Tropical weather

  • You may see the National Hurricane Center daily maps showing the likely areas of development for tropical storms and wonder how long it takes the storm to get close enough to the Southeast to worry about. This excellent map from Ed Piotrowski shows the average number of days it takes for a storm to get…

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  • While the Atlantic tropics have been very quiet for the last two months, we are finally starting to see the possibility of some development of the waves that are now coming off of Africa. There are two areas of potential development in the Atlantic today, and while the potential of development in the next five…

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  • It’s been a remarkably quiet July and August this year, with no named tropical storms since the three that occurred early in the season. In fact, it’s one of the quietest tropical periods in the Atlantic basin since records began. But the models are starting to show a change in the pattern as the Saharan…

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  • Those of you who are older might remember the terrible storm that hit Miami (and later, Louisiana) 30 years ago this week, Hurricane Andrew. There have been a lot of interesting retrospective stories in the news about it. Here is a NOAA story with several links to interviews with National Hurricane Center forecasters and others…

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  • The tropics wake up

    After a long calm spell, the tropics appear to be waking up, right on time as we approach the main part of the Atlantic hurricane season. The National Hurricane Center posted a 5-day outlook today that shows a wave coming off of Africa in the next day with a 40 percent chance of developing into…

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  • The North Carolina State Climate Office posted a blog story earlier this week about short-lived TS Colin, which formed near South Carolina and moved along the coast into North Carolina before it dissipated less than 24 hours after it formed. You can read more at The Tropics Come A-Colin – North Carolina State Climate Office…

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  • We have just finished the first month of the official Atlantic hurricane season. How unusual has it been? One thing is that we have already had three named storms, including Colin this past week (although the last time we had TS Colin in 2016, it occurred on June 6). The average date of the first…

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