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!
Tuesday, January 15, 2019
OH MY GOODNESS.... WINTER GOING TO COME BACK !!! Happy MLK Day on the Real Day Not the Weekend.
This basically began yesterday in ernest.
Headlines on Twitter showing SNOW and ICY weather coming!
The Polar Vortex is being unleashed!!
Yeah........ Winter is back!
My AC is off and my heat is back on!!
The beach a week ago was nice........
.... I didn't go outside today in Raleigh. Brrr...
Tonight's blog is a prelude to real discussion.
I want to show a variety of news and tweets.
The real news today was in California...
Dabuh knew that!
If there's a beach he's watching the surf.
And the weather.... he's a great weather watcher!
Prayers indeed as you will see deeper down in the blog.
Weather is locational and whether you live in Maine or Miami you have different priorities with regard to what you wish for...... and in this case be careful what you wish for.... Note the REAL storm is going on NOW in California but the East Coast, as always, thinks this is all about them and whether NYC or Boston gets Snow. The South looks longingly at the snow models wishing the system would take the more Southern track so that we could see some snow flakes falling and dusting our Carolina Pines. There is a middle part of the country, though to be fair they got the last snow storm AND Jim Cantore so they have plenty of stories to tell of the Winter of 2019!
I gotta warn you there's a lot of hype going on right now, because that's all we have is hype and models and watching the satellite loops. Speaking of models the Canadian is really on to something or just being the Canadian over amping every system and bringing snow to Cuba. It's worth noting it DID snow in Cuba in 1857 so I suppose it's not impossible. The EURO and the GFS (choose your version of it) do not show snow for Havana or Miami so you can breathe a bit and get out your favorite boots for weather diving down for one night into the 40s!
And the usual mets are having fun with this because to be honest we had one wild winter storm in November, a January thaw in December and now in January winter is showing up again on the models. And it seems this one will really do the trick and usher in some Arctic Air down into the US all the way down to .... Key West and do NOT laugh as Key West is an island in the middle of the Florida Straits and when a cold front breezes in across the water it gets down right chilly!
Yoda knows....
In truth though California IS having WEATHER NOW!
Yet you wouldn't know it from my feed ....
...that is heavily weighted to the Hurricane cities & Seattle.
There's a Blizzard warning up for the Sierras!
California is like the song....
I've lived there....
First comes fire and then the rain comes....
...and the mud runs down the hills.
It's one disaster after another...
In Santa Barbara there was crazy wind damage.
High Surf Warnings up the coast of California.
If you live in LA.........
........don't let your garbage cans float away!
But on the East Coast everyone is ready!!!
North Carolina and Virginia are waiting...
NC won the November storm lotto...
VA stole last week's storm.
What will be with this next storm?
Allan Huffman is as reliable as it gets.
He's watching the models and we are listening.
In my mind it's going to Carolina......
No it's not really going to Carolina, not this week's storm.
But I'm driving North for the cold, frigid week down the road.
So I know I'll see snow one way or the other soon...
You heard about the 10 year challenge on Facebook?
Yes Weather Twitter is a buzz and buzzing louder than transformers or swarms of freezing bees. What do I think? What do I know? When you have a period of warm weather deep in December you have to know that winter is going to come back with a vengeance. It's like during hurricane season when it's slow and early waves give it up to Saharan Dust and Shear at the Gateway of the Caribbean and you think there won't be any hurricanes and then Mother Nature is back with a bite and Twitter begins buzzing with innuendo and rumors and people act as if the world is coming to an end and on air news people say things like "unprecedented Arctic Invasion as the Polar Vortex is blasting it's way down into Florida" and you worry Aquaman is going to freeze and Lex Luthor finally discovered a weather machine that will control Earth's weather and then you remember Spring will come again. Kids enjoy the snow, parents shiver and shovel the snow and someone gets sleet which is about as annoying as rainy days and Mondays. So as for me I'm going to enjoy whatever we get this week and wonder on what weather I'll see in New York City next week as I'm scheduled to be there then. There's highs and lows near zero if the extremists are right and if it moderates in the teens... time will tell. As for tonight, enjoy this song and know I love it...... really as much as the oldie goldies are great this song is perfect and note .... he uses weather because how can you show a love song without some kind of weather??
