NYE 2018 Into 2019 - As the Weather World Turns

Kind of awesome isn't it?

We can watch the whole world's weather...

...from up above.

NYE weather..... January 1st?

Watch the weather world turn.

For a good part of the year I'm watching waves roll off of Africa and what's going on in the Caribbean and then I'm suddenly aware of an odd noise outside ..... and I realize it's raining in my backyard. The irony is that unless it's winter and I'm hoping it will snow I rarely pay attention to the local weather in my own neighborhood. I check my kid's weather as they don't use weather apps or pay attention to the local weather until someone posts weather news in the family WhatsApp feed. It's a strange, big, beautiful world. 

And we are moving fast from 2018 into 2019 as the hours click away and the clock counts down. It's human nature to look back every year and remember, bitch, complain and wax poetic on what was the most wonderful and what was the most horrible. There are always things that remain in our memory and others we don't remember until someone reminds us. I suppose it's a good thing to take stock every year and smile and ponder what we would like to do this coming year. Goals are good, surprises happen and sometimes you actually get what you are wishing for but I may warn you as always to be careful for what you are wishing for... because you just might just get it!

It was a busy year for me traveling frequently to see my kids in the 3 corners of the USA and back and forth up and down I-95. Cranky is right my life has become traveling North and South on I-95 yet I went to Seattle this year and am drinking coffee this morning out of an Amazon Go mug picked up in the store where you don't pay the register and I literally mean "picked up" as I wandered through the store with my son and one of his friends. I walked around the huge Biosphere Globe and I do mean "walked around" as it's reminiscent to my first trip to Disney World. Amazingly my son worked on some of the algorithms that made that store work and it was wonderful seeing him and his awesome family. I was there for my granddaughter Bella's birthday party and celebrating life and family. Even without the kids there I'd love Seattle, something about that city resonates with me deeply.

Seattle is truly so magical.

A tropical paradise inside the globe.

And, then back home to the East Coast.

Yet we watch the West Coast for our future weather.

 We watch Alaska and before that the Pacific.

Look at that Jet Stream in the NW...

Wet weather up across Mexico ... 

Then the Southern Jet up coming into the South East.

The two jets of 2018...

...will they linger into 2019?

Or hook up again somewhere?

Speaking of Alaska... 

...big earthquake this year.

And there you see the current pattern.

Snow in the NW...and the Great Lakes.

Rain the Southeast.

Down the road Oklahoma might get snow.

Just a blue patch there in the middle of the country.

The rest of the South stays clear of snow for five days.

Then what?

If you don't have snow...

... play in the sand.

And Mike does.

He made a Sandman!

www.spaghettimodels.com

Somehow this year he became the Drunk Monkey Man.

I'm not sure where the girl is who called him that online.

Hopefully she keeps those things "inside thoughts" from now on.

My younger kids use that term.

My older kids tell their kids "use your words"

Use your words wisely.

Mike as always runs with the ball... 

You can buy a tee shirt or an umbrella!

Check out his site for weather and merchandise.

I bought a Hurricane Season tee shirt..

sorry not putting a donkey across my breasts.

People look enough as it is....

... nuff said there.

Cute though.

Mike's cute.

Jim Williams chased Michael.

This was definitely the year of Michael.

Michael and Florence in the tropics.

Retired names (they will be) of 2018.

A wet Southeast was the legacy.

Rainiest year in Raleigh since 1945.

1945 was a huge hurricane year...

Good for him.

He got out of his studio/office...

..and back to his roots.

Jim's always been a chaser...

I know that, trust me.

But he's an awesome Weather Historian.

He's awesome in general. I know that.

Jim Cantore finally got out of Wilmington.

They were pounded by rain before, during and after Flo.

Flo would not leave....

Tornadoes happened in Wyoming this year.

Oh and Cape Cod got some action too in that department.

Weather is locational.

Memories of 2018 are connected to your location.

Fires in California were the story of the year there.

Well there's time for a big Quake but times running out.

It's 8 AM on December 31, 2018

The "ball" or "acorn" will be dropping soon.

In Raleigh they drop an acorn.

It's Raleigh... don't ask.

You remember the weather you had that rocked your world.

Or you hanker for the weather you want and didn't get.

You hope it won't snow or you pray it snows.

I had a surprise snowfall in New York in Mid November.

Magical snow flakes falling from the sky out of nowhere.

Not in the forecast...

Raleigh got snow, a lot of snow later that month.

We have not had snow since.........

Last year it was freezing on New Years Eve...

...this year it's forecast to be in the high 60s today.

Thunderstorms!

(count ten days til snow...)

You have to roll with the punches weatherwise and in life.

I have 3 new grandchildren... this year.

2017 was the year of weddings.

2018 was the year of babies.

A brand new Instapot and beautiful Kitchen Aid.

Maybe 2019 will be the year of cooking and baking!

For most baby boomers losing the Bandit was hard.

He defined a good part of our lives.

Especially if you live Down South.

but I know a few Yankees who loved him too.

May 2019 bring you wonders and magic.

Magical moments to remember.

New friends, children, partners, grandchildren.

Maybe a new puppy or goldfish or lizard?

May you take trips to paradise or enjoy staying home.

Home is where the heart is...

..but in today's world... 

The world wide web let's us take our heart with us..

..wherever we go.

We are all on Twitter or Instagram or Facebook.

And we can watch the world turn from up above.

My special thanks to all I mentioned...

..all I implied (you know who you are) 

And to those I didn't mention but usually do.

To all of you who rock my world...

Thank You!

And as for Burt....

The Bandit stole our heart.

Besos BobbiStorm

Thanks for the birthday wishes.

Happy 2019!!

As for the 2018 Hurricane Season..

Jim and I both love maps and weather.

Going to let him do the 2018 Hurricane Season round up.

Besos BobbiStorm
@bobbistorm on Twitter

Ps... As for me I'm watching the weather.
Wearing a plethora of tee shirts.

This one from www.hurricanecity.com
Finding weather from the Keys to Seattle...
... in Iowa or New York City.
Sometimes even Raleigh...



Thanks for following along.



Enjoy the thoughts and the music.
We do get older, we kind of grow up.
Sometimes I think we get even better with time.

From Carolina........

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