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.
Hurricane Oscar Our October Surprise in the Tropical Atlantic. 8th Hurricane of the 2018 Hurricane Season. Oh....and RED SOX WON THE WORLD SERIES!!
Hurricane Oscar formed tonight a bit ahead of the original forecast and has been doing what it wants most of the day. Moving fast to the West, though that is expected to be halted at some point down the road before being swung back out to sea. It is also forecast to become a 100 MPH Hurricane and personally I think that may be conservative but as always time will tell. The advisory is below along with some discussion worth noting and the ever popular "cone" that shows the track. To be honest this was a done deal since earlier this evening. I've had one eye on Oscar and one eye on the Red Sox the last few hours. Oscar became very photogenic after a difficult beginning as it evolved into a hurricane.
Weekend Weather. Tropics? Taking a Break of Finished? Coastal Storm... GOM. Questions Abound.
Convection in the Caribbean.
Rain lingering along the Texas coast...
... continuing to flow in with a flood alert.
Cold weather clouds off the East coast.
Everyone wants to know what's happening with the weather this weekend and next week but some are wondering on the tropics and others are wishing for a snow storm. It's that time of year we start watching the Troposphere to see what may be coming down our way.
Cranky watches up above.
He lives up north.
DaBuh watches down below.
He lives Down South.
In reality we watch the troposphere...
...because what develops there and dips down...
... becomes the steering currents in the tropics.
What goes around comes around.
DaBuh loves to say that...
...it's true.
It can lift a hurricane up towards landfall...
...or it can sweep one away from landfall.
Currently there are no hurricanes forecast to form.
This time of year things can pop up fast so we watch.
...the AC isn't on that's just cool air getting in here.
Got my velvet sweat pants from Victoria's Secrets on :)
Short sleeve top in a matching color.
We are moving bit by bit into Autumn.
Took off the hot pink nail polish...
..tried a new color Burnished Bronze.
It looked like a Fall Shade ;)
Patchy frost possible on Monday...
Brrr for Bronze.
As for the tropics until that flow stops flowing...
We need to watch the Caribbean.
And any stalled out cold fronts that linger.
That means the GOM and off the FL coast as well.
Late October and early November can produce hurricanes.
On this day in history... Wilma did the Yucatan.
A few days later she did Florida.
She caught a cold front.
Some people stop watching the tropics after the first good cold front goes through Florida and simply say things like "it's all zonal" and what they mean is if they aren't getting any huge CV Hurricanes they don't care and aren't chasing any subtropical or hybrid storm. I'm not that person. I watch with one eye on the tropics and one eye up at the North Pole. No ... not looking for Santa though might be wondering what Superman is doing up there hiding out but he's probably just enjoying the snow. Everyone wants to know about snow or a hurricane, but the reality is that weather happens in between in places that wish they could get rid of the weather. Texas for example is so stuck in a wet pattern and that's common this time of year some years. Caribbean moisture is still moving up towards the Gulf or Mexico and there's much rain but not a lot of spinning going on. No name storms wash out bridges, destroy WHOLE small communities built in the cheaper low lands close to where people work and they get no press. But tropical destinations along the coasts that have destruction get lots of press. You could say it's not the same but it is and it's a matter of perspective. If your community was washed away by a Flash Flood that wasn't even on the radar the night before when you were decorating for Halloween and putting together a few things for Christmas presents it's the same devastating, horrific catastrophe. Oh you heard a neighborhood of trailers were destroyed so you think somehow that it's not as big as a beach front home that looks like the beach front home you always dreamed of...
