Hurricane Harbor

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!

Thursday, November 18, 2021

Non Tropical Moisture for Florida, Waiting on Cold Fronts... A Look Back at 2021 Hurricane Season & Towards a Parade of Winter Fronts Moving Getting Ready to March. Hurricane Season Ends, Early Winter in the Wings


There's rain on the way for Florida today and tomorrow. A non-tropical area of moisture is oozing it's away across the peninsular waiting to be picked up by an approaching front. 


The NHC weighs in below.


Why are we not more excited?
Because we are in a frontal pattern.
Fronts on the march!!


We are marching into Winter.
Looking back at the 2021 Hurricane Season

It's odd that all November we have been watching winter models as if it's early December and yet according to the calendar we are still in Hurricane Season and knee deep in fallen leaves or watching football depending on where we live and or doing both! In the Carolinas we have had severe, strong cold fronts that actually gave us frost and freeze warnings. Rather than look down to our Southwest for a tropical Caribbean threat we are watching  the atmosphereric rivers in Alaska and Canada. 

It's that time of year. In truth the hurricane season has been over de facto for quite a while, in fact it seems so far behind us in the distance that it almost seems like last year's weather news. And, yet there are areas that are still cleaning up and nothing is totally normal. That's what hurricanes really do.... they shake up our sense of normal. The landscape changes suddenly like in a movie with great cinematography as storm clouds roll in and things blow away in the wind. People pray for their lives and for their home, their car and their neighbors and wince when they hear the broken groan of a tree crashing down somewhere in the dark of the stormy night.  In the daytime they peer out unboarded up windows or venture out when the wind calms briefly to see which tree landed and what it wrapped itself around praying no one was killed. 

Cars and trees can be replaced. People we love cannot be replaced. Hurricane Season reminds us that one day there's a storm with it's name written just for us. Kids grow up and talk on Hurricane Donna or Hurricane Camille or Hurricane Andrew or Hurricane Hugo that's still remembered for cutting a path through Charleston all the way to Charlotte far inland; Raleigh remembers Hazel and Fran that also took the "A Train" far inland to Raleigh and Hilsborough and beyond.  And, the 2021 Hurricane Seasons reminded us that horrific storm damage happens not just upon landfall, nor does it just creatiing inland flooding up river but that as Camille and Ida both did they created horrific havoc and a crazy high death toll as they made their exit off the stage but not onto the stage; it's a lesson we should not forget ever. 


Ida's classic  C track yet deaths were higher in NY and NJ
than Louisiana. 
Go figure.
This should be the lesson of the 2021 Hurricane Season.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Ida You can read the article linked here that enumerates all the places from Venezuela in South America to places in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast that suffered casualties from Ida not just landfal in Louisiana. At least 115 people died from Ida and I've seen several different totals so I'll let you read the report above and we will wait to see what the NHC writes up in their post season evaluation.

As for our ready to roll Winter...what will it really bring us? You know there is a game children play during Chanukah, they spin a draidel that looks like a top with letters on 4 different sides. As it wobbles around as it slows down after spinning fast and it lands on one specific letter. Yes it's a gambling game of sorts and yet our relationship with weather be it hurricane season or winter is always a gamble. 

Do I put the shutters up?
Do we evacuate?
Should I salt the driveway?
Do I need to buy milk, eggs and bread? (This is specifically big in the Carolinas...)
Do we cancel school for the storm?

So many intangibles and until it actually evolves and unravels we really do not know for sure while the GFS EURO and all the other models show us various tracks for snow storms.

Miller A
Miller B
Miller C (seriously there's a C option?)
There are actually a lot of "Miller Storm" scenarios that are to winter what the Lushine Line is to Hurricane Season.


Before the parade passes by, it has an area where the parade sets up and waits to begin it's marching movement down the assigned track. And the storms, fronts and dips and dives of the atmosphere move around Planet Earth like some lava lamp or carousel at a carnival, a winter carnival I may add.

7 troughs around the Northern Hemisphere in the mid latitude is what he is pointing out. As we move deeper into December and oh my gosh January those begin to dive deeper down, sharper and there's a chance of a snow storm or an ice storm or a blizzard. Or there's a chance the winter parade passes you by and you end up making French Toast with all that milk, eggs and bread! Unfortnately, from my perspective, french toast is way too big a diet after most of our winter weather threats here in the Carolinas. But once in a while.... 
once in a while........we get a winter storm to remember.

This 2021 Hurricane Ida is the hurricane to remember, whereas the beautiful ocean spinners of Sam and Larry are merely an asterisk to our memories. Elsa does get a prize for a great name and doing her share of damage. The pattern was set up early on this season for where US landfalling Hurricanes would go and what they would do as they progressed towards the NE and flooding as Elsa did and Fred followed, before Ida produced and directed a disaster movie in real time in real life for New York City.


What will our pattern be this winter?
This is where our focus is on November 17th!

Stay tuned.

Besos BobbiStorm
@bobbistorm on Twitter and Instagram

Ps Last night we went out to a meeting, get together at Tobacco Road in Raleigh. It's a great bar, restaurant, hang out and has pretty lights strung at night for anyone who wishes to eat outside. It was fun, it was a soft Autumn night with just a drop of chill in the air. I threw a flannel plaid shirt over my black tee shirt and enjoyed a good Imperial Porter. Note they only put Porters on the menu in the Autumn and Winter here so that was good as I prefer malty beers to hoppy IPAs and I gave up Miller Lite a long time ago. I hope you get a chance to get out and enjoy life before the parade passes you by. Soon we will hunker down for frigid cold fronts in this neck of the wood and that's what I do love about this neck of the woods as I love Winter. I do love Miami, but after Thanksgiving I'm focused on Winter and Hurricane Season is pretty much in the rear view mirrow; yesterday's parade so to speak ;) 


NC is a beer state with breweries on almost every street downtown ... I leaned a lot about beer here, what I like and what I do not and I prefer fruit dipped in chocolate not in my beer! 







1 Comments:

At 5:32 AM, Anonymous John Wyatt said...

Have been working in the Stormwater Management industry since long but haven't come across such an elaborate blog post. I'm glad I found your blog.

 

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