to Fall.

If you don't believe me my windows are open.

My AC is resting for a few hours... 

There's a breeze coming in from the windows.

Loving it.

Back to Lane and the ongoing coverage.

Why is everyone worried about Hawaii?

"It's not a Cat 5 anymore" people say...

It's getting a rare bit of really tropical weather.

That means flooding, fires and landslides so far.

Also models show different solutions.

Most slide it on by Hawaii....

...as a weaker storm but with much rain.

Time will tell what happens.

There are many models.

Spaghetti Models show many scenarios.

We err on the side of caution always.

You don't need a Cat 3 to have serious damage..

...or loss of life.

Mike explains what's going on in a summary below.

Love his honesty :)

"(which means nothing lol)"

Note even tho NHC gives it low odds.

Something is there.

Will it form there?

Or closer to here?

As in close in to the SE coast?

Inquiring tropical minds are wondering.

Note the yellow closer to the islands below.

Inquiring minds are discussing it.

God I love his maps.

His intelligence is a thing of beauty.

Knowledge of weather history.

Student of the pattern.... 

... as the pattern is what gets you there in the end.

I'm musing here.

Did I mention the cicadas are crazy noisy today??

Above is our African Yellow Area.

It started to come off Red and Purple.

And then it went yellow.

Then it went poofish as seen below.

It kind of shot off at a high latitude.

North of the ITCZ

Maybe it heard this was the Year of the Subtropical?

It's all a process as a pattern sets up.

Wave train suppressed South by a Strong High.

Waves have been flaring up further West.

Keep watching.

Note the lead old wave.

Yeah not much to look at.

But give it a few days.

Time does tell.

I'll always remember when I was a little girl sitting on my father's lap watching the Ed Sullivan show and Peggy Lee came on singing "Is that all there is?" and he said....."I've always liked her." It was an odd moment. She was old, not very beautiful in a traditional way but a voice kind of like a husky angel. Didn't look anything like my mother who often had to take in size 2 gowns to wear to family events. A few years later he showed told me he always thought Anne Miller was wonderful and I began to see a trend here. Either way they were both older and not what I thought of as classically beautiful, yet they were classic great song stylists who obviously had quite a bit of sex appeal in their time.

When looking at the latest wave to roll off the coast of Africa and seem to fizzle fast as it hits the water I wonder to myself, "Is that all there is?"

As for Hurricane Lane that isn't wall there is .... there's always some surprise with Lane, currently Invest 95C in it's Eastern bands........

Cat 2 Lane to the left.

Strong area of convection with a tiny tail is Invest 95C.

Good thoughts on Invest 95C above.

A summary of Hurricane Lane below.

Mind you no one in Hawaii is singing that tune "Is that all there is?" They have been dealing for months with a volcano and it's deadly, destructive lava flow taking out who neighborhoods on it's way down hill to the water where it crackled and put on a whole bigger show than the last few African waves that fizzled when they hit the water. Now they have a hurricane with an odd tag along Invest behind it and a fire has broken out on Maui obviously stirred up fast with stronger than normal winds. No one wants to know what comes next. Landslides and on the Invest behind Lane that might change or rearrange the flow of moisture towards a part of the Islands not expected to get such a strong piece of Lane. Time will tell.

Remember when....

That was May.

A few months back.

Cantore posed the question earlier on TWC during their ongoing coverage as to how the two might interact. Could there be the tiniest subsidence issue holding back the moisture from the hurricane? Could the rain from the hurricane hitting the hot lava......(fill in the blank with your own question) make a difference or ???   Seriously for a real scientist the list could go on forever as rarely do you have two such Earth Science events happen in the same area. Skeptics would just laugh it off and say the hurricane is going to fizzle by the time it "hits Hawaii" and just be a bunch of rain and wind and the usual flooding that occurs from such rain will happen and nothing more. I'm pretty sure that person isn't in Hawaii.  Many geologists love to follow meteorology, but always deny the weather can affect geology in any way; most are what I call closest meteorologists for the obvious reason as they watch weather message boards and slurk around on Reddit. Some question whether heavy rain can help trigger small earthquakes, many say it isn't true but when I lived in California the government was studying an area out in the High Dessert that is always shaking and sometimes gets high rain fall amounts during the very short rainy season to see if there was an increase or decrease in the ongoing tremors. Then there is the whole fracking debate, but I'm not going there. Obviously I'm a closet geologists. Don't tell anyone. (Especially my favorite geologist...)

