Hurricane season begins

Ron, there's a reason that the storm did what it did, and where. It has to do with the polar stream, and the subtropical jet streams. Their current location is offering a very low wind shear environment off the Carolina's giving our first invest of the season a place to develope. This location of low shear will move down into the Carribbean in about two weeks and could make things scary there, and in the Gulf. The Carribbean is historically where early season storms form. There is even a model out there that has a tropical depression off west Florida just past mid month. None of this is really out of the ordinary, they are fanning the scare flames just to get published. This statement;

is pushing to be over the top, and would be mocked at Weather Underground for being "sensationalism jouralism.

On the whole of the season, we may have an "el Nino" develop in the middle of the hurricane season. This will serve to depress tropical development with high wind shear values throughout the Carribbean and Gulf. This is good news on paper, but it only takes one to make a big mess. 2004 was an el Nino year.. Francis, Charlie ,Jeanne and Ivan said hello that year, BUT, statistically, there are "overall" fewer and weaker storms during an el Nino event.

SST's (sea surface temperatures) and TCHP (tropical cyclone heat potential) values are down.. not as much warm water to feed any given storm so there's that in our favor too. In fact, the SST anomalies we are seeing right now are at their coolest level since July 1994. Good news.. probably. There are many indications that this will be average or below for the number of storms, where they go, is entirely different. I think I have about two weeks before the nervousness that will not abate until November is upon me.

 

I have to say, after having the worst part of Ike blow right over me, Im not unhappy to be living in Autin now.

Hopefully it will be a mild year.