Less Hurricane Anxiety

It's amazing how these weather computer projections can change.  Before the weekend started, I was scared to death of a major hurricane coming up the East Coast and literally hitting me where I live. Now look at this map from the Global Forecast System (GFS), showing 1:00 P.M. Eastern time on Monday, October 26, from today's 06z run!

While it shows a large swath of rain of snow coming in across the continent (which would affect my area by Wednesday, October 28), it does not show that hypothetical Western Caribbean storm affecting the Eastern seaboard.  In fact, it doesn't show any such storm; while a hurricane is expected to form out in the Atlantic near Bermuda but likely not to affect land, the hurricane that forecasters thought would develop from the area of the Caribbean Sea of the coast of Nicaragua is completely non-existent.  Although something could still form near Central America, the shift in the jet stream dip from east to west would likely preclude any such storm reaching the Northeast as Sandy did eight years ago.  The current trends on the GFS have been consistent for several runs.  And the National Hurricane Center has lessened the chance of anything forming in that part of the Atlantic basin to near nil.

Although Mike Seidel on The Weather Channel insists the chance will still go up.

On the other hand, here's what new York meteorologist Joe Cioffi had to say about all of this: "Another tropical storm could develop in the Northwest Caribbean and it has been one that weather models have been showing for the last 10 days and weather chatterers on social media have played up for all sorts of apocalyptic outcomes. Yes, it is 2020, but overnight we see that models have lost the idea of a hurricane moving up the coast and show that anything that forms in the Northwest Caribbean could get trapped there. We suggest that until there is something that develops, we will focus attention on what is actually there and not what could be."

Although Mike Seidel on The Weather Channel will continue focusing on what could be.

Vivian Brown's departure from The Weather Chanel wasn't the only reason I stopped watching that channel so much. 😛