What is really interesting is that after Lane has fallen apart and the people of Hawaii try to clean up from whatever Lane dished out then Lane will be studied over time by meteorologists to see why this storm was so unique that it took a road many have not taken. It also has that friend known as Invest 95C that formed in it's wake and is being "investigated" to see "what the heck it's doing and how did it get there?" as usually a slow moving tropical system has some upwelling (it's moving slow) and the outflow makes it hard for anything nearby to spin (it has a huge outflow) and yet it's there. It's actually very reminiscent of the second center of convection of Matthew, but that was a part of the actual system not a system in it's tail with it's own designation on NRL. It would be like a small comet showing up in the tail of Hailey's Comet. Yeah, I like astronomy too. Things like this will be studied over time under the greater umbrellas of "Hurricane Lane" and as always we learn and we getting better as knowledge is power.

Lane with the little area of strong convection in it's tail.

Matthew with it's odd larger double center.

It wasn't really a "center"

It was a second area of deep convection.

Not the same but we remember Matthew well.

As for Lane.... 

Category 2, 110 MPH moving North very slowly at 5 MPH as of 11 AM on Friday morning. As for me I'm going to shut the window soon if the cicadas don't stop singing. I'm not a fan. But loving the last cooler days of Summertime before the heat returns later this weekend. I'm chilled, resting a bit, writing while the eggplant is cooking in the oven for Baba Ganoush and enjoying just musing a bit. The only cones in my part of the world have frozen yogurt in them. Nothing I need to convey but somethings I want to convey.

My mother loved Lena Horne. My parents obviously had different tastes in both music and pretty much everything else. They had a long marriage and a good sense of humor that probably kept them together. That and my mother made various eggplant dishes for my father every Shabbos as it was his favorite vegetable. My mother was a singer when she was younger doing appearing as a featured coloratura soprano and sometimes sneaking out to sing with a Band when she was way underage but dressed up with lots of make up. She loved music. 

As for me I'm waiting for the leaves to start to fall and turn colors and it's not too cold to go out and the heat has evaporated by the progression of time and seasons moving swiftly in this region from one season to another. Fall in the Carolinas is a long, beautiful season even if you are not a fan or orange, red or Peter Yellow. (Yeah in a mood today) but it's still so beautiful. 

Have a very wonderful weekend.

Not sure yet what I'm doing.

Going with the flow....

Seeing what feels right.

Some weather and some football... 

And listening to music. 

A song I love and can't stop dancing too.

Besos BobbiStorm
@bobbistorm on Twitter


Ps...    The Bottom Line here is that Hurricane Lane like Peggy Lee when I saw her singing on that show isn't as photogenic as she was a few days ago. The shape of a Category 5 hurricane is gone and yet the dangers that Hawaii faces from fire and rain are very present. The ever changing images of Hurricane Lane are still beautiful even if far away in a different ocean.  Yet this particular beautiful Pacific hurricane is endangering the lives of people in the State of Hawaii not missing the islands as most of them do. So just because it weakened as predicted and will take a track away from the islands most likely - it has inherent dangers still present that people in Hawaii that present a clear and present danger. Being repetitive here on purpose. No laughing matter. Meanwhile I'll be looping while I cook tonight's Friday night Sabbath dinner and dancing around in the kitchen to the music. Music from today and yesterday, but mostly today.

http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mimic-tpw/natl/anim/latest72hrs.gif

Hurricane Lane. Will It or Won't It Hit Hawaii? Even a Close Call Could Cause Serious Problems. ATLANTIC BASIN Slowly Coming to Life. I'm Still Thinking Aug 25th Give or Take to See Switch Flipped

Newest update lowers intensity 5 MPH to Cat 4.

