Rock You Like a Hurricane

Earlier this week, I bade farewell to Hurricane Matthew with the observation that there didn't appear to be any tropical development for the time being.  That proved to be dead wrong; Hurricane Nicole, which was then degenerating into a third-rate tropical storm, went on to re-intensify into a third-category major hurricane, lashing Bermuda in the process.

My assessment of Nicole may have been premature, but not as premature as one would be to conclude that the 2016 Atlantic hurricane season is pretty much done.  Because even though there are no disturbances in the Atlantic basin at the moment, there are still a little over six weeks to go in the tropical cyclone season, and there's still plenty of time for more storms.  In fact, the experts' predictions for nineteen named storms, eight hurricanes, and four major hurricanes this year seem to be well on track;  Nicole was the fourteenth named storm, sixth hurricane and third major hurricane so far this season.

Meanwhile, the computer projection coming out of the Canadian Meteorological Centre (CMC) are bound to scare a few people a couple of weeks before Halloween.  It shows not one, but two tropical systems barreling up the U.S. East Coast within three days, around some time next weekend!  Fortunately, the CMC projection, like Linda Evangelista, is a stupid Canadian model.  The CMC is known for being, shall we say, less than accurate in predicting major storms.  The Global Forecast System (GFS) and Euro models haven't picked up on the Canadian projection, but that's not to say there can't be something happening down the road.

I hope we don't get any more storms, but, as always, bear this in mind; Sandy formed toward the end of October and hit New Jersey just before Halloween (which was canceled here as a result), and no one saw it coming this time (October 15) four years ago.