Floydbuster

I am so tired of this hot Ohio weather. So is my air conditioning bill.

I think it was a very memorable season (and it's still ongoing). Hurricane Ida will likely be the "storm of the year". 2017 is the most recent "extreme" year to me. When you have two simultaneous 150 mph hurricanes threatening land (Irma and Jose), then another Cat 4 slamming TX, then another Cat 4 slamming Puerto Rico....that season really joined the 2004/2005 group in my opinion. So I'm a 2004/2005/2017 snob. I really think the explosive August Cat 4s like Charley and Harvey and those long-tracked violent tropical Cape Verde beasts like Ivan and Irma do it for me. I actually think that one thing that may make the weenies feel the season wasn't "crazy" enough are the Louisiana strikes. The media could care less about Hurricanes Laura, Delta and Zeta last year. They quickly dropped Ida from the headlines until New England flooded. Who remembers Hurricane Frances Cat-2 strike in Florida? Me too. I meet people to this day here in the Midwest who remember Frances 2004. Now tell me, who