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, June 04, 2021
Will a Major Hurricane Hit the Miami Broward WPB Area This Year? I Hope Not... But it Could They Are Overdue for the EYE of a Hurricane.
While things are quiet and not much is going on I'm trying to put links to sites to use and people to follow on social media who are excellent sources of reliable information. In his case, he is prone to unique, original ways of presenting valuable material that helps you understand better some of the finer points of a particular situation be it a current set up or historical information. If you were playing a paint online game you'd be trying to figure out what color line to draw across the Miami to West Palm Beach metropolitan area and that's concerning as that area is overdue for such a hurricane. Many in Miami and the Ft. Lauderdale area would argue that and point to all the trees down and their roof damage from Hurricane Irma in 2017 and that's because they fail to remember they did not get the EYE of Irma nor the brunt of it's power, they had all that damage from a brush with Irma that made landfall in the Florida Keys but due to it's immense size delivered a wicked punch to North Miami Beach, Walnut Creek and other places far to the North and East of where Irma made landfall. A similar smaller storm would not have impacted the Miami area if it moved quickly through Marathon in the Florida Keys so remember with hurricanes not only strength but size matters!
Also what is worth remembering is that the general Miami area was in the Cone often for both Irma and Dorian and Matthew scared Miamians greatly even if the cone showed it could stay offshore. The NHC did a good job with those hurricanes and they did veer away from a visit to Miami. This is a very DANGEROUS set up as what happens after these sort of brushes with danger is that people begin to believe Miami is safe and all the hurricanes will veer way from the coast as Dorian and Matthew did but many such as the 1926 and 1928 Hurricanes did not, nor did Betsy, Katrina nor Andrew that made a due West beeline for Miami and never took the road that David did in 1979 when it took aim at Miami and then veered up the coast. Why is this important? I knew many people in Miami during Andrew that refused to believe that Andrew would not do what David did and it would go somewhere else.
Miami is a city that always has new people who have moved into the area and never experienced a Hurricane. Old times tell them about Donna and Betsy and Andrew and they think they will be fine, they will not be if a Major Hurricane makes landfall at Hollywood Beach or Aventura just North of Miami but all part of the same metropolitan area demographically and otherwise. Also we have a huge transitory population of people who are they college students or employed in the HUGE hotels and restaurant business that makes up a giant slice of the Miami economy!
Sadly Andrew taught me that the worst case scenario can and does happen. For years I kept this poster in my living room as a reminder that the worst case scenario can play out and a major hurricane can and will make a landfall in your living room if you live in Florida long enough. Note that also goes for Savannah, Jacksonville and Tampa!
Orange ... high pressure.
H for Huge High.
A nice wave over Africa...
There's online chatter on something in 10 days or so...
.. maybe down in the Caribbean headed North.
Or by the Yucatan.... or out in the Atlantic.
Models keep showing long term possibilities.
But nothing expected to form for the next 5 days.
Use this time wisely for Hurricane Preparation.
This IS Hurricane Season.
June Hurricanes have happened making landfall...
... up from the Carib towards Florida.
Currently the huge High Pressure is in place, so use this time wisely. As I said in a previous blog, my friend Sharon was sure we would get a hurricane in the very dead summer of 1992 when the first named storm didn't show up until Mid August named Andrew. Sharon rinsed out bottles of Publix Soda and filled them up with tap water and stored them away and bought inexpensive bottled water when on sale. When Andrew changed course for Miami, as she thought it would do as she didn't trust that weak cold front in August, she had close to 80 bottles of water stored in her garage to use for drinking or washing. After Hurricane Andrew on Miami Beach far from the eye but getting strong impressive winds, we had no water for a long time and we had no electric even longer and we had no cable to watch TWC until late November.
Be like Sharon, don't be that guy at Publix buying perishable deli and ice cream because you are sure this is just a big scare and the next big Major Hurricane aiming for Miami will turn away and crash into South Carolina as Matthew did...... Prepare now! Buy canned food, water, non-perishable food and stock up on your medications. Don't be that person left at Publix who went too late and is standing at the empty aisles staring at cans of oysters and sardines.
Thanks for your patience while I was on vacation in Miami visiting my family and attending a wedding for Sharon's son. It was a long road trip after a few days in Charlotte for business before the trip to Miami, a stop on the way back in Savannah and I'm finally back in Raleigh. I learned years back from friends of mine who worked at the NHC that the best time to usually take a vacation is actually early June, before the season ramps up :) Learn from the best ...
I should be updating every day from now on so follow me as we cruise into the height of the Hurricane Season when SAL begins to let go of his dusty hold on the Atlantic and the Huge High Pressure suddenly fades away and yellow circles pop up South of Cuba or off the coast of Florida in the Bahamas and as always near the Yucatan.
Besos BobbiStorm
@bobbistorm on Twitter and Instagram.
