Making Hurricanes Go Away

  Four months ago this week, residents in South Florida were anxiously watching the tropics as Hurricane Ike formed in the Atlantic Ocean. For two agonizing days, the Palm Beaches was ground zero in the National Hurricane Center’s “cone of uncertainty.”

    Thankfully for us, a large high-pressure system steered Ike south of Florida. Unfortunately, the storm slammed into Cuba and eventually made landfall near Galveston, Texas, becoming the costliest hurricane in Texas history.

   During those two days in early September when it looked like Ike was headed our way, I fielded more than a few phone calls from folks wondering why science can’t do something about these huge storms.

  “If we can put a man on the moon,” some folks would say to me. “Why can’t we weaken a hurricane?”

   We did try once. Back in the 1960’s and ‘70’s, the U.S. Government created Project Stormfury, an attempt to weaken tropical storms and hurricanes by flying aircraft into the storms and seeding them with silver iodide.

   While the theory (silver iodide would cause supercooled water in the storm to freeze, disrupting the inner structure of the hurricane) had merit, the scientific team could never determine if the structural changes in the storm were produced by the seeding or just natural fluctations of the the hurricane.

   A big part of the problem is the sheer size and power of a hurricane. A typical storm will cover hundreds of miles and reach thousands of feet into the atmosphere. The energy released by a hurricane is mind-boggling, as much as 500,000 atom bombs.

  Still, science hasn’t given up. Researchers from Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Isreal think they’ve come up with a new way to weaken a hurricane. They want to blow smoke into a storm.

   The group believes that injecting tiny smoke particles into the bottom part of a hurricane will cause water vapor to condense at a lower altitude than normally occurs in a hurricane.

   Why is this important? If the water vapor condenses at that lower altitude it will lead to the formation of water droplets that are too small to become raindrops. It is the formation of these raindrops that leads to the release of latent heat energy that gives the storm its destructive power.  

   Bottom line: fewer raindrops mean a weaker hurricane.

   Computer models of the theory have been promising. Daniel Rosenfield, the scientist who came up with the idea, said wind speeds were cut by 25 percent in the simulations. That is a significant drop in the power of a storm that could conceivably turn a major hurricane into a much weaker storm.

   Still, while it may be possible to weaken a hurricane in a computer model, doing it in real life is something else entirely. Just to get enough smoke particles into a storm, Rosenfield estimates, would require 5 to 10 cargo airplanes filled with the stuff.   At present, no one has come up with the money for Rosenfield to field-test his theory.

   Of course, the bigger question is should we even fool around with Mother Nature? Hurricanes are a natural part of the planet, helping to transport heat from the equator to other parts of our world.

   I guess it all depends on WHEN you ask the question. It sure seemed like a good idea four months ago.

Learning the Hard Way

   It is called a mandatory evacuation. It is issued by local government agencies telling residents that they need to get out of harm’s way.

   Here in South Florida, mandatory evacuations are common when a hurricane is expected to make landfall. Twenty-four to thirty-six hours before the storm is anticipated to strike, local governments, working with forecasters at the National Hurricane Center, will issue the evacuation orders.

   Ordinarily, those evacuation guidelines will cover long stretches of communities close to the coastline or in areas that typically flood. Folks who live on Palm Beach, Singer Island or barrier beaches are told to leave their homes and move inland.

   Still, not everyone leaves. Even though it is a “mandatory” evacuation, authorities do not have the manpower to enforce the evacuation. So, in every storm, there are always a few people who stay behind.

   Just like Connie Travis and her son, Mathew Nez, of Crystal Beach, Texas.

   As told by Houston television station KHOU, Connie and Matthew were not going to leave their Crystal Beach home just because Hurricane Ike was headed their way. So, they defied the “mandatory” evacuation and rode out the hurricane, recording the event with Matthew’s home video camera.

   “There is no way the water is going to rise to that roof,” Connie says on the videotape pointing to the bottom of her house some 15 feet above the beach. “It is all news media, weather propaganda. And, I want to stay.”

    Connie’s comments were recorded one day before Ike slammed into the Texas Coastline. Packing winds of 110 mph and generating a storm surge of 20 feet, Ike made landfall along Crystal Beach in the early morning hours of September 13. It is the costliest hurricane in Texas history with damages topping $25 billion.

