Atlantic Hurricane Season

It was a quiet hurricane season through mid-August with no named storms during June and July.

2009's first named storm Ana broke up.

500 PM AST MON AUG 17 2009 ...CIRCULATION OF ANA HAS DISSIPATED... AT 5 PM AST...2100 UTC...ALL TROPICAL STORM WATCHES HAVE BEEN DISCONTINUED

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Bill After brushing PEI and Newfoundland, the storm disappeared into the North Atlantic:

500 AM AST MON AUG 24 2009 ...BILL LOSES TROPICAL CHARACTERISTICS...ENVIRONMENT CANADA HAS DISCONTINUED ALL TROPICAL STORM WATCHES AND WARNINGS FOR NEWFOUNDLAND. THIS IS THE LAST PUBLIC ADVISORY ISSUED BY THE NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER ON THIS SYSTEM.

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Claudette was a poorly organized system that didn't become a named storm until it was close to the Florida Panhandle; it then petered out completely:

1000 PM CDT MON AUG 17 2009 ...ACCORDING TO THE LATEST SURFACE OBSERVATIONS AND SATELLITE IMAGERY...THERE IS NO LONGER A DETECTABLE SURFACE CIRCULATION WITH CLAUDETTE.

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Danny — never well organized— broke up in the Atlantic.

500 AM EDT SAT AUG 29 2009 ...THE REMNANTS OF DANNY WERE LOCATED NEAR LATITUDE 34.3 NORTH... LONGITUDE 74.6 WEST OR ABOUT 80 MILES...130 KM...SOUTHEAST OF CAPE HATTERAS. THIS IS THE LAST PUBLIC ADVISORY ISSUED BY THE NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER ON THIS SYSTEM.

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Erika became a named storm on September 01 2009 and collapsed on 3 September:

1100 PM AST ...0300 UTC...THU SEP 03 2009...ERIKA WEAKENS TO A REMNANT LOW...THIS IS THE LAST ADVISORY...

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Fred became a named storm in the far eastern Atlantic on 7 September, Labor Day. It fizzled out in the eastern Atlantic:

500 PM AST...2100 UTC...SAT SEP 12 2009...FRED NOW A REMNANT LOW...LOCATION...17.7N 33.7W...THIS IS THE LAST PUBLIC ADVISORY ISSUED BY THE NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER ON FRED.

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Grace and Henry never achieved hurricane strength.

Ida, an unusual November hurricane, threatened the Alabama, Mississippi coasts and the Florida Panhandle:

900 AM CST TUE NOV 10 2009...IDA BECOMES EXTRATROPICAL...ALL WARNINGS DISCONTINUED...

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Atlantic Tropical Storm ( Hurricane ) Names- 2009
Ana ×
Bill ×
Claudette ×
Danny ×
Erika ×
Fred ×
Grace ×
Henri ×
Ida ×
Joaquin
Kate
Larry
Mindy
Nicholas
Odette
Peter
Rose
Sam
Teresa
Victor
Wanda

Must be that global warming thing everyone is making money off of.

NOA...? seems like it needs more letters...says the late start to the season is the result of La Nina conditions, which may or may not last several more weeks...dunno...having lived in Florida, Mississippi and North Carolina, it has become a habit to watch each season wherever I find myself...

Amicus

Might be quiet hurricane-wise, but I was at a popular South Carolina beach recently and six people died in the rip currents that lasted most of the week I was there. Several of them fathers and husbands saving their children and wives. Sad.

Was getting the reports today. (Man I love my new Cell Phone.)

Anna doesn't really bother me. Only one model out of the five being used show it even becoming a Hurricane. Most tracks show it going south of me.

Bill on the other hand is a bit more worriesome but even then it's way too early for me to start filling gas cans.

Rip currents on the other hand. Yes they can be scary if you're a child or an adult who A) Can't swim, or B) Don't know how to deal with them. (Me? I personallt like to play in them.)

Cat

In 1938 Commodore Vanderbilt supposedly received a weather station as a birthday gift. He called the very prestigeous store where the unit was bought to complain that there was something wrong with the barometer, "It shows hurricane conditions."