A statistic I read this morning said that 30 to 50% of the people in the path of Hurricane Michael live within the poverty range. That might be higher in the part of North Carolina flooded out by rain from Hurricane Florence. To the people who live in the trailer parks and work in the farmland in Florida, Georgia, Carolinas and Texas from the No Name storm they lost their homes and their jobs. I was told it takes a good fifteen years for a pecan orchard in Texas to really produce, that's a long term disaster for people in those parts and I can bet you money that in five years Panama City will look more beautiful than it ever was before Michael. I know because we went through it in Homestead, some of the poorer areas looked like beautiful suburbs three to five years later as money flowed into the area in the same way devastating hurricanes winds blew in with Andrew. Money flows after a hurricane into some areas and other areas money creeps in and the towns barely come back and the people who lived and worked there pick up and move away. Just inland about 30 minutes from Myrtle Beach or less there are tobacco farms, cotton farms and farms that grown winter wheat and the landscape is filled with small trailer communities on the edges of the farms and small towns that all look the same in that they have a few old beautiful buildings and some store somewhere has been changed into a Chinese Buffet. Drive the back roads someday they are beautiful and an education about what it takes to make a country like the USA. Not everyone lives in the cities and not everyone is rich and owns a beach home or a ski chalet but life is way better here than it is in most places across the world. If your home, trailer or beachfront dream house was destroyed your world was destroyed. Some have good insurance or money put away and will rebuild there or somewhere else and others will simply pick up and move on to some other town where they can make a living and send their kids to school.
Or take a drive somewhere out in the country and look at the Fall Foliage or drive down to the coast and spread some money about encouraging life to get back to normal along the coast of North Carolina. Not sure what I am doing this weekend. Maybe staying close to home and watching football or take a long drive somewhere or maybe go to the Farmer's Market for fresh Fall produce that is bountiful this time of year round here. Time will tell. I'll update the blog should anything happen worth updating. If the models start to come on as fast as Jack Frost is nipping at our door I'll post some information on them. Have a great weekend if you are a Red Sox fan and I am .... you'll be wearing your colors and having a smile on your face. I'd play the Fenway Park video but this series shows we can win anywhere even on the road and we have done that before haven't we? I just realized I have a charm not just a bunch of tee shirts and a way too big oversized tank top I sleep in sometimes.
Besos BobbiStorm.
@bobbistorm on Twitter
If you aren't a big Red Sox fan here's another video below.
Ps. Going to put this here and let y'all think on it a bit and let it sink in that being a mother can be empowering and doesn't mean you can't "have a life" and continue doing what you love. Most 1st world and many 2nd and 3rd world countries have had women leaders and they were often at the top of their game without having to worry how to balance careers. Women in both political parties work in Washington while raising children and even being active grandmothers. I like to think God gives mothers an extra measure of strength especially in today's world where mother's work full time and have to balance being a mother and working in careers from Publix to being an Ambassador at the United Nations. Being a mother takes a lot of navigating and often but not always the father's do their share making it all work. But either way... she does a good job and makes a good point. So this is for any young girls out there... you CAN be a METEOROLOGIST and you can work on air or behind the scenes and you can be anything you want to be you just got to work at it hard as success takes hard work and sometimes a measure of luck. Good luck!
Eye of Hurricane Michael... Video... Thoughts on the Eye of a Hurricane.
Remember that image?
I posted it from a larger posted.
it's not doctored in any way.
Just cut it down to the eye.
And indeed it looked like a person's eye.
Michael's eye.
Below in Black and White.
Moving towards landfall.
Perfection.
Jim Williams was in the eye.
The edge of the eye.
It got quiet and calm.
He reached for the car door to get out...
...it got really windy and things went flying.
I laughed.
Sorry... I wasn't worried about him.
He's smart, very smart and cautious.
Was just kind of funny to me.
The eye of Michael, plain and simple. I decided it needed it's own blog post and one I could refer to or find for myself easily to remember. Impressive video. I've been in the EYE and it's something you never forget. Surreal in ways as suddenly after a symphony of meteorological noise during the first part of the hurricane that is one part debris hitting into things, trees falling down nearby, the roar... the unmistakable roar of the hurricane wind louder at times and the slamming of rain and objects caught in strong squalls and then suddenly after hours it stops...and it's quiet and the blue sky comes out above and if you are luck you can see the sun shining down. Surreal but very real. You almost feel giddy after all the noisy, dangerous drama the sun is shining and there are blue skies. Sometimes you see the edge of the eye wall but usually that comes at you fast with the return of the cacophony of horrific noise and the need to once again hunker down until the second half of the hurricane has passed on somewhere else. You almost feel you are imagining the quiet, still calm of the eye but you remember it forever.