    “Man, I wish you could see this,” Matthew says on the videotape. “The wind is horrendous.”

   During the height of the storm, the storm surge rose 15 feet to the bottom of Connie’s beach house, the generator quit working, the camera stopped rolling and Crystal Beach went black. But, Connie and Matthew survived. “The night was literally hell for me,” said Connie.

   “Staying here was not a very smart idea,” Matthew told KHOU television. “We never had any idea it would have gotten than bad or we wouldn’t have stayed.’

    A Coast Guard helicopter rescued Connie and Matthew just hours after the wind died down. As they were being lifted from their home and into the waiting chopper, the mother and son came face to face with their decision to stay.

   “So many people lost everything, everything,” said Connie. “What’s the point? I would never ride out another hurricane again.”

   Still, Connie and Matthew were lucky; their home survived the hurricane. Most of their neighbors lost everything. It will be months before Connie, Matthew and the residents of Crystal Beach, Texas recover from Hurricane Ike. And perhaps years before the emotional scars go away, like the last words a 911 operator told Connie hours before the storm hit.

   “She said ‘write your Social Security number of your arm so that if you get swept away we can identify you’,” Connie said. “That’s when I freaked out.”

   Safe to say that Connie and Matthew now understand the meaning of “mandatory evacuation.”

When Bad Things Happen to Good Forecasts

Flooding and mudslides in Southern California, blowing snow with wind chills approaching 50 below in North Dakota and more than one million people without power in New England thanks to an ice storm.

  Yea, it was a good week to be in South Florida.

  I’m guessing that you liked our weather over the past six days, easily some of the nicest we’ve seen in months. Each day featured mostly sunny skies with afternoon high temperatures in the upper 70’s and mild overnight lows in the 60’s. It was just about perfect.

   Except for Tuesday.

   I knew something was amiss with our weather as soon as I woke up Tuesday morning. The night before I had predicted sunshine and warm temperatures (close to 80), yet as I peered out my bedroom window I was greeted with thick clouds and light rain.   

    (Insider information on meteorologists: the first thing every weather forecaster does when he/she wakes up each morning is look out the window. We are expecting a certain type of weather based on our most recent forecast and, if it is not what we anticipated, it is a lousy way to start the day.)

   Back to last Tuesday: gray, wet and cool. This is not good, I said to myself as I quickly turned on the Weather Channel and scrambled for my laptop. What in the world is going on?

   My mood darkened as I scanned satellite loops and radar sweeps of our area, each showing thick clouds and persistent showers across nearly all of South Florida. Surely, this damp weather can’t last? We should see sunshine and warmer temperatures by the afternoon. Right?

   Wrong. The afternoon was just as gloomy as Tuesday morning leading to an inescapable conclusion: my prediction was dead wrong. A busted forecast, as we say in this business. 

   Everywhere I went Tuesday I was greeted with the same question: Wasn’t it supposed to by sunny and warm today? Yes, I would reply somewhat sheepishly, that’s what I expected.

   Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of this sordid story is that Tuesday’s forecast seemed like a slam-dunk. Everything I looked at Monday afternoon told me that Tuesday was going to be one of the best days of weather we’ve seen in months, the kind of late fall weather that made South Florida famous.

   It reminded me of another seemingly “easy” forecast back in September. At the time, it seemed a certainty that it was going to rain cats and dogs across the region. The setup was classic: an abundance of tropical moisture in the Gulf of Mexico and an approaching trough of low pressure. The result: periods of heavy rain.  It didn’t rain. In fact, it was sunny across most of the state.

    Still, I am happy to report, Tuesday’s boo boo notwithstanding, that most of the time I get the weather correct. In fact, forecasting overall continues to improve especially for the big weather events like a tornado outbreak, a major winter storm or an approaching hurricane.

    So, I’ll keep calling ‘em like I seem them. And each morning I’ll look out that bedroom window expecting the best. And if I’m wrong again? It’s back to the Weather Channel and my laptop.

  

A Dry and Chilly Winter?

  It’s a dry heat. That’s how some describe the weather in Phoenix, Arizona during the summer months when the temperature routinely tops 100 degrees while the humidity is nearly non-existent.

     While Phoenix and the rest of the American Southwest are famous for its triple-digit-trouble, some might be surprised to learn that the region does have a rainy season. From June 15 through the end of September, large, powerful thunderstorms are common across the area.