The store promised to send someone out to replace the obviously faulty unit for the very important customer. However, the hurricane hit first.

SeaCat said:

Rip currents on the other hand. Yes they can be scary if you're a child or an adult who A) Can't swim, or B) Don't know how to deal with them. (Me? I personallt like to play in them.)

Cat

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A rip current is a powerful current that flows out perpendicular to the shore. It's caused by a lot of water trying to squeeze through a narrow break in the sea floor or sandbar. The way to deal with a rip current is to just swim out of the very narrow rip current, that is, parallel to the beach.

Many people die each year, because they have no idea how to deal with a rip current.

My mother, grandmother and two of my aunts were at their jobs in Providence, RI the day the Hurricane of 1938 hit. No one had a clue about it, even the Weather Bureau. It forced the Providence River back upstream and flooded Providence. My mom and the others were safe, but trapped in three different buildings and a department store for two days until the water receded. People brought provisions and drinking water in boats to the thousands who were trapped.

Of course there will be Atlantic hurricanes this week. I'm at an East Coast beach. A hurricane has always gone through when I was at an East Coast beach.

trysail said:

I'll be damned. There haven't been any reports that I've seen. Do tell.

Rip tides are extremely frightening. I recall one episode where two kids were carried off the shore in the bat of an eye. An entire squadron of lifeguards was needed to retrieve 'em.

By the way, the storms are now stacked up in the Atlantic. Tropical Storm Bill is right behind Ana.

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Yes. It was bad for a long stretch of beaches due to storm systems. A 13 year old down for a baseball tournament, a mid-40's father who saved his two kids before succumbing (their first trip to the beach) and on it went.

Cat's right. People ignore the signs on the beach telling people how to get out of rip current. They are not experienced ocean swimmers and fight it, get fatigued and the ocean takes them.

I was out in it and it was a losing battle to simply stand still!

SeaCat said:

Was getting the reports today. (Man I love my new Cell Phone.)

Anna doesn't really bother me. Only one model out of the five being used show it even becoming a Hurricane. Most tracks show it going south of me.

Bill on the other hand is a bit more worriesome but even then it's way too early for me to start filling gas cans.

Rip currents on the other hand. Yes they can be scary if you're a child or an adult who A) Can't swim, or B) Don't know how to deal with them. (Me? I personallt like to play in them.)

Cat

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You're obviously a VERY strong swimmer. I am, too, but I'm older than I used to be and I don't think I'll tempt Mother Nature by knowingly swimming in a rip current.

The NHC expects Bill to strengthen considerably ( from tropical storm to a full-blown hurricane with sustained winds in excess of 110 MPH ).

I'm hoping the El Niño that seems to be strengthening in the Pacific, brings us a wet winter this year!

Let's see if "Forecaster Berg" is any good:

WTNT43 KNHC 160857
TCDAT3
TROPICAL STORM BILL DISCUSSION NUMBER 4
NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL AL032009
500 AM AST SUN AUG 16 2009

THE CENTER OF BILL HAS BEEN DIFFICULT TO FIND THIS MORNING...AND A
0419 UTC AMSR-E PASS INDICATED THAT IT HAS EITHER SLOWED DOWN OR
HAS BEEN RE-FORMING CLOSER TO THE DEEP CONVECTION. DVORAK
T-NUMBERS ARE NOW 3.0 FROM TAFB AND 2.5 FROM SAB...SO THE INITIAL
INTENSITY IS RAISED TO 40 KT. BILL IS EXPECTED TO GRADUALLY
STRENGTHEN OVER THE NEXT COUPLE OF DAYS...AND THE OFFICIAL FORECAST
FOLLOWS THE UPWARD TREND NOTED IN THE INTENSITY GUIDANCE. BILL IS
NOW EXPECTED TO REACH MAJOR HURRICANE STATUS BY DAY 5...BUT IT
SHOULD BE NOTED THAT THE 100 KT SHOWN IN THE FORECAST IS STILL
BELOW THE INTENSITY CONSENSUS AND WELL BELOW THE HWRF MODEL. THIS
IS TO ACCOUNT FOR INCREASED VERTICAL SHEAR THAT MAY DEVELOP BY DAYS
4 AND 5...AS INDICATED IN THE SHIPS GUIDANCE.