Track remains very similar.

Concerns are real for different dangers.

I waited for the newest update to come out before posting this blog. I'm not going to make other changes as whatever the NHC says now will change a bit in three hours even though for the most part the forecast will verify. They have done a good job warning the people who live in the path of weather from Hurricane Lane to prepare as they always do. They do NOT control the weather so they cannot make Lane miss Hawaii but they can do their best to prepare and give people warnings to take timely precautions. I may update later this evening as things evolve. But for now suffice to say that they are getting ready for Hurricane Lane, storm chasers are on their way and the NHC recon is on top of it as to gathering as much information as possible to constantly update their forecast and fine tune it in real time. As someone who lived on Miami Beach during Hurricane Andrew I can tell you personally that when the NHC downgraded it five mph back to Cat 4 before landfall I was not impressed much nor did I feel any safer because it's sustained winds were five miles per hour less. Later it was analyzed and changed back to a Category 5 at landfall. Andrew was a different storm making a direct hit on Miami Dade County, however the comparisons are valid in both size and intensity. Hopefully Hawaii will get lucky and only get "weather" from Lane and nothing more but it's too soon to know for sure what will happen. The rest of the images and discussion are from the earlier advisory. Not much changed.

Newest Cone below.

Always watch the trend.

So far the trend has been offshore.
But while in the cone you need to prepare.

Things can change fast with hurricanes.

Lane.... Hurricane Lane.

All about Hurricane Lane today.

Note towards the bottom I discuss the Atlantic.

And why we need to watch the wave train soon.

Things are slowly progressing to go "boom" soon there!

I've avoided talking to much on Hurricane Lane as I'm not an expert in that part of the Pacific and there has been a huge amount of hype online as the alliteration of "HURRICANE LANE AIMED TO HIT HAWAII" seems too hard for people looking for good Click Bait links to ignore. Note it "HITS HAWAII" vs "SLAMS INTO HAWAII" is what I mean by alliteration. A Cyclone would "SLAM INTO SIAM" by example. Since newspapers first hit the new stands writers have been trying to make up headlines that sell! Nothing really changes just because we get our news online.

Let's face it we all love the dream of a big Hawaii vacation during the depths of winter with memories of watching Hawaiian Eye before a new generation began watching Hawaii Five-0. To be honest I'm  sure a lot of baby boomers watch that as the Millenials watch Netflix and Roku and Sling, however Hawaii is always a tropical background for a beautiful story be it drama or romance as it's tropical beauty always grabs our attention.

Luckily throughout history hurricanes usually miss Hawaii completely though often they have had problems with flooding from hurricanes that came perilously close enough to create damage and cause life threatening floods. Sometimes, when we get into a certain pattern Hawaii becomes harassed by hurricanes that seem not to follow the game plan and insist on making landfall in Hawaii. The list below will show you the many hurricanes that came near by with little damage and just heavy rain. Then you get into a few years where a pattern prevailed that was different from the norm and Hawaii was affected by multiple hurricanes even in the same year or back to back years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Hawaii_hurricanes

1980s caused some problems.

1985 especially.

Note I've said 1985 is an analog year for this year.

It's playing out in Hawaii.

Let's see what happens later in the Atlantic Basin.

1990s below show a rare story of landfalling storms.

1992

Georgine

Iniki

Orlene

Again here's the link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Hawaii_hurricanes

From the site above with reference to 1992

"

• September 1992: Hurricane Iniki caused more damage than any other hurricane to affect Hawaiʻi since records began. It hit the island of Kauai as a Category 4 on September 11. Iniki caused $3.1 billion in damage, mainly to Kauai.^[23] It remains the costliest East/Central Pacific hurricane on record. Six died as a result. Iniki brought winds of 140 miles per hour (230 km/h).^[22]
• September 1992: Hurricane Orlene struck Hawaii as a tropical depression causing heavy rainfall, washing out roads, shortly after Iniki ravaged the island.^[22]"

I cut and pasted the part about 1992 as it really is the benchmark year in the memory of many who remember Hurricane Iniki. As Jim said on TWC recently it made landfall during the filming of Jurassaic Park. Funny how Cantore and I have the same memories. Many remember Iniki that way, especially if you knew someone who was on the location shot affected by the rare landfall of Iniki. I heard it was more exciting than the actual movie in ways. They went there to bring dinosaurs to life and the tropics came to life. Life has a funny way of surprising you when you least expect it.

