All Quiet For Now

You see this?

For the first time in over a month, the tropics are quiet.

This Atlantic hurricane season has been an active one, but with Sally, Teddy, Beta and finally Paulette gone for good, the Atlantic basin is clear of any organized storms.

So now we can rest easy, right?  Uh, no, we can't.  See, the hurricane season doesn't end for another two months, and we're still five storms short of the predicted 28 storms for the Atlantic basin this year . . . and next.  The last (and only previous) season that was active enough to produce storms that required Greek letters for names, the 2005 season, lasted into 2006.  And October s nown for producing some bad hurricanes and tropical storms.  Only in the coming month, they will be forming more in the Caribbean Sea than the Atlantic Ocean, and in fact Hurricane Sandy in 2012 originated off the coast of Nicaragua before making its way to the American Northeast .  And - remember! - at least one almanac has predicted a hurricane threat for some time around Columbus day.  At least one computer projection simulated a tropical storm for that approximate period hiting the Northeast, though another projection from the same source (the GFS, for the record) indicated a storm hitting the Gulf Coast at about that same time instead.  None of this is written in stone, of course.  As Long Island weatherman Joe Cioffi explains on his own Web site, troughs will be dropping into the Eastern half of the United States, which "makes for interesting scenarios under certain circumstances."

Like another Sandy?

Let's wait and see what happens.  Just remember, its not over yet.

Sally? Gee!

Tropical Storm Sally has formed.  But not from the tropical wave you might be thinking of.

The new storm developed from a small disturbance just as of Miami that the National Hurricane Center gave little chance of forming into anything significant, and yet when it bisects the Gulf of Mexico on a northwesterly track, it is expected to strengthen into a hurricane before hitting the coast of Mississippi. 

As for the wave that came off the coast of Senegal, it has finally developed into a tropical depression and will likely become Tropical Storm Teddy late today (Sunday, September 13).  Then it should become a hurricane soon after. 

But get this.  Teddy will likely turn to the north sooner than originally anticipated, as the GFS computer projection now agrees with the Euro that will pose no threat to land. So those earlier projections of this storm affecting the whole damn U.S. East Coast appear to have fizzled.

I have to remain vigilant, though.  The hurricane season comes to end at the end of November, and the Northeast could still get that late -season storm the 2020 almanacs have been hinting at.

In the meantime, the 2021 almanacs should be out soon.  I can't wait to see what they say about next year!

Weather Weary

We're nearing the  peak of hurricane season soon, and it's too soon to say whether Tropical Storms Fay and Isaias are the worst storms my area is getting for this season.  Last week, we had a triple threat of severe thunderstorms - Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday - and we got at least one severe storm that passed before it could do any damage. But there are no indications that we're going to get anything comparable to those storms in the next two weeks.

That's not to say we won't get any inclement weather in the next two weeks.  A cold front arriving on Labor Day is expected to being showers and thunderstorms all up and down the Northeast . . . and it's going to stay here for much of the week.  It's too soon, though, to say whether any of them will be severe.  But tropical cyclones, though they will still form, will mostly stay away from the East Coast.  As I type, one tropical depression that formed off the East Coast and has become a tropical storm, though its trajectory will take it out to sea.  Any storm that forms off the west coast of Africa is likely to also remain out at sea, what's called a "fish storm" because those are the only living creatures affected.   (As for frog storms, you can read about those in the Old Testament.)  There is one potential cyclone that could affect land - a storm heading west across the Caribbean toward Central America.

It should be noted that even though the East Coast will not be affected by a tropical cyclone during hurricane peak period - September 10 and a couple of days before and after - we in the Northeast could still be hit by a hurricane much later.  Repeat: Sandy hit us in late October.  But for now, at least, the weather is giving us a break.