  Still, in recent years, meteorologists have been at odds over what to call the outbreak of storms. Some of the names that have been used include Arizona monsoon, Southwest monsoon, Mexican monsoon and summer thunderstorm season.

   “The one thing that has been consistent is the lack of uniformity on the monsoon hazards,” said Tom Haffer with the National Weather Service in Phoenix.

   There is no such problem here in South Florida. Our rainy season is just that, the rainy season, and in 2008 it was very wet.

   The National Weather Service reports that this year’s rainy season began on May 22 and ended on October 14. Rainfall during that five-month period was heavy, averaging about five inches above normal and officially ending South Florida’s recent drought.

   “Tropical Storm Fay put the bullet in the drought,” Geoff Shaughnessy, a meteorologist with the South Florida Water Management District told the Palm Beach Post.

   The slow-moving tropical storm dumped a foot of rain on Lake Okeechobee and nearly two feet in the Melbourne area. Because of Fay’s prodigious rainfall, the level of Lake Okeechobee rose from 9.3 feet in June to more than 15 feet in early September.

    In fact, Fay was determined to drop rainfall on every square inch of the state. The storm made its initial landfall in the Keys, a few hours later came a second landfall near Ft. Myers followed by a slow trek across Lake Okeechobee and off the coast near Melbourne.

    Fay spent the next three days lingering off the coast of the Kennedy Space Center before making a third landfall in Florida in Volusia County. The storm moved on a west-northwest track across the state, back into the Gulf of Mexico with another landfall in the panhandle.

  Fay is long-gone and so are our regular afternoon thunderstorms. The dry season is here and, if the forecasts are correct, it looks to be a very dry and potentially chilly winter and spring.

    “The National Weather Service’s long-range outlook for the upcoming winter and spring is for an increased likelihood of below normal rainfall and near normal temperatures,” said Robert Molleda, a meteorologist with the Miami National Weather Service office.

   Molleda bases his forecast on sea surface trends in the equatorial Pacific Ocean that tend to influence weather patterns around the world. The warm water phase of the phenomenon is called El Nino, while the cold water phase is referred to as la Nina.

    The current phase is neutral, which means that the equatorial sea surface temperatures are near normal. The forecast for the upcoming winter and spring seasons is for a continuation or near normal conditions to possibly a cool, or La Nina

 in early 2009.

   Based on past neutral or weak La Nina events, Molleda says, “that the likelihood of a drier winter and spring is higher” here in South Florida. Temperature trends, on the other hand, are not as well defined. Still, Molleda predicts “there is a higher than normal likelihood of a freeze over South Florida.”

   “Previous years with similar trends (in the equatorial Pacific) have shown fairly significant variability in temperatures during the winter months,” said Molleda. “The winter seasons of 1960-61 and 1980-81 produced significant cold spells across parts of South Florida.”  Another comparable winter season, 1996-97, tended to be very warm with brief, but intense cold spells.

   As always, one should take these long-range forecasts with a grain or two with salt. After all, we weather folks often have a difficult time predicting what next Tuesday’s weather will be like, let alone next month’s.

   By the way, those squabbling meteorologists in Arizona finally agreed on a name for their summer storm season. It’s called: the North American Monsoon.

   

A Chilly and Dry Winter?

  It’s a dry heat. That’s how some describe the weather in Phoenix, Arizona during the summer months when the temperature routinely tops 100 degrees while the humidity is nearly non-existent.

     While Phoenix and the rest of the American Southwest are famous for its triple-digit-trouble, some might be surprised to learn that the region does have a rainy season. From June 15 through the end of September, large, powerful thunderstorms are common across the area.

  Still, in recent years, meteorologists have been at odds over what to call the outbreak of storms. Some of the names that have been used include Arizona monsoon, Southwest monsoon, Mexican monsoon and summer thunderstorm season.

   “The one thing that has been consistent is the lack of uniformity on the monsoon hazards,” said Tom Haffer with the National Weather Service in Phoenix.

   There is no such problem here in South Florida. Our rainy season is just that, the rainy season, and in 2008 it was very wet.

   The National Weather Service reports that this year’s rainy season began on May 22 and ended on October 14. Rainfall during that five-month period was heavy, averaging about five inches above normal and officially ending South Florida’s recent drought.

