RETIREMENT PARTY AND EARLY SEASON ACTION?

Waking up from a long winter's nap with a new hurricane season just beyond the horizon. We're so close, in fact, the 2023 preseason predictions should start trickling in within the next couple of weeks or so.  Meanwhile, the WMO (World Meteorological Organization) had a retirement party earlier this week. Two systems from last year's season get retired, Ian and Fiona.

Ian

Hurricane Ian becomes the 13th storm that starts with the letter "I" to get retired (14th if you count the Greek letter Iota in 2020). The letter "I" easily leads the pack for the most retired storms. It wasn't until post-season analysis that Ian got an upgrade to a category 5 hurricane after it crossed Cuba and entered the southeastern Gulf of Mexico. This makes Ian the 1st cat 5 in the Atlantic basin since Lorenzo in 2019, and the 1st cat 5 in the Gulf since Michael in 2018. Ian struck and crossed Cuba as a cat 3 blow on Sep. 27. A day later, as it was nearing the southwest Florida Gulf coast, Ian hit peak intensity of a cat 5 with 160 mph winds. Ian made landfall on Sep. 28 at Cayo Costa, FL as a cat 4 with 150 mph winds, the strongest landfall since Charlie in 2004, which coincidentally struck almost the exact same place 18 years earlier. Ian's death toll reached 160 with 149 of those in Florida, making it the deadliest Florida hurricane since the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane. Ian crossed the peninsula, regained hurricane strength off the U.S. east coast and made a final landfall near Georgetown, SC on Sep. 30.

Fiona

Hurricane Fiona also joins the retirement party. Fiona was a cat 4 hurricane with peak winds reaching 140 mph. Fiona did most of it's damage in Puerto Rico (25 deaths) and the Dominican Republic, as well as the Turks and Caicos Islands, and as a powerful extratropical system in Atlantic Canada. Fiona clipped the southwest corner of Puerto Rico near Punta Tocon as a cat 1 on Sep. 18 where the island suffered it's worst flooding since Maria struck Puerto Rico as a cat 4 in 2017. In the early morning hours of the 19th Fiona makes landfall in the Dominican Republic near Boca de Yuma. Fiona slowly moved through the Turks and Caicos Islands reaching peak intensity on the 20th. After passing just to the west of Bermuda, Fiona became an intense extratropical system and on Sep. 24 the center made landfall near Whitehead, Nova Scotia. At an estimated 931 millibars, Fiona was the lowest pressure ever recorded in Canada. Fiona finally dissipated just off the southwest coast of Greenland. Yes, I said Greenland!!

Fiona was the 10th "F" storm to be retired, making it the letter with the 2nd most retired storms behind "I". Ian and Fiona will be replaced by Farrah and Idris, and will be on the 2028 storm list.

GFS & Euro Models

Meanwhile, closer to home, the weather system that is bringing tons of rain to southeast Texas at the moment, is expected to move out over the Gulf in the next few days and there's models out there (mainly the GFS and EURO) thinking something tropical, or at the very least, subtropical, could spin up towards the middle of next week. Early season GFS has been atrocious the last few years, but it's usually by itself. With the EURO on board, could there be something to it? There's only been 3 April tropical storms in recorded history. A subtropical storm in 1992, tropical storm Ana in 2003, and tropical strom Arlene in 2017. Coincidentally, the 1st name on this year's storm list is Arlene.

Alex 2016 & Invest 90L 2023

I'm of the opinion though, that Arlene should have already been used in January for what is now only known as Invest 90L. This system popped up in mid January and it took forever for the NHC to even say something about it. They finally gave it an Invest tag but it easily should have at least gotten named, never mind it looking as good as the last January hurricane we had, hurricane Alex in 2016. But, the NHC never pulled the trigger for whatever reason.

Anyway, that's neither here nor there. We're 54 days from the official start of the 2023 season. Predictions should be out soon but with La Niña coming to an end, and El Niño, which typically inhibits tropical development in the Atlantic, expected later this summer, we could be looking at an active season early on with things dying down in the 2nd half. Again, predictions will be out soon so we'll see what the experts think.

In the meantime, we'll raise an eyebrow for now for this potential spin up next week. It wouldn't be a threat to Texas, by the way.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TEXAS STRONG

Image
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...
Read more

JULY '22 REVIEW

Image
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...
Read more

2024 PREDICTIONS

Image
It's that time of the year again, a little over 8 weeks until the "official" start of the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season. Of course Mother Nature doesn't adhere to a schedule and tropical systems can spin up at any time, but 97% of tropical storms form between the "official" designation of a season (June 1 - November 30). Dr. William Gray Early to mid April is when most of the more reputable sources that cover the tropics release their preseason predictions of what they expect to happen in the tropics. One of the top authorities in this regard is the the tropical weather and climate research team at Colorado State University (CSU). They have been issuing tropical weather predictions since 1984 under the guidance of Dr. William Gray. He passed away in 2016, 2 days after issuing their predictions for the 2016 season. Only since 1992 though, has CSU been making preseason predictions in April. Before that their predictions came out near the start of hurricane se...
Read more