Ps. A dirty little secret is that Miami Beach was trashed by Hurricane Andrew, all the street signs, store awnings and often AC units on condos crashed to the ground below. Massive Ficus Trees were uprooted with most of the yard, pine trees on Pine Tree Drive fell onto homes. My neighbors roof on Flamingo Drive took flight and landed in tact in the back yard of a house on Pine Tree Drive near 41st Street. Bits and pieces of plastic from the Dry Cleaners, the Used Bookstore and Epicure then on Arthur Godfrey Road landed all across my parent's house on 37th and Royal Palm Avenue. My neighbor next door, a photographer who was working for Newsweek got back from covering Homestead and asked what happened on Miami Beach as it wasn't mentioned in the news. As Andrew approached Miami, just before it made that itsy bitsy dip to the South that saved most of downtown Miami... it's approaching wind and wild surf took aim on Miami Beach. I'm grateful that despite all that wild damage (we had no Traffic Lights on 41st Street for half a year, they all were gone with the wind) we were spared the horrific damage the eye did in Homestead. So while thinking on all the debris you had from Irma remember it made landfall near Big Pine Key NOT in Miami nor Hollywood Florida! Prepare now! Use this "quiet" time wisely!!
All the damage in the old blog below was from Miami Beach. They hired people fast to clean it up and laid low and tried to stay out of the news and to get back up and running for the 1992/93 Tourist Season. They were not as lucky in 1926... but that's another blog.
Yes most buildings were "fine" but everything else went whoosh with the wind... and that beautiful Polynesian style roof some friend of mine had... small square houses do best in a hurricane in Florida... no power for weeks, no cable for months... debris sat until late October after the Andrew Hurricane.
Update Monday Morning! 4 Tornadoes in Tampa Area Confirmed by NWS. Election Day Mother Nature Voting so ... IF You Didn't Vote Early Watch Your Weather Apps For Timing on Storms. Mike Covers Tornadoes in Tampa on Facebook Live.... Watch as it Moves On Shore and Mike Goes in Search of His Umbrella That Was Gone With the Wind. Storm Chasing in Florida... Gets Hairy and Crazy Fast!
Watches for today above.
Watch the rest of the South go into Warning mode tomorrow.
Say it ain't so....
Bad weather on Election Day?
Yup.
I voted early...
I'll update this later on Monday afternoon.
I want to see how a few models play out.
Watch the satellite loops and get a better feel for timing.
Note the presence of deep moisture in the GOM
As it lines up and connects with the front.
Provides more fuel.
Warm, tropical energy meeting a cold front.
Could have power outages.
Severe weather.
Again NWS updates watches and warnings in real time.
So go to your most trusted source for local weather.
Absolutely love it. Video Mike took on Friday when a squall line was coming into the Oldsmar area in a park where he is used to chasing storms. This is obviously the first time a storm chased Mike and he recorded it live on air or about as live on air as you can get on Facebook Live. There's got to be a way to get that on Youtube.
See the news coverage of the tornadoes. At least four tornadoes touched down.
It would be easy to say fast forward to about ten minutes in, but without watching the weather slowly coming in and advance towards land it's hard to really appreciate how fast things can get crazy when you are out there waiting for it to ... well ...get crazy. Been there...done that ...though not in Oldsmar. I'd take a good guess that one of my Great Uncles has been there as my family moved from Key West in the 1800s to Tampa around the turn of the last century to the Miami area in the 1930s My Uncle helped develop Anna Maria Island and parts of Holmes Beach and loved life on the water and watching storms. Some things are genetic and karmic at the same time, but let's get back to Mike. Smiling, love it really. I've been down in the Keys with my brother chasing storms and seen squall lines that looked uglier than that or from my perspective more beautiful but didn't produce a tornado and we usually got to safe cover before the line washed over us. That's really the only way to describe that sort of rain storm as it washes over you like one big wave and you feel as if you have been tossed into a drive through car wash but without the car...
When things got crazy Mike was actually lifted up and his flip flops went flying in the wind. I'm pretty sure Jimmy Buffett needs to write a song about this... Anyone round here know Jimmy Buffett? That would make one fun, heck of a song to write. His umbrella took off faster than the wicked witch of the west went swirling up into the Twister and now that I'm thinking on it... how did stay on that bike in a Twister pedaling along ... oh right......Hollywood.
This was the middle of the afternoon in July.
When weather gets nasty everything gets dark fast.
2014 Hurricane Arthur offshore Long Island.
When a strong band came through..
So know that when you are chasing things like this can really happen. Good to have a safe spot when you see hail moving in on you...which my daughter and I did not have when we were in New York in the bands of Hurricane Arthur. We walked down through a park on a spit of land that looks across at JFL where the planes were grounded and suddenly something got "funny" in the water and Dina being quick realized it was hail whereas I was taking pictures in awe of the dark clouds obscuring the view of Manhattan. She insisted we leave as in "NOW" and we did and we sort of raced back through the park to the car where we chased the squall line a bit more down near Long Beach where she grabbed some great pictures and we walked around inspecting some post Hurricane Sandy construction. Turns out later we heard there was severe hail in the area. I really would liked to have gotten those pictures... but I digress.
We were here...........before we had to relocate because of the large hail coming down in the bay.