I really cannot say whether Lane will or won't hit Hawaii directly. The NHC seems to have low confidence in the long range part of the forecast yet wrote excellent discussion this morning trying to highlight the dangers and probabilities and as always they will update in real time. It would be easy for me to go with the law of averages and say that Lane will stay to the South of the Island Chain. The trend has been more and more in that direction as previously the Cone showed it moving up through the Islands. Basically Lane is tracing the High Pressure much like strong hurricanes do in the Atlantic and where and when the ridge breaks down tells the actual story of where and when the hurricane makes the move and how fast it makes that turn.  Add in cooler waters near by and you have a difficult forecast where a hurricane will often do what it can to stay alive. No I am not throwing in drama here or personalizing the storm... hurricanes more away from high pressure and towards low pressure as they need the low pressure the way most plants need sunshine and water.

Salient part of discussion.

The Key Points!!

The always popular cone.

The previous cone is shown below.

It's a good trend away from direct landfall.

But only a trend and things change often.

So we keep watching.

The world is watching.

@iCylone is chasing the other two for a 2 in 1 chase.

Note how small Lane is in comparison above.

Let me say this lastly.

There is a trio of hurricanes in the Pacific.

While Lane is a Cat 4 currently.

It is size wise the smallest.

That could help Hawaii.

Tightly wound storms can cause localized damage.

If Lane stays that way...

..or does it come unwound and undone?

Keep watching.

A real drama.

@hurricanetrack on Twitter

Mark Sudduth will be there to record whatever happens.

He's really great and capturing statistics and useful info.

Stay tuned....

As for the Atlantic.

There has been a slight change in there as well.

Moisture has been surging across the ITCZ

A large tropical wave that does not form will do that.

We have had several. 

The next set of waves arrive in a better environment.

Less shear, warmer water and moisture laden air.

@dabuh as always gives great visual and musical coverage.

For someone like me that's like...

...getting lemon meringue pie for dessert ;)

There's a reason we call it a wave train.......

He's also watching the Pacific.

Isn't Cimaron a great name?

I love it personally.

Stay tuned.

I'd show some loops and sats but......

...they are having a problem with them today.

Very, very annoying.

Extremely annoying.

I feel like we have less options of late than before.

And those options keep going down.

I'm mentioning this because...

Some people are posting old pictures online.

And not aware they are doing so.

Nothing much gets past Cranky.

Nice of him to share and remind people.

Waiting for the Atlantic to come alive in a "normal" "average" year is a slow process whereby SAL begins to get exhausted and loses it's grip on the Main Development Region where it sucks the life out of all the really beautiful early waves. Then the shear begins to lessen as the waves begin to roll west into less of a head wind. The water warms up in late August and September it's usually just the right temperature to ignite a fire under those waves rolling off in the wave train we talk about so often. Note any waves that make it across under these healthier conditions are prone to blow up fast in very warm water over a sweet spot close to the coast. This can happen off the Florida coast near a dangling cold front that soon went stationary or in the Gulf of Mexico where the water currently is red hot warm. As pressures at the surface begin to drop waves that did not develop in the MDR find a place they prefer to actually develop close in as did Katrina, Betsy and Andrew. Having a robust set up in the Atlantic does create a year like 2017 that delivered us Irma and Maria, however having a good set up in the Atlantic any time allows waves to stay together and not die and find their strength closer in and also sometimes delivers hurricanes to our shores. It's not an either or set up, it's just the way the tropics work and one way or another Mother Nature finds a way to shuffle the energy from the equator up to the poles by way of hurricanes. 

