TEXAS TROPICS

July gets started where June left off with 3 marks on the map. A tropical wave with a 10% chance of formation east of the Lesser Antilles, Invest 95L in the northwestern Gulf of Mexico, and Potential Tropical Cyclone #2 in the SW Caribbean. We'll start with the tropical wave that entered the eastern Caribbean then fizzled out. Or to be more technical, conditions were not favorable for development and nothing becomes of it. Next was Invest 95L . This system had a mesoscale vortex form near Galveston, TX that literally moved most of the rain out of the Houston area. The Golden Triangle area ended up getting the bulk of the rain from this system, leaving much of the rain starved central Texas coast pretty much high and dry.  The final holdover from June was PTC2. On July 1st, this system had been designated a PTC for a record 6 days. The NHC only started referring to these systems as a PTC since 2017. Incidentally, the record PTC2 broke was that of PTC1 last month. So finally after 6...

Former Invest 94L/PTC2/Tropical Storm/Hurricane Bonnie,  finally meets her demise becoming post-tropical on July 9th after a 17 day journey off the African coast. Having started as a strong tropical wave south of the Cabo Verde Islands back on June 23rd, and almost immediately getting an AOI (area of interest) tag, followed by an Invest tag (94L) the same day, the system made the trek across the Atlantic, got tagged Potential Tropical Cyclone #2 on June 27th, as it approached the southern Windward Islands and coast of South America. Still not attaining a closed circulation to become a cyclone, PTC2 scraped across the northern coast of South America before entering the southwestern Caribbean. Finally on July 1st, a closed circulation was found and Bonnie was born. Bonnie then slammed into the southern coast of Nicaragua as a tropical storm, maintained tropical storm status crossing Central America and splashed down in the eastern Pacific, thus keeping the name Bonnie. The 1st such ...

The 1st month of the 2022 Atlantic Hurricane Season is in the books, and though there were a few features, only 1 named system came from it. On the very 1st "official" day of the season (June 1), we had an Invest tagged near the Yucatan Peninsula ( 91L ). This system was part of a broad low in the NW Caribbean and the remnants of what was once Hurricane Agatha in the Pacific. Those remnants crossed the Isthmus of Tehuantepec from the Pacific and emerged into the Bay of Campeche. With the system projected to head to Florida, and be there within 48 hours, on June 2nd the NHC gave it the designation of Potential Tropical Cyclone #1 (PTC1). A ton of shear was present in the Gulf of Mexico, and that shear remained present during PTC1's entire trip to the Florida coast. Any center that tried to form had convection completely blown away from it. By the 3rd, PTC1 was making it's way across Florida, sorta making landfall between Naples and Ft. Myers. Sorta because there'...

Tropical Storm Alex is one of the rare systems that was 1st a named system in the east Pacific, crossed over into the Atlantic basin, and became a named system there as well. So rare that there's only been 5 others on record that have done so. It should be noted that these systems all degenerated to remnants/areas of disturbed weather while over land, before re-emerging into open water in another basin and regenerating into a tropical cyclone. When this happens where the system then regains tropical storm intensity, it gets a new name, which is whatever the next name on the list in that particular basin is. This used to be the case for all systems, including those that maintained a low level circulation, which is more rare, as well. In 2000, the WMO ( World Meteorology Organization ) changed the naming policy where if a storm's core holds together on it's journey from one basin to another, it would retain the same name. This last happened in 2016 when category 3 Hurricane ...

In a recent blog entry I talked about the strongest hurricanes there are, the CATEGORY FIVE . Since our emphasis here at Texas Tropics is, of course, tropical systems affecting Texas, I thought I'd talk about the strongest systems to ever make Texas landfall. There has never been a hurricane at category 5 strength make landfall in Texas. At least in recorded history (since 1851), that is. There have been a couple that have come close though. There have been 5 hurricanes that have made Texas landfall with winds of at least 140 mph. There's been just 6 hurricanes to make Texas landfall with pressure lower than 940 millibars. I'll save the strongest, most powerful Texas landfalls for last. 5th on the list for lowest pressure, and one of the 5 to make landfall with at least 140 mph winds was the Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900 . To this day the 1900 storm is the deadliest U.S. natural disaster ever, killing an estimated 8,000-12,000 people. This death toll could have been muc...

Forecasting the weather is one of the most difficult jobs one could set out to do. At least in terms of getting it right. In fact it's so hard to do that people joke about how they wish they had a job where they could be wrong 75% of the time and still keep their job. Earth is a very big planet. Not by Jupiter standards of course, but still plenty big, and a million things factor into our weather. From ocean currents, to the atmosphere, to volcanic activity, to the tilt of the earth relative to the sun, to the sun itself affecting our weather, there's a whole lot going on that makes up our weather. Even with the technology we have available here in the 21st century, predicting Mother Nature is far from an exact science. And technology we do have now. We've come a long way from relying on the Farmer's Almanac to make weather predictions. Now we have satellites all over the globe giving us a view of every inch of the planet and all the weather taking place all at the same...

The Saffir-Simpson scale is what is used to measure the intensity of hurricanes, which are defined by 5 categories, ranging from 1 to 5, with 1 being minimal in strength and damage potential, and 5 being the most powerful with catastrophic damage potential. Sustained winds of a tropical cyclone that are 74 mph or greater, classify a tropical cyclone as a hurricane. In the Western hemisphere, that is. Elsewhere around the world they're called Typhoons. Hurricane classifications in our part of the world: Category 1 - winds of 74-95 mph Category 2 - winds of 96-110 mph Category 3 - winds of 111-129 mph Category 4 - winds of 130-156 mph Category 5 - winds greater than 157 mph The scale only goes to category 5 because the scale was created to measure potential damage to human made structures. Once you get past a certain threshold, in this case sustained winds of 157 mph or greater, it doesn't really matter how much stronger the winds get, the damage on human made structures is basi...

Last year's hurricane season (2021) saw the number of named storms fall well short of the record number of 30 storms we had in 2020. The 21 named storms last year, however, were still the 3rd most ever in a season, and it marked the 2nd year in a row, 3rd time ever, that the seasonal storm name list was exhausted. That list has 21 names every year, using a name for every letter of the English alphabet except the letters Q, U, X, Y and Z. The 21 storms last year, following the 30 storm record season of 2020, easily broke the record for the number of named storms in a 2 year period. That record now stands at 51. The record for a 3 year period was also broken. That now stands at 69, falling 1 storm short of the previous record for number of storms in a 4 year period, which was shattered last year and now sits at 84. 84 storms in the last 4 years! The entire decade of the 1980's had 93 storms. Despite the extremely heavy activity in the tropics, particularly recently, prediction o...