TEXAS TROPICS

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...

2023 will go down as a moderate to strong El Ni ñ o year. El Ni ñ o typically means tropical action in the Atlantic basin is suppressed. 2023 also had some of the warmest water temperatures in the Atlantic basin on record. Warm water is of course the jet fuel for tropical systems. Because of the unusually warm waters, the 2023 hurricane season will go down as the most active El Ni ñ o season ever recorded as 20 named storms formed in the Atlantic this season. The previous high for an El Ni ñ o of at least moderate strength was 12 storms in 1951. The warm water didn't totally win out over El Ni ñ o though. Most of the action this season formed in the MDR ( main development region ) and recurved to the subtropical Atlantic. The Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico stayed relatively quiet. There were only 3 storms active within the Caribbean Sea this year ( Bret , Franklin and Idalia ). There were a couple of others that scraped along the Leeward Islands ( Philippe and Ta...

1983 was one of the least active Atlantic hurricane seasons on record. The Atlantic basin only had 4 named storms in 1983, not only the fewest in the satellite era (1965), and since storms started receiving names (1950), it's the least amount of at least tropical storm strength systems since there were only 3 recorded in 1930, and is tied for the 3rd fewest all-time, or since records became official in 1851. 1983 was coming off a strong El Nino event during the '82-'83 hurricane seasons, where there were just 10 named storms during that 2 year stretch. '83 was so quiet that it wasn't until late July when the 1st tropical depression of the season formed almost 1,000 miles southwest of the Cabo Verde Islands. This system made it to the Lesser Antilles as a depression before dissipating in the Caribbean. Tropical depression #2 formed 4 days after TD1, about 250 miles SW of the Cabo Verde Islands. 6 days later it dissipated just north of the Leeward Islands. On the mor...

How do you know when a new hurricane season is approaching? When Colorado State University , the foremost authority of cyclone predicting, comes out with their annual preseason predictions. One of the biggest factors in this year's forecast is the expected El Niño, which should be in full force come the meat part of the season starting in August. El Niño, if you don't know, typically means less tropical activity in the Atlantic basin. Of course, if we go back to August of last year, where we were in a 3rd year La Niña, which typically means more Atlantic activity, you'll remember we had ZERO named storms in the month of August. It was the first stormless August in 25 years, and just the 4th since 1930. We also went 60 full days, from July 4th through September 1st without a named storm in the Atlantic, the 6th longest in-season stormless streak on record. So you'd almost think we were in the midst of El Niño last year. That stormless August last year really put a dent i...

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 south...

The 2022 Hurricane Season was the 1st in 8 years that didn't start with a preseason named storm. So considering an Invest popped up on the 1st "official" day of hurricane season, a system that eventually turned into Tropical Storm Alex , things got off to a rather slow start, which was basically getting back to normal. The 1st raised eyebrows for the state of Texas for the 2022 season didn't come until June 25th when the NHC tagged an AOI ( area of interest ) from the north central to northwestern Gulf of Mexico. Over the next couple of days, models were on and off about developing this AOI, but all either had it moving into Texas, or at the very least bringing much needed rainfall to the Lone Star State. This AOI was eventually tagged Invest 95L . Models started out pointing it towards the Texas/Mexico border. Later they were having it make a sharp right before it got to the coast down there, and bringing it up to around Matagorda Bay. Development of the system was n...

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...