It's not coincidence that the switch for the cold fronts to start being more viable is also the same time as when hurricanes begin to start rolling, rolling west. Currently the westbound hurricanes are in the Pacific. That could change over the next few weeks. Until then watch any cold front that makes it into the Gulf of Mexico or slides off the Outer Banks or congregates as a stationary front off the East Coast for possible Home Grown action. Stay tuned.

Til then think on how awesome the study of weather and hurricane is in that it brings together people from so many different backgrounds who have different perspectives and from them all we learn so much more by growing, sharing, collaborating and learning something new every day, every year. Diversely different and yet all focused on one thing... meteorology and trying to give the public the best information in a timely manner to give them a warning to prepare for the storm. Music is often like that as well.

Besos BobbiStorm

@bobbistorm on Twitter

Ps As much as I often say "not my ocean" when it comes to covering Pacific hurricanes it is true that Hurricane Lane seems to be historic and may get the job done that Hurricane Hector did not accomplish. The truth is that Hurricane Recon began in the PACIFIC during WW2 when the US troops found out that the biggest weapon the Japanese had that put our troops in danger was in fact intense hurricanes they were unfamiliar with and needed to find a way of keeping track of ...so they began surveillance of those Pacific storms. After the war with a surplus of planes and pilots looking to fly this morphed into the program that we know know as "Hurricane Recon" so it's worth taking a look back at that while wondering if Hurricane Lane can do what Hurricane Hector failed to do.

A look back at Hurricane Hector.

Hurricane Lane.

Mike has some great loops on Lane.

He also has some radar sites up as well.

You can watch in real time.

Links below to how Hurricane Hunters got their start.

https://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/wwii/articles/airrecon.aspx

http://navalaviationnews.navylive.dodlive.mil/2011/12/15/storm-hunters/

Aletta Forming in the EPAC? Could Alberto Be Far Behind? 2018 Hurricane Season Starting Early... TWC Goes into Tropical Update Mode

Up close shown above.

Wider picture below.

Link on www.spaghettimodels.com

The NHC has their own way of doing things and we wait to see what they may or may not say later today. Why aren't they saying something earlier? It's very far away, actually, over a thousand miles off the coast of Mexico and the sun has not even begun to rise on that part of the world yet. Not your normal early May Epac storm that forms close in off the coast of Panama.

Luckily we have many ways to see 90E

Water gets colder out there. 

It has a small window for development.

More on that later.

Closer to the East Coast.

This area isn't going away anytime soon.

Always watch the tail end of fronts.

Always but especially in May.

Pic above yesterday.

Below today.

So true.

Stalled out and hanging around.

A set up for possible trouble.

Names for the 2018 Atlantic Season below.

Down below watching swirls.

Just for fun.

It's May I'm allowed to be funny..

..and just enjoy a weather loop.

Cute little swirl I'm watching.

Like great wall art....

Sub Polar Something.

There are now 12 fissures.

This is not a lava flow down the side of a volcano as much as fissures suddenly forming beneath a random home and oozing up lava that pushes and melts everything in it's path. Trees explode as they are heated to some of the highest temperatures on earth that are moving the way a strong Haboob moves across the desert, a dust storm in Oklahoma except here they are sometimes called "curtains of fire" on the move...... 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fissure_vent

And to add to the geological discussion here a 4.5 earthquake occurred in California today. Seems Mother Nature is rocking and rolling this year. 

On a lighter note.

Beautiful food art and recipes here below.

https://www.instagram.com/weather_foodie/

When waking up for the 5 AM advisory package...

...my day starts early during the Hurricane Season.

Always looking for ideas.

On the fashion front it seems ...

...Schiaparelli Pink is in this year!

Pretty sure if women were in charge of the colors at the NHC we'd get a bit more creative and less boring than yellow, orange and red. Nice little Hi Low Hemline dress Stephanie Abrams was wearing today. Kind of looked like an updated Can Can dress made for Tomorrow Land at Disney which should really have a Weather World...   

Besos BobbiStorm

@bobbistorm on Twitter

Ps Lightening this dark volcanic discussion with some music for Mike: