Ode to Miami History. Roasted Nuts & White Chocolate, Caramels & Cashews. Cocaine Cowboys. Films Music & What We Learn From History as we Deal with Covid 19.

Roasted nuts and white chocolate.

Caramels and cashews...

Music from the carousel 

off in the distance out of view.

In a half empty mall...

in my memories bright but small.

Deep in the recesses of my mind..

sharing them with my brother

one memory at a time.

Once upon a time ...
and what a time it was...
There was a Mall next to a Hotel.
The rooms over looked Biscayne Bay.
In the mall parents shopped and kids played.
Teenagers hung out in record shops buying music.
Cocaine Cowboys made deals out in the parking lots.
Miami Vice came to down riding neon lit streets outside.
Miami was a boom town once again and then......
Time moved on, bigger hotels and fancier malls.
Aventura Florida was built in the early 1990s
They drained a swamp..
They paved paradise and built a bigger mall.
People drove up Collins Avenue to shop and dine.
Luxury Hotels were built in nearby Sunny Isles
And Omni Mall became a ghost town.
A has been waiting to be torn down.

For me Omni was a place to escape to after work before the kids came home after I moved back to Miami from LA and I loved that it was quiet and I could wander through the adjacent Jordan Marsh department store that I grew up in as we went there at least twice a week after my Grandma went to the doctor across the street and the store was our treat for being quiet in the waiting room. The Ice Cream Parlor, the Raggedy Ann and Andy Dolls suspended from the ceiling on swings during the holidays or the ever popular Biscayne Dining room looking out of beautiful Biscayne Bay. For my younger brother it was a happening alive place that he escaped to just across the Venetian Causeway that he watched go from popular to closing up one store at a time a decade latter.

A little bit of poetry here to start off the morning, mixing it up a bit as I'm looking back at a little bit of Miami history after a long talk with my brother this  morning as we shared memories of the Mall closest to Miami Beach in the 1980s. Lincoln Road wasn't popular then as a shopping, dining venue it was where our father worked in his office and we played pinhall in Mike's Cigar Shop that father said was probably a front for a bookie joint; not sure but something was going in that busy room behind the curtain behind the Ballyhoo Pin Ball Machines ;)

My brother wrote a book, buy it on Amazon online it's good and germ free ;) he lives in Greece in a city locked down he could use the money and you could use the poetry and prose to get you through another day in Quarantine ... whatever day this might be as we all have lost count. He used the "roasted nuts and white chocolate" line this morning in Messenger and it inspired me to write this morning's blog. The rest of the poem above is mine ;) but inspired by our talk.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1980911312

History repeats and whether you are studying the history of dead, defunct malls before Big Box Houses like Macys and Sears currently dying even before people started dying from Covid-19  that came along putting the final nail into a world that we grew up in and thought would last forever. Spoiler alert: Nothing lasts forever. We are born to die. Enjoy the moments, the hours of fun in the sun and love ever lasting ... enjoy your moments while you got em cause time never stands still.

Then Miami became popular again as another BOOM TIME hit the city as we painted every building on Miami Beach in shades of Art Deco colors (the City Council seriously had to approve the shade of paint you chose for your house) and the party moved back to Miami Beach and Lincoln Road now a popular place to play, dine or just hang out under the palm trees where the parrots squawked and Miami moved again to another rhythm.

Bayside was built bit by bit and my ex-husband and I would take long, slow rides across Venetian Causeway always ending up at the old Bayside where Sonny Crockett's boat was docked and Hard Rock Cafe was the only show in town before they kept adding on bit by bit. Tracing that ride we watched on TV so often driving back and forth at night across the Venetian Causeway, windows down, music up as we stared out at the neon lights of Miami. The first time I saw the scene below I lived in LA and our night time drives were down Santa Monica Boulevard to La Cienega to Sunset Drive past the Chateau and back again... but now I was home in my Miami.

Fast Forward to 2020.

There's always a little bit of history repeating.

New song, new movie.

Miami popular again as always.

Amazing.

That movie nailed every one of my favorite place...

...where I'd go to wander and get lost and hide.

How did they do that......

.......but I digress.

What we learn from history is this.

Viruses are not just a computer hack....

....they change everything.

Some people die, some people live.

The Spanish Flu hit and things shut down.

Then in the Roaring 20s we roared back.

Dancing the Charleston and having fun again.

