Tropical weather
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We are continuing to watch the El Nino begin to fade away in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, although there is still plenty of warm water there. Last year, while El Nino was growing, the strong jet kept most of the tropical storm development out over the very warm Atlantic Ocean, although we still experienced some…
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After every extreme weather event, scientists study the effects of the event to see what they can learn from the consequences of that event. One of the lessons learned after Hurricane Idalia shows how “living shoreline” projects provide more protection to ocean fronts than other methods of protection from high waves and storm surge. Living…
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My tropical meteorology scientist colleagues have been watching the sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean lately and have been stunned at how warm they are compared to normal. In some areas, the temperatures are at more than 4 standard deviations away from average conditions, which is just mind-blowing in how unusual this is. That…
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With the 2024 hurricane season coming up, here is an article and video from the Weather Channel describing the list of names for this year. The list is basically the same as the 2018 list (they repeat every 7 years) but with Francine replacing Florence and Milton replacing Michael. Both of the retired storms caused…
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With Atlantic Ocean temperatures at summer-like conditions already this year in the main development region of the tropics, tropical scientists are very concerned about the likelihood of a very active Atlantic tropical season this year, especially if El Nino decays quickly and is replaced by La Nina. CNN has a good discussion on this here.…
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While we have all been watching the current strong El Nino for signs of weakening and swinging to La Nina, that is not the only factor that will impact the weather across the United States this summer. This year another big factor will be the sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic, which are currently far…
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If you follow weather news, you probably saw a story this week about a new scientific article that discussed the need for a category 6 hurricane with winds much stronger than the typical category 5 storm at 192 mph or greater. According to the authors, “Since 2013, five storms — all in the Pacific —…