   “Tropical Storm Fay put the bullet in the drought,” Geoff Shaughnessy, a meteorologist with the South Florida Water Management District told the Palm Beach Post.

   The slow-moving tropical storm dumped a foot of rain on Lake Okeechobee and nearly two feet in the Melbourne area. Because of Fay’s prodigious rainfall, the level of Lake Okeechobee rose from 9.3 feet in June to more than 15 feet in early September.

    In fact, Fay was determined to drop rainfall on every square inch of the state. The storm made its initial landfall in the Keys, a few hours later came a second landfall near Ft. Myers followed by a slow trek across Lake Okeechobee and off the coast near Melbourne.

    Fay spent the next three days lingering off the coast of the Kennedy Space Center before making a third landfall in Florida in Volusia County. The storm moved on a west-northwest track across the state, back into the Gulf of Mexico with another landfall in the panhandle.

  Fay is long-gone and so are our regular afternoon thunderstorms. The dry season is here and, if the forecasts are correct, it looks to be a very dry and potentially chilly winter and spring.

    “The National Weather Service’s long-range outlook for the upcoming winter and spring is for an increased likelihood of below normal rainfall and near normal temperatures,” said Robert Molleda, a meteorologist with the Miami National Weather Service office.

   Molleda bases his forecast on sea surface trends in the equatorial Pacific Ocean that tend to influence weather patterns around the world. The warm water phase of the phenomenon is called El Nino, while the cold water phase is referred to as la Nina.

    The current phase is neutral, which means that the equatorial sea surface temperatures are near normal. The forecast for the upcoming winter and spring seasons is for a continuation or near normal conditions to possibly a cool, or La Nina

The current phase is neutral, which means that the equatorial sea surface temperatures are near normal. The forecast for the upcoming winter and spring seasons is for a continuation or near normal conditions to possibly a cool, or La Nina event, is early 2009.

   Based on past neutral or weak La Nina events, Molleda says, “that the likelihood of a drier winter and spring is higher” here in South Florida. Temperature trends, on the other hand, are not as well defined. Still, Molleda predicts “there is a higher than normal likelihood of a freeze over South Florida.”

   “Previous years with similar trends (in the equatorial Pacific) have shown fairly significant variability in temperatures during the winter months,” said Molleda. “The winter seasons of 1960-61 and 1980-81 produced significant cold spells across parts of South Florida.”  Another comparable winter season, 1996-97, tended to be very warm with brief, but intense cold spells.

   As always, one should take these long-range forecasts with a grain or two with salt. After all, we weather folks often have a difficult time predicting what next Tuesday’s weather will be like, let alone next month’s.

   By the way, those squabbling meteorologists in Arizona finally agreed on a name for their summer storm season. It’s called: the North American Monsoon.

   

The Great Waco Hail Stone

A six-pound chunk of ice that smelled a little like fish and looked a lot like quartz made big news in York, Pennsylvania last week. That’s because the frozen concoction fell from the sky, through a York woman’s roof and slightly injured her while she slept.

   Mary Ann Foster was glad to be alive after a piece of the ice broke off and hit her on the forehead. The lump of ice left the 66-year-old grandmother with a large bump on her head and holes in her roof and bedroom ceiling.

    Local officials, meantime, were left with a mystery: where did the six pounds of ice come from?  Some speculated that it might have fallen from an airplane or rocket but the actual source remains a mystery.

   Ice, on a much smaller scale, does fall from the sky during thunderstorms. Most hailstones are tiny often compared to nickels and golf balls. Occasionally, hail the size of softballs show up in Texas and Oklahoma, and every once in a while so much hail falls in eastern Colorado that it looks like snow.

   The largest hailstone in US history fell from the sky in south-central Nebraska just over five years ago.  It was the size of a soccer ball with a circumference of 18.75 inches.  Still, it weighed a little more than two pounds, a tiny piece of ice compared to the chunk that hit Mary Ann Foster.  And, nothing like the nine-pound hailstone that fell in Waco, Texas back in the 1930’s.

   The great Waco hailstone was the talk of Texas for years. Photographs of the huge chunk of ice were seen around the world. Folks who witnessed the amazing event became local celebrities.  It even became part of Ripley’s Believe It or Not.  