The Eye on Earthnull.
The center... very clear and visible.
Amazingly the eye or the "center" of Michael was still going strong as it moved into North Carolina. So now I'll leave you with video and some thoughts to wonder on and to remember the fury of the eye wall the surrounds the eye where the most dangerous, deadly winds are and should you ever have the chance to be in the eye of a hurricane....... remember stay near your safe spot and get back in it fast as the back side of the eye comes back with a fury stronger usually than the front side of the eye.
After telling us he "knew what he was doing" going to a friend.
And then.......
WHAM...
The wind picked up, the sky turned dark that moment.
It got very very very windy.
And he came running back down the street to the house.
I smiled.
Yeah......"Thank you God"
Good timing.
And we locked the door.
Bolted it.
Pushed the china cabinet back in front of it.
And hunkered down til it was over.
Some eyes are easier than others.
Some eyes are longer than others.
But then the second half of the storm returns.
This is when many people die actually.
They venture out to go check on their friend...
....To check on damage.
... maybe they can repair something fast.
The 1926 Great Miami Hurricane was a huge hurricane with a huge eye and it was moving slowly. It was mean and sneaky as the eye coincided with sunrise and daylight and to people not aware of what a hurricane was they thought they had made it safely through the dark night and the storm was gone. They got in their Model T Fords and drove away from safety across the bridge into Downtown Miami to check on their stores. Old timers begged them not to go but they were sure the storm was gone... the storm surge came back down the river, the wind blew and many were blown away. On Miami Beach people tried to get back to Miami and their cars were swept away as they tried to get back across the causeway to Miami to relative safety. During the eye you go out, look around and don't go very far from where ever your safe place is .... but in 1926 before satellite imagery and radar people didn't know where the weather was and didn't understand what a hurricane was and people died when the fierce second half of the eye raced back over Miami and Miami Beach. It happens in every storm, no matter how much we know now and how much information we have it's human nature to venture out and look about and try to check on a neighbor or a relative or run down the block to a friend's house and we think we can do it fast before the eyewall returns.
Turn your sound up loud.
This is Jim Leonard who passed away a few years ago.
A legend truly in Hurricane Chasing.
The second half of Hurricane Charley.
I leave you with this because everyone always complains about Hurricane Charley. In any Chat Room or discussion on Facebook Live when Mike is talking people always ask him about how "sure" they are and mention Hurricane Charley. For those who went through the eye of Hurricane Charley ... those who thought they had lower chances of being in the eye than other places and faced a hurricane stronger than they expected they never ever forget Hurricane Charley. Every hurricane that makes it into the Eastern Gulf of Mexico reminds them of Charley and they worry that once again they will find themselves facing the wrath of a strong, powerful Category 4 Hurricane. Turn the sound up and you may understand why.....
Besos BobbiStorm
Follow me @bobbistorm on Twitter
Ps... With extreme admiration for those who took the videos and gathered the data... those I know online and those I am friends with in person and know well. For those who have been through the eye of a hurricane as I have and some of us have been through more than one eye... each is different, the power and force of nature when it is on a rampage is never forgotten.
Leslie Makes Landfall near Portugal and Spain After Being Downgraded Just Prior to Landfall. 1842 Also Had a Hurricane Hit Spain... After 2 Similar Strong Hurricanes in NC and FL and a Quiet MDR. Thoughts on the NHC CONE and a 1970 Datsun.
Leslie made Landfall.
I know.
I can't believe it either....
So many different cones the last few days.
One of them got it right though.
(I'll discuss the yellow area in the MDR in next post)
See that little red dot on the top right of the page?
It says LE...
That's Leslie impacting the Portugal and Spain.
Here I'll make a close up for you...
Maybe it changed it's name to Lee?
Anyway...
It went extratropical suddenly.
That's all that's left of it.
It still had 75 MPH but it was no longer a "hurricane"
I suppose we can continuing saying Spain didn't get hit.
Just slammed by a wild storm with 75 MPH winds.
Hmnnn.
It's possible that they may see more weather down the road.