There's nothing like weather. Really nothing like it and it's unpredictable in that tornadoes can spin up without any watches or warnings especially in Florida where a sudden waterspout decides to become a landlubber and tears up a park or a house or anything it wants to on it's way somewhere else.
So yeah that happened. Funny as I'm going to be in New York this coming weekend with Dina who is chasing her 3 year old son more these days than weather, though she took some incredible video driving through the back roads colored with fall foliage ablaze in the sunshine.
Below is a pic I took with my brother and one my brother took of me. I'm wearing a Hurricane City tee shirt :)
Actually I remember that line.
We were oceanside and took cover near a hotel.
Lots of funnel clouds that day.
Some Asian tourists stood with us...
..we were excited, they were terrified.
This picture was taken from just under an overhang.
At the tip that juts out past the pool near the ocean.
That's Florida for you.......
One minute it's all aqua, turquoise and sunny.
Twenty minutes later it can be black and white and stormy.
And dark........very dark as the storm moves in.
I think I'm going to leave this up as a stand alone blog, easier to find and more fun to look back on.
Up late watching the clock turn back. Seriously, I had a horrible headache Saturday afternoon and I ended up sleeping for about five hours. I didn't sleep the headache off but I got my evening sleep a bit early. Going to sleep again now, now that the headache is gone and I'm smiling. I just might watch the video again just to laugh. And speaking of weather......the weather has turned cold again in Raleigh and though we missed the wild weather both New York and Florida had today (including a storm that took apart an Amazon building under construction in Maryland) we are headed into peak of the season leaf watching so I don't mind missing a storm for once. Hopefully later today on Sunday I'll get some nice pictures and do a full post on this week's weather and my thoughts on the tropics later on Sunday evening. For now I have a small fake fire going in little heater and the AC is off and so is the ceiling fan tonight! Brrr... Florida girls up north in NORTH Carolina get cold fast :)
Hope y'all turned your clocks back if you still have one or two of those great old radio clocks that my father loved and I still use. Amazingly everything breaks excepts those clocks.
He's extremely honest, listen and know that's the way it feels when something unreal suddenly happens. Oldsmar was in the path of the Tornado, his home is on the water and it's near where the line came in..
This is the line..
I tweeted on it last night and this morning.
The Northern part of the line is shown below.
By the way the wind on Mike's video is awesome.
Crazy....
This was a mean line... forming last night.
Below you can see where the line pulled apart...
Part of the energy went to the North...
...another part hung back in the Gulf of Mexico
And moved East FAST today.
Note the ball of red down by BOC.
So telling you know if you are in the line of this system...
Take it seriously and watch out.
Amazingly no real watches or warnings.
Just put up when the tornadoes came through...
What can I say?
Don't think there is any place like Tampa...
...when it comes to fast breaking wild weather.
Storms form over the GOM...
..slamming into Tampa Bay fast.
Then the rest of Florida gets a heads up.
In South Florida there's a boat showing going on.
First big event of the Show Season.
Ft. Lauderdale Boat Show.
My kids asked me...
..so I asked Phil who is great.
If you live in Florida watch it carefully.
In the Carolinas it's mostly expected to be rain.
A narrow band but a dangerous band.
Note no real warnings up for Tampa before hand...
In motion............
No real warning other than "bad weather coming"
Really why I wrote about it a few days ago.
Because the news cycle is so crazy right now.
Things get lost...
Like checking on the weather...
Stay safe.
Stay happy.
If weather happens....
... take pictures from somewhere safe.
Besos BobbiStorm
@bobbistorm on Twitter.... for constant weather updates.
Watching the GOM for a TD or TS Alberto Could Form in the Eastern GOM This Weekend Going Into Early Next Week. Mother's Day Weekend.
A brief update that is more foreshadowing than anything else as something may be developing over the weekend in the tropics. A combination of an Upper Level Feature and a dangling, decaying frontal boundary provide the recipe for tropical trouble this time of year as it may not be too soon to get a named storm. I'm not sure this will get a name vs designation in the way of Invest or a Tropical Depression. You can see these features above that we are watching and the models are spitting out various, similar solutions.
It's hard to see but there is a very small closed low that comes ashore on the Florida Panhandle in the model above. What is more compelling in the long run is the HUGE High off the coast of Florida that takes up much of the Atlantic. ANYTHING and EVERYTHING that forms will be propelled West towards the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico and of course Florida. For now this is the pattern and as long as we have old frontal boundaries dangling around Florida we have the potential for tropical trouble be it a wander Upper Level Low or a westbound tropical wave. The satellite is below.
Currently there is no Yellow X.
No box to watch ....
But it's coming.
I'm pretty sure when I am done with the Jewish Sabbath Saturday Night I'll go online and find a yellow X and if not a yellow X it will be so close I'll be able to smell the yellow color on the map. Unless all the models pull back out immediately and pretend they never said nothing about something happening the set up is there for a tropical scenario. And, rain... copious amounts of rain and local flooding will happen with or without a name in Florida. My gut feeling is if this develops the rain may be quite heavy far from the actual small closed low so know wherever you are in Florida you will be dealing with rain.
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