   There was just was one problem with the story:  the hailstone didn’t come from the sky. It came from a hotel room.

   On an overcast humid afternoon one-summer day in the late 1930’s a traveling salesman checked into the Raleigh hotel in downtown Waco.  The salesman asked the bellhop to bring a block of ice and some liquor to his hotel room.

   As the salesman began sipping his first cocktail of the afternoon, the sky in downtown Waco turned black as a squall line of thunderstorms approached the city. Heavy rain, gusty winds and pea-sized hail soon began falling just outside the salesman’s hotel window.

   This was one whopper of a storm. Soon, the pea-sized hail morphed into quarter-sized stones of ice along with a few hailstones appreciably larger.  Folks who had sought shelter from the storm under the hotel’s awning began gathering the hailstones marveling at their size.

   Now on his second cocktail, the traveling salesman decided to have a little fun with the locals.  He rounded the remainder of the block of ice under the hot water faucet and threw the nine-pound icy chunk out his hotel window.

    The folks down on the street went crazy gathering around the large piece of ice like it was gold. Soon, a photographer from the local paper arrived to document the record-breaking event.  Waco had made history.

   The salesman did make an attempt to clear things up, to tell folks that he had thrown the ball of ice from his hotel room but no one in Waco was listening. As far as the locals were concerned Waco was now home to the largest hailstone in history and no one, especially a traveling salesman, was going to tell folks anything different.

  While we may never know where the six-pound chunk of ice that struck Ms. Foster came from, the origin of the great Waco hailstone is crystal clear. Thanks to a traveling salesman with a sense of humor and an empty glass of liquor a Texas tall-tale lives today.   

Monday Milestone: No Named Storms In Tropics

Monday, September 15, was a bit of a milestone for those of use who keep track of the tropics. It marked the first day in exactly one month that no named tropical systems were roaming around the Atlantic Basin. No depressions, storms or hurricanes. No big headaches like Fay, Hanna, Gustav or Ike.

It doesn’t mean the 2008 hurricane season is over. After all, history tells us that tropical systems can form well into November. Still, it does give us a chance to take a collective breath after a very active four-week period in the tropics, culminating on Saturday with the landfall of Hurricane Ike.

Thanks to Direct TV, I was able to watch a Houston television station cover Hurricane Ike over the weekend. KHOU, the CBS TV station in Houston, did an excellent job tracking Ike as he crashed ashore early Saturday morning. Their team of meteorologist and on-site reporters covered all the bases as Ike hit.  Their team did an equally excellent job covering the aftermath as millions of residents along the upper Texas coast pick up the pieces.

The images brought back vivid memories of Frances, Jeanne and Wilma, three storms that slammed into southern Florida just a few short years ago. Those memories and the pictures from Houston reinforced an important point about hurricane preparation; surviving the storm is easy, making it through the storm’s aftermath is something else entirely.

The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that conditions in Galveston “are degenerating, with stagnant water breeding mosquitoes, toilets overflowing, no operating sewage system, hardly any running water, no power, no gas”. The Post reports that the city has “no functioning hospital and that officials fear a health crisis will result from the worsening sanitation.”

Up the road in Houston life is a little bit better. The Houston Chronicle reported Tuesday that power has been restored to 700,000 customers. Still, more than two million customers are still in the dark and that electricity may not be restored for several more weeks.

As we know first-hand following Frances, Jeanne and Wilma, life after a hurricane is incredibly difficult. The power is out, the phones aren’t working, the kids are driving us crazy and there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight. Stand in line for several hours for water and ice and the stress can reach a breaking point.

“Life after a hurricane is a test of endurance, patience and adaptability,” wrote Washington Post reporter Joel Achenbach on Tuesday. “When there’s no electricity, life is dark, hot and kind of mysterious — because no one knows anything other than rumors.”  

Unfortunately, for folks along the Texas Upper Coast the facts say it will take some time to recover from Hurricane Ike.

Ike Catches All By Surprise

No one saw it coming. Ike’s rapid intensification (from tropical storm to Category 4 hurricane in 12 hours) caught everyone by surprise, including forecasters at the National Hurricane Center.

 

They had anticipated a strengthening tropical cyclone and, in fact, had predicted that Ike would become a major hurricane. But that intensification was expected to be gradual, over a period of days, not hours.