THE INITIAL MOTION IS AN UNCERTAIN 270/11. BILL IS EXPECTED TO
GRADUALLY GAIN LATITUDE AND TURN TO THE WEST-NORTHWEST OVER THE
NEXT FEW DAYS. THE NEW SUITE OF MODEL GUIDANCE HAS SHIFTED A
LITTLE NORTH OF THE PREVIOUS GUIDANCE ENVELOPE AS MOST OF THE
MODELS APPEAR TO BE SHOWING THE DEVELOPMENT OF A DEEP MID- TO
UPPER-LEVEL TROUGH OVER THE EASTERN UNITED STATES AT THE END OF THE
FORECAST PERIOD. MOST OF THE MODELS...WITH THE EXCEPTION OF THE
UKMET AS A SOUTHERN OUTLIER...ARE IN REMARKABLY GOOD AGREEMENT
THROUGH DAY 5.

FORECAST POSITIONS AND MAX WINDS

INITIAL 16/0900Z 11.4N 37.2W 40 KT
12HR VT 16/1800Z 11.8N 39.3W 45 KT
24HR VT 17/0600Z 12.5N 41.9W 50 KT
36HR VT 17/1800Z 13.4N 44.7W 60 KT
48HR VT 18/0600Z 14.3N 47.5W 70 KT
72HR VT 19/0600Z 16.5N 53.0W 85 KT
96HR VT 20/0600Z 19.0N 58.5W 95 KT
120HR VT 21/0600Z 22.0N 64.0W 100 KT

$$
FORECASTER BERG

Austin8 said:

I'm hoping the El Niño that seems to be strengthening in the Pacific, brings us a wet winter this year!

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It'll bring YOU a wet winter. It'll bring us a bitterly cold and dry winter.

sr71plt said:

Of course there will be Atlantic hurricanes this week. I'm at an East Coast beach. A hurricane has always gone through when I was at an East Coast beach.

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And will you please stop it? You're ruining the fun for everyone else.

trysail said:

You're obviously a VERY strong swimmer. I am, too, but I'm older than I used to be and I don't think I'll tempt Mother Nature by knowingly swimming in a rip current.

The NHC expects Bill to strengthen considerably ( from tropical storm to a full-blown hurricane with sustained winds in excess of 110 MPH ).

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Strong swimmer? I suppose you could say that. I spend a lot of time in the water either on the surface or under it. Much of the time I'm dealing with things like currents. I learned years ago to read currents and it has saved me a lot of grief over the years.

I'm really liking the forcast models for all of the storms out there right now. I didn't get a chance to check them until I arrived home this evening and started smiling when I saw them.

Cat

Looks as if TS Claudette's gonna dump some rain on Pensacola and Mobile...winds are barely TS strength...'round 50 MPH...on the NW side of the rotation. Ana and Bill are no threat to Fla at this time.

According to this, Worst Atlantic storms in past 10 years than in last 1000 years

From here:

The people of U.S. Gulf Coast have felt unusually battered by big storms during the past few years. Now, it turns out their instincts are right. A new report in the scientific journal Nature indicates that the last decade has seen, on average, more frequent hurricanes than any time in the last 1,000 years. The last period of similar activity occurred during the Medieval Warm Period.

The study is not definitive, but it is a unique piece of work that combines an analysis of sediment cores from inland lakes and tidal marshes with computer modeling and finds a "striking consistency" between the two, the authors suggest. The use of sediment cores to place and date ancient storms -- called "paeleotempestology" -- is becoming an increasingly useful tool in the broader effort to try to reconstruct the history of hurricane activity in order to better predict a future potentially influenced by climate change. "You don't want to go into the business of predicting the future without knowing the history, which does tell us what's possible and tests our understanding," says Richard Alley, a Pennsylvania State climate change researcher. "When people build models to predict hurricanes in the future, one way you know it works is to wait 100 years and say, 'See.' Or you run it against the previous 1,000 years."