Besos BobbiStorm
@bobbistorm on Twitter
Ps... Don't say I didn't blog and as always I hoping you get the weather you dream about!
I'll be back with real hard data on what to expect from the storm after this storm and how frigid the temperature will be and just how low that freeze line will go. I suggest you familiarize yourself with the winter links on Mike's fantastic www.spaghettimodels.com as he's a guy for all seasons ;)
Thanksgiving Day Forecast.... Frigid Temperatures for the Macy's Day Parade... Starbucks Latte VS Frappe Unless You Live in Florida - Winter Make Up :)
That's today.
November 20th, 2018.
The year winter came early.
Talking mittens, gloves, hat, scarf ... stay home inside?
Stay home sipping hot chocolate under a cover ;)
The Parade is on TV you know :)
I spent my lifetime watching it on TV.
You'll survive I promise..
21 degrees for Thursday.
Oh wait that was yesterday's forecast.
Look below.... now it's down to 19 degrees!!!
Check out Thursday's Low above. 19 degrees
Ya...that's winter weather not fall temperatures.
Sometimes you have to throw out the rule book and deal with what is and not what should be. It's like when a hurricane forms in June or a strong Tropical Storm pops up in May... you can't say "hey it's not Hurricane Season yet" you have to get supplies, make a plan and watch Cantore in the surf on TWC until your power goes out. In NYC and NJ the powers that be erred on the side of "it's not winter yet" and we saw what a mess Winter Storm Avery made. In Maryland where they were treating the roads and being "all melodramatic" they were better prepared to deal with the snow. As my Daddy used to tell me "you gotta do what you gotta do" and that means treating this storm and the cold weather that follows it as if winter is here and the calendar is irrelevant. If we get a December thaw "nice" but if not ... button up your overcoat and do what you got to do.
If you are traveling by car make sure you have blankets, extra food and drinks with you as the walk into the service plaza or Truck Stop will make you feel like one of Santa's Elves. If you're flying, hope you don't get stuck anywhere. If you and your loved ones have asthma or any health problem make sure you bring along your medication. It's easy to say "let's hope these forecasts" are "melodramatic" but I'd err on the side of caution, hope for the best and prepare for the worst. By the way... the worst will come AFTER Thanksgiving if the long term models are correct and they are currently in good agreement! And, what concerns me is how cold the ground gets, how much it warms up when the temperatures moderate before the next polar blast comes through. I'll deal with long term models tomorrow or Thursday.
Sadly another thing I want to mention today is......... the smoke from the fires is caught up in the atmosphere and the horrible possibility of rain in California that would immediately create mudslides. I lived there ... they go hand in hand. First comes fire then comes rain and there is nothing to hold back the ground and it slides down the hill. There are many, many people missing and many more will be declared dead as the death toll rises daily. If you think hurricanes are bad... generally I'd take a hurricane any day than a hillside that goes up in flames and then what's left slides down to the valley below. So perhaps while giving thanks for all you have this year... pray ... and give some charity. I know I am and many of my friends have been doing so.
I'm not sure what I'm actually doing on Thanksgiving yet. The family isn't meeting anywhere, it's one of those years with three new babies the different couples are fending for themselves and my brother is doing something (not sure what) and my husband and I may go see my mother-in-law . . . up in Maryland in her Rest Home...or we may stay home and eat good food, watch football and buy presents for Chanukah which comes early this year the same way winter is coming early. Road trips are always good; maybe I'll take in a movie . . .
I may make Turkey Benedict for breakfast the way I did last year in Miami for the kids as we were going to Abeulita's house to be with my daughter-in-law's family. She had the baby, it's a girl named Lucy :) and I need to buy more clothes for Miss Lucy so that's my life. I may use fake hollandaise sauce or fake turkey... it came out really good last year. Or... we'll figure it out. North Carolina isn't going to be that cold, but it will be cold with a low somewhere around 25. Maybe I'll stay home by the Fake Fireplace and order presents online. Whatever you do ... do it with a smile, your favorite music and I hope your favorite team wins!
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.
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.
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