 

Ike’s explosion of power sent a hurricane wake-up call to everyone is South Florida.  The fifth storm in just over two weeks is on everyone’s radar now as we watch and wait to see what the big storm will do in the coming days.

 

As usual, the future track of the hurricane is full of questions with a spread in the computer models. All the models take the storm toward Florida and then turn it north. The question is when and where does that turn take place. I don’t think we’ll have a clear picture until the weekend.

 

Safe to say there will be a lot of teeth gnashing and our hearts will beat a little faster each time the National Hurricane Center issues an update on Hurricane Ike. More hurricane angst.

 

Still, now is the time to begin preparing for the possibility that Ike might come our way. We have time. Based on the forecast from the National Hurricane Center, Ike won’t be threatening Florida until Monday or Tuesday. So, take the time now to prepare.

 

Our online hurricane guide is an excellent resource full of everything you need to prepare for a storm.

National Weather Quirks

I’ve been scratching my head today over two weather events that occurred earlier in the week. On Monday might, a line of severe thunderstorms rolled through the Chicago area. And, on Tuesday morning, Tropical Storm Edouard made landfall along the upper Texas coast.

At first blush, you would think the tropical storm would have been the big weather troublemaker. After all, a tropical storm can really pack a punch, generating high winds, isolated tornadoes, storm surge and drenching rain.

Folks in Texas, especially around the Houston area, know all about tropical trouble. Last September, Hurricane Humberto seemingly came out of nowhere lashing the area with high winds and heavy rain. And, in June of 2001, the region was devastated by Tropical Storm Allison, a weak, poorly organized system that dumped nearly 40 inches of rain.

Still, Edouard turned out to be a non-event. Sure, the area got soaked with three to five inches of rain and winds did gust to 65 mph but there were no reports of any significant damage, injuries or deaths. In fact, considering how dry it has been in southeastern Texas for the past few months, Edouard was just what the region needed.

In Chicago, on the other had, folks were still picking up the pieces after a vicious line of thunderstorms roared through the area Monday night.

The storms were so strong tornado sirens were heard in downtown Chicago, Cub fans were evacuated from the stands at Wrigley field and passengers at O’Hare International Airport were moved to lower levels of the terminal.

The National Weather Service confirmed that at least three tornadoes accompanied the squall line through the region. Twisters touched down in the Chicago suburbs of Bloomingdale and Bolingbrook. A third tornado hit Griffith, Indiana.

More than two dozen homes were damaged because of the storms while thousands of people were still without power Wednesday afternoon, nearly 48 hours after the storm hit. Lightning was blamed for several fires.

A tropical storm making landfall is always a big deal. As it turned out, Edouard was a big dud while, in Chicago, a line of severe storms turned out to be the day’s big weather news.

Big Bad Bertha

All this week we will be watching the future movement of Hurricane Bertha, the first hurricane of the 2008 season. You’ll find lots of information about this storm here on our web site, including the latest forecast from the National Hurricane Center, satellite photographs and the latest statistics.

It is not the first time a “Bertha” has prowled the waters of the Atlantic Ocean.  In fact, historical records from the National Hurricane Center web site (http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/) reveal that we’ve dealt with a Bertha twice in recent history. And, in both instances, Bertha was a trouble maker.

In August of 2002, Tropical Storm Bertha formed in the Gulf of Mexico, not far from the mouth of the Mississippi River. The storm, top winds of 40 mph, made landfall across southern Louisiana dumping as much as eight inches of rain across the region. Then, just when forecasters figured Bertha was done, she reformed in the Gulf and made a second landfall in Texas. She dumped a lot of rain but didn’t cause any significant problems across the Gulf coast states.

The Bertha of 1996, however, was much stronger and caused widespread death and destruction in North Carolina. Like her distant cousin in 2008, Bertha of 1996 formed in the eastern Atlantic and quickly intensified into a category 2 hurricane. (Bertha, 1996 intensified into a hurricane July 7, 1996. Exactly 12 years later, Bertha 2008 did the same).

Bertha, 1996 briefly took aim at Florida before turning to the north and slamming into North Carolina. The storm produced more than $250 million in damages and claimed eight lives.

Let’s hope that this year’s version of Bertha stays far away from land.