A good blog on genealogy teaches us this.

https://larasgenealogy.blogspot.com/2020/03/my-family-in-cholora-pandemic-of-1848.html

If you do genealogy, and I do, you will notice that many ancestors lost family members from the measles and cholera as if it was the most normal thing in the world and it was back then. But, hey a little bit of history repeating and then "we beat on, boats against the current borne back ceaselessly into the past" and we look back, remember and we smile. We learn from the past, we get inspired from the past and then we move on creating a new future, a brave new world.

Time Magazine (remember that one?)

Wrote off Miami as Paradise Lost.

The news media said Miami was dead.

And then it roared back again.

Wrapped up in neon pink.

Ecologically odd.

Aesthetically beautiful.

One of my favorite people.

Paul George the Miami Historian.

And an incredible friend always says..

Miami always has a 2nd Act!

So be like Miami!!

Stay inside, stay home, stay healthy.

Stay alive and then..

Have a Beautiful Second Act!

Again and again.

Besos BobbiStorm

@bobbistorm on Twitter and Instagram.

Ps. If the nonstop news gets too much for you. Turn it off.

Put on some music. Let go, relax, breathe and enjoy.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/miami-beach/article225472800.html

Tuesday Tropical Discussion. Jim Williams Hurricane City 2018 Predictions. GOM Low Lowered Odds & Long Term Watching Caribbean. Will the Mid Atlantic See Hurricanes This Year? Probably. Derecho Warnings and Discussion. Confessions From the Tropically Inspired Mind.

Magic circle down to yellow.

That's the 5 day image.

A look below shows more detail.

www.spaghettimodels.com

Note the moisture off the FL East Coast.

Yet still moisture down below.

Moist, tropical flow.

May in Florida.

Check out that radar off the FL East Coast.

But also note the "low" is not going anywhere.

Watch the loop below.

The Gulf of Mexico Low lolllygags around as if it's doing a vacation off the Redneck Riviera. That's not a slight but a geographic term denoting it's "almost like the Riviera if your from Arkansas and Missouri" and that's because people up in those regions drive on down to the coast and that coast is in fact the beautiful beaches of the Florida Panhandle. This time of year you get a little rain when you be vacationing down that way. The word lollygag is indeed a word and that's simplistically speaking what this little Low is doing. I could say it's "phasing" or doing a "cyclonic loop" but I'll just say it's not going anywhere, anytime soon. Neither is the rain in the Southeast as it's as green as a putting green in that loop above. 

The loop below shows the dry air that came in from the West seriously impacting the development of the low in the Gulf of Mexico. It's still there and will be for days so needs monitoring and that is why there is a yellow circle up on the map on the main page at the NHC's website.

The main purpose for tropical systems this time of year is that the rain provides the moisture for farms to grow and produce huge amounts of produce as crops have been planted and trust me they need the rain. It gets expensive to have to water crops continually on small farms and America still has quite a few small farms especially in Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama and the Carolinas; not to forget Florida itself is a huge Ag producer. The produce that comes from those areas such as squash, tomatoes, cucumbers, okra, green beans to name a few not to forget Vidalia Onions, peanuts and later in the season some of the tastiest watermelons you have ever had on a hot day in July. Growing produce is a long term project and it begins with rain after the crops have been planted. More than half of the rain that farms in these regions get is from slow moving, weak, tropical systems that are doing more than juicing up the atmosphere. 

Again because this particular little low is lollygagging about in the NW Gulf of Mexico it needs to be monitored for any sudden development. One of the biggest problems that beaches such as Destin have to deal with is close in, home grown development that doesn't give more than 12 to 36 hours if the conditions become perfect for development and some suspect low is still lurking about like a shark waiting to make a grab for some fresh meat. 

Speaking of beaches one of the reasons people in Tennessee load up the truck and drive on out to the coast is also a matter of location. In that region people drive East vs South and I like to think of the North Carolina Beaches as being coastal Tennessee. If you live here long enough you get that. The beaches of the Carolinas in May are one of the most beautiful places you can be on a hot day or any day for that matter. The sun is warm, the breeze is cool and the air has this fresh feel to it as sea oats bend to the bend and children of all ages sit by the water watching people appreciate one of the true rights of Spring. In the winter these beaches are cold though beautiful, but come May the air warms up while the water stays cool and it's more refreshing than you can imagine. 