...So far, written history about storms like the Galveston hurricane of 1900 have provided data about strength and impact on human communities. But further back in time, the written maritime record is spotty, making it unreliable as a gauge of older storms. The research team has gotten around that by using sediment cores from a lagoon as well as tidal marshes behind barrier beaches. Hurricane storm surges drive sand into the muddy marshes, and over time that becomes a layer of sand sandwiched between mud. Scientists can date when that sandy layer formed. They can also apply the same techniques to some coastal lakes. From these samples, they extrapolated the frequency of ancient storms. The North Atlantic has produced an average of 17 storms a year during the past decade -- twice the number from most years in the last millennium, according to the study.

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3113 said:

According to this, Worst Atlantic storms in past 10 years than in last 1000 years
From abc news

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[ emphasis mine ]

"Just when you think it couldn’t get any more bizarre in Mann-world, out comes a new paper in Nature hawking hurricane frequency by proxy analysis. I guess Dr. Mann missed seeing the work of National Hurricane Center’s lead scientist, Chris Landsea...

... Mann is using 'overwash' silt and sand as his new proxy. Chris Landsea disagrees in the Houston Chronicle interview saying: 'The paper comes to very erroneous conclusions because of using improper data and illogical techniques...' "

-Anthony Watts

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/08/...uent-than-at-any-time-in-the-last-1000-years/


ftp://ftp.gfdl.noaa.gov/pub/gav/PAPERS/LVBK_08_SHORTSTORMS.submitted.pdf

Impact of Duration Thresholds on Atlantic Tropical Cyclone Counts
By
Christopher W. Landsea
NOAA/NWS/National Hurricane Center
Miami, FL, USA
chris.landsea@noaa.gov
Gabriel A. Vecchi
NOAA/Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory
Princeton, NJ, USA
gabriel.a.vecchi@noaa.gov
Lennart Bengtsson
Environmental Systems Science Centre
University of Reading
Reading, RG6 6AL, UK
lennart.bengtsson@zmaw.de
Thomas R. Knutson
NOAA/Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory
Princeton, NJ, USA
tom.knutson@noaa.gov

May 7th, 2009
Re-submitted to JClimate

Abstract
Records of Atlantic basin tropical cyclones (TCs) since the late-19th Century indicate a very large upward trend in storm frequency. This increase in documented TCs has been previously interpreted as resulting from anthropogenic climate change. However, improvements in observing and recording practices provide an alternative interpretation for these changes: recent studies suggest that the number of potentially missed TCs is sufficient to explain a large part of the recorded increase in TC counts. This study explores the influence of another factor--TC duration--on observed changes in TC frequency, using a widely-used Atlantic TC database: HURDAT. We find that the occurrence of short-lived storms (duration two days or less) in the database has increased dramatically, from less than one per year in the late-19th/early-20th Century to about five per year since about 2000, while moderate to long-lived storms have increased little, if at all. Thus, the previously documented increase in total TC frequency since the late 19th Century in the database is primarily due to an increase in very short-lived TCs.

We also undertake a sampling study based upon the distribution of ship observations, which provides quantitative estimates of the frequency of “missed” TCs, focusing just on the moderate- to long-lived systems with durations exceeding two days.

Both in the raw HURDAT database, and upon adding the estimated numbers of missed TCs, the time series of moderate to long-lived Atlantic TCs show substantial multi-decadal variability, but neither time series exhibits a significant trend since the late-19th Century, with a nominal decrease in the adjusted time series.

Thus, to understand the source of the century-scale increase in Atlantic TC counts in HURDAT, one must explain the relatively monotonic increase in very short duration storms since the late-19th Century. While it is possible that the recorded increase in short duration TCs represents a real climate signal, we consider it is more plausible that the increase arises primarily from improvements in the quantity and quality of observations, along with enhanced interpretation techniques, which have allowed National Hurricane Center forecasters to better monitor and detect initial TC formation, and thus incorporate increasing numbers of very short-lived systems into the TC database.

I just noticed on a Disovery Channel program, a reference to a huge Typhoon in Taiwan in September, 2008; they are just now recovering from another storm, the same as our Hurricanes, I wonder if that says anything climate wise?

Amicus