That's the track for Michael.
Maybe France won't get a tropical storm.
Wherever the remnants go they will be strong.
Storms that travel that fast don't fall apart quickly.
I'll update tomorrow with information on what happened.
But I'm pretty sure it was one stormy mess.
So you think Spain doesn't have hurricanes?
They do.
They have.
This is an animation of the 1842 Hurricane Season
It's a best guess based on DATA.
Note what is missing?
Nothing forming in the MDR.
Different but similar landfall locations to this year.
NC got slammed.
Florida Panhandle got slammed.
Weak systems into Texas
Florida Keys into Panhandle.
A storm in October goes to Spain.
This is what I mean by history repeats.
You learn from history.
No huge Caribbean storms.
MDR was quiet it seems.
Other areas were not.
The real reason I wanted to come on tonight was to talk on the 1842 hurricane that hit Spain which may or may not have fulfilled the rules of the NHC but it goes down in history as a landfalling Hurricane. Why this is so important other than random information is that the 1842 Hurricane Season bears an uncanny resemblance to the 2018 Hurricane Season.
In Alphabetical order are the locations that dealt with tropical weather in 1842. The video below is what it would look like IF we had satellite imagery and cones out the wazoo. Note how similar the tracks are and remember this year Texas got hit by a few crazy "no name" storms that were worse than some of our named storms. They had the impacts of what would have been a strong named storm without the name including serious flooding.
In 1842 NC had one of it's worst storms in history.
Massive flooding, towns destroyed.
It's always in the history of NC storms books.
There are no reviews.
Remind me to write a review.
It's an awesome book.
From Google below:
In September a storm was around the Florida Keys.
The Florida Panhandle had a severe tropical storm later.
Ludlum the best of the best early mets..
Discounted it being another storm near Texas and believed...
...it was a continuation of the storm down in the Keys.
Sound familiar?
Gordon?
In October.......
A storm came up out you know where.
And made landfall in the Florida Panhandle.
Read Wikipedia or click on the text below.
Sure sounds a lot like Michael.
Locations a bit different.
Track a bit different but the pattern was there.
What happened next?
A hurricane hit Spain.
You can't make this up.......
They showed Vince from 2005 as an example.
See history does repeat.
This was 1842.
I bet you are wondering what happened next...
One formed off the Florida coast... to near Bermuda.
It brushed the FL coast and Charleston area with gale force winds.
An earthen dam had damage along the Georgia Coast.
It would be very logical to believe that formed at the tail end of a front.
There are fronts moving across the country.
Moisture in the Caribbean.
The last of the tropical waves moving West.
Caribbean is favored by Climo through November.
As much as we are watching the Caribbean for some system to form that could be a weaker version of Michael or some November storm that cruises ENE or NE out of the Caribbean threatening the Islands and or the Bahamas it's just as easy to believe now that we have fronts on the move that one will falter and stall out off the Florida Coast and another system similar to the last system of 1842 could happen this year. History repeats and obviously there was a similar pattern that year as this year. If we didn't have satellite imagery the way we do now and models an old time meteorologist would probably connect the dots and say some of the storm that was Kirk went West into the Caribbean and eventually reformed and moved North into Florida. In 1842 there were no models, radar data or satellite imagery.
So keep watching.
As for my thoughts tonight on Michael there is just so much I cannot wrap my head around and I'll discuss it another day. But for tonight this is all I want to say.
The death toll climbs state by state in unique but predictable ways. A tree fell on a truck or a truck slammed into a fallen tree. Storm surge deaths come to light as teams get into the areas and go through debris and find bodies. The back side of Michael that intensified from North Carolina into Virginia as it became one with the front took many I am sure by surprise as so much emphasis in the media is on "landfall" and "storm surge" and "highest winds at landfall" and very little is talked about by the media on anything beyond landfall. The NHC mentions things and reminds people to check their local NWS office and as I've said sadly the local NWS offices get very little press as the media touts the cone showing where the storm will make landfall. Anyone reading blogs or following on social media knew that this storm was moving fast and within one day it would be make it from Florida to the Carolinas and into Virginia. But the average person watching the nightly news still or checking headlines will only see the CONE a day before they are blasted by 50 to 80 winds in North Carolina and Virginia.
My blog from Monday before Michael made landfall.
When it was trying to pull together.
Pleading people to remember how fast it would move.
And that people in the Carolinas and Virginia...
...would get impacts and they would happen sooner rather than later.
Dangerous impacts from a Tropical Storm.
The local weather people here talked on it's dangerous impacts but the general feeling was that they were keeping us in a Tropical Storm Watch out of an abundance of caution and that the Tropical Storm Warning was put up for the same reason. Few inland took it seriously and the only concern on the local news was to assure people Down East still cleaning up from Florence wouldn't have to worry on more flooding. Flooding in NC and Virginia was NEVER a concern with Michael, but high winds as the storm and the front blasted through after a solid day of rain with wet soil meant trees would topple and weather would become dangerous. If it wasn't for the NC State Fair canceling the Opening Day and postponing it off til Friday I don't think the locals here would have thought much on Michael. Everyone was in shock and it showed the possibility that high winds were there as they had to watch the rides and secure what wasn't taken down. If the Fair is worried, there must be something to worry on someone told me in their own words. Smart thing too that the Fair did that as two trees went down on the property or part of the trees and one severely injured one of the people who works the fair. Luckily no one else was walking through that area near that gate when that tree came down. His trailer was parked near the spot as he works the fair, otherwise there would have been hundreds, thousand of people in the general vicinity. The Fair Grounds are beautiful when the Fair is not in town as it's the site of the NC State Flea Market and it's a fun place to walk around on a Sunday under huge Oak trees providing shade on a hot summer day.
Cranky sent me the wind speeds as I had asked him on Friday. Impressive what the wind and gusts were that brought down huge trees and added in the death toll from Michael. I believe five people in Virginia died which is just so sad as they should have seen this coming as we talked about it online for days, however did the message get out to the media I wonder?
https://twitter.com/crankywxguy If you like longreads and you obviously do as you are reading this.. check out his blog. Spoiler Alert it's longer than mine. He has much good information to share.
Those are strong winds.
They caused death and destruction.
But the talk was mostly about where landfall would be...
... but people died far away from Mexico City.
Far from the Florida Panhandle.
So there are just some things I don't understand.
They didn't evacuate a Florida State Hospital which is used for mental health patients who mostly have been committed put there against their will and I'm sure there was some logic and they "thought they'd be okay" but they weren't and so they were dropping food and water by helicopter down to them for days. Seems odd. Strange story. Didn't they know that it could easily be cut off and with the watches and warnings up for this storm when it was a Potential Storm why did they not evacuate them before or have more supplies?
Much I don't understand about how things work with regard to warning people of inland dangers from landfalling hurricanes and the NHC's refusal to update their cone to show inland dangers or flooding potential is just lame. They do a great job in general under difficult circumstances but when you ask them to modify the Scale they use and the cone they refuse saying it was "confuse people" even though these same people are on Facebook and Twitter that updates their format every month and people get used to it. They truly act like that old guy driving along in an 1970 Datsun because they refuse to sell it going 45 mph on the highway because the speed limit is 55 MPH listening to Iron Butterfly on a cassette player that they had to install when the 8 Track died on them sadly.
I get it. I hate when my phone says it wants to do an update. But it's part of life and it's time for the Cone to be updated. Again possibly put the cone over the satellite image and put an old fashioned symbol for flooding over the area that may lose all their crops, homes, farms, businesses and where many may lose their lives because they thought they would be fine because they were not "in the cone." Life will go on really and it will be a better product.
I'll write a full post tomorrow on the tropics and an update on Michael as in what was done right and what was done wrong that hopefully we can learn from and update the way we do things and do it better the next time around. They learned after Sandy they needed to put in good graphics showing where flooding would occur and they have put out some great products, but they are not on center stage and the only thing that gets shown in the media is the cone so it's time to update the cone. I'm pretty sure no one at the NHC is still using an old flip phone or refusing to update their iPhone so why not update the Cone?
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