Myrtle Beach specifically is like a lazy day in the fresh air and sunshine. Men fish in the surf (something you rarely see in Miami) and children dig in the sand as older people walk around stooped over lollygagging about it seems but what they are really doing is trying to discern shark teeth from bits and pieces of shells at the edge of the water. Also when the water is calmer it's a wading beach where you can wade out quite far allowing you to see down into the sand to find conch shells that were carried North from the Gulf Stream or the treasured shark teeth Myrtle Beach is so all about. Further North up near Wilmington the surf gets stronger and surfers wait for that perfect wave. Up near the Outer Banks the water is rarely calm and the air always blows cool and fresh even on the hottest day. May in Miami is all about thunderstorms and monsoons and the early morning temperature rises daily until one day you realize it's 80 degrees and it's 8 AM and the summer is back in your face.

The reason I am waxing poetic today on beaches, geography and demography is that we are currently in a wait and see mode where we watch the satellite loops with one eye and the model loops with the other eye. By the way that is what people do most of the day at the NHC and the NWS in any given city as they sit with huge multiple monitors in front of them watching all the possibilities that may evolve to give you a heads up and early warning to prepare for bad weather on the way. 

Yes that's the color of the sky.

Good video in the link below:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang

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

A derecho is a fast moving cluster of storms that travel far distances slamming into many cities in their path with torrential rains and pounding winds. There was an especially strong derecho along the Mid Atlantic yesterday while people were wondering on hurricane season and what to do for Memorial Day Weekend. I'm putting up a list below to show you many of these events. I'd call your attention to the years when May and June brought nasty weather up to the Mid Atlantic and temperatures soared to summertime levels early in the year. It's pretty rare for May and yet the Mid Atlantic has been really hot and so has the water off shore. Again as I said up above the Southeast stays swampy hot and our days are filled with rainy possibilities for the next week or so. 

This is the process ....

... as we move closer into June 1st.

2018 Hurricane Season.

Rarely see that graphic above.

Look at that amber necklace draped across the SE.

I draw your attention to some great sites on a wonderful weather page coming out of Tampa that Mike highlights often on Spaghetti Models. Check out that river of orange that runs along the Gulf Stream off the South East coast running up towards the Mid Atlantic and New England. Those warm water temperatures are something to stop and think about a bit.

And never take your eyes off the Caribbean.

Deep down there something is also lurking about.

Models spit out various solutions.

I like to watch and wait.

I watch the models.

I wait to see the storm develop.

You get what you see .... 

...models just show possibilities.

And lastly today I want to tie this mornings #longread blog together by explaining that weather on the day to day gets you to where Climatology lives. It takes a while for the right winds to set up, the shear to lessen and the water temperatures to begin to boil. And, it's all about geography when dealing with meteorology. You have to really understand geography along with oceanography to really understand meteorology otherwise you're just being a computer model cowboy looking to better enhance your website's delivery of tropical models that may or may not be right or wrong. Modeling is wonderful whether you are building a 1965 Mustang Convertible or assembling a beautiful modeling package of clearly displayed isobars that allow you to better discern what the models are actually showing you. Actually the models imply and suggest and they are still left up to our own interpretation. Why did the system in the Eastern GOM not develop? Because dry air wrapped in on the left side and cut off the moisture supply from down below, however the moisture trying to stay alive snuck over to the Eastern side of the Florida peninsula where deluges of rain delivered the May Monsoons right on time over my son's house in Walnut Creek and my other son's apartment in Aventura while he watched the golf course out his window flood and the palm trees bend. 

As the Mid Atlantic heats up and the water begins to be warmer than it should be this time of year we need to look forward to what that may mean deeper into the 2018 Atlantic Hurricane Season. Jim Williams released his report while I was driving back from Charleston where we ended up having dinner but that's another story for another day. I wait patiently for Jim to put out his report as few people put as much energy into getting a report out with details that show us where a hurricane might make landfall vs shooting out random numbers as to how many might form. It's not about how many might form it's about where they might go.... duh. Otherwise it's useless information that looks good on paper but not worth the paper it's not even printed on anymore. Number projections are especially useless during in any given year as some years the NHC gives designation status with the coveted name to what in other years would be no name storms that create problems but did not get watches and warnings and a name. We used to call those systems "no name storms" but lately the NHC has rarely seen a close in system that it didn't feel it needed to give a name to out of an abundance of caution. That's not necessarily bad may I add, however it skews the numbers game so feel free to shoot out your 13-7-4 predictions (13 named systems, 7 hurricanes and 4 major hurricanes) vs 15-8-3 that someone else might predict. Message Boards (yes they still exist) are filled with such odds predictions this time of year. But Jim .... spends much time analyzing the possibilities and the various elements that contribute to one sort of hurricane season vs another. Few people know Hurricane History as well as Jim does and he understands the elements as anyone who went to school and got their degree do and his track record is may I add often better than the GFS model that they still can't get right no matter how much the computer, meteorologists tinker with it. 

www.hurricanecity.com

http://hurricanecity.com/blogs/2018/05/2018-landfall-predictions-for-hurricanes-and-tropical-storms/

What I want you to take away from today's #longread blog that saved my sanity and helped me collect my thoughts is that storms like people go where it is convenient to go. People in Arkansas drive South for Panama City to the Florida Panhandle Beaches. Storms that form in the Caribbean or Eastern Gulf of Mexico in May and June tend to head North to those same beaches. And, when it's hot in Maryland people head to Ocean City to catch the beach breeze and when the water off the East Coast is hotter than normal hurricanes that get far enough west as they trace their way around the Bermuda High will often impact those same Mid Atlantic Beaches going all the way up to Portland Maine. Years when derechos form in May and attack the East Coast out of seemingly nowhere are also years when I believe hurricanes can impact those same coastal regions. And, those same years bring storms cruising by or treading the Outer Banks beaches when the water is warm close in and the Bermuda High locks into place.

Jim's map for 2018 is shown below. I will talk more on Jim's predictions in future blogs but I suggest you read and reread his report and sit and think a spell on all that information to get a better handle on which beaches hurricanes may travel to this coming Hurricane Season. His map from last year looked like a road maps made for Irma and Harvey and Maria to name a few. 

Besos BobbiStorm

@bobbistorm on Twitter

Ps. I have a brother who is a writer among other things he does creatively speaking and he complained to me a while back that I don't know how to write to my audience on my blog. He's wrong because I know exactly who I am writing for and why I am writing. This blog was started because Jim was about to pull the plug on the message board he hosts because well it was that time of year when people get testy waiting for a westbound wave to finally wrap into a Cape Verde Hurricane and I needed a place to go to just write whatever I wanted and not be told whether it would or would not happen. I wanted to write a diary of sorts filled with tropical information. It used to be a very long read without pictures or songs or loops or any real heavy tropical discussion but filled with cryptic stories that hopefully no one except the usual suspects involved know what the heck I'm talking about. I do owe a few people apologies for some posts back in 2006 and 2007 but they probably deserved what I said and I probably made a meager apology either online or on the phone. Smiling as I type this because oh we were crazy back then or as my daughter who often made dinner while I sat typing online would say Mommy's Cray Cray which is better than my other daughter who used to call me Psycho Mommy. I have great kids. I have great friends and I wouldn't do it over again. I didn't start this blog to become rich or famous or to impress my friends in meteorology school or use it as a resume to try and get a good job at the NHC. I have used it as a resume of sorts for jobs speaking, writing and editing as I do here and there. I have never written that Great American Novel but it's probably just as well as there is a beauty in anonymity. I've never really wanted to be on the cover of the National Enquirer and yet I was on the cover of the Washington Post so go figure. Life is strange. It's not often what you worry on that gets you as much as what's gaining on you in the rear view mirror. Check out the NWS site is you live in the dark green area as the day progresses today.

https://www.weather.gov

And you... (yes YOU) may want to reread Jim Williams 2018 Atlantic Hurricane Report on cities most likely to be impacted by hurricane. There are more details to that statement as Jim is rich in details always and he'd probably criticize me for how I described his report but it's okay I'm used to it ;) If you want to check out my brother's book of musing and rambling poetic thoughts the link is down below. He and Jim are both born in the same year and are Rabbits according to Chinese Astrology ;) 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1980911312

This blog sometimes saves my mind and that's good. Somehow yesterday I ended up in some of the worst traffic I have ever seen on a highway that's supposed to be an evacuation route out of Charleston when a Hurricane is on the way. Good thing that cable didn't snap in September. I had a great day, didn't get to see a close friend but we did get to listen to the same press conference live at the same time. Charleston is wonderful, beautiful and not as hot as it will be later in the summer. Myrtle Beach is always wonderful. Margaritaville in Myrtle Beach is one of Jimmy Buffet's best locations and you can sip a drink and watch the other Jim warn you of Hurricane Myrtle. Thanks for reading today's very long blog post. Keep watching the Caribbean, something wicked from that direction may spin up in the near future while you are watching the Eastern Gulf of Mexico for development. 

https://www.postandcourier.com/news/broken-cable-in-wando-river-bridge-closes-westbound-i-/article_065d1ee2-57a5-11e8-8872-bf3b0a4681cd.html

Besos BobbiStorm 

@bobbistorm on Twitter for short, fast breaking information. I'll keep the blog more concise and shorter once we really have something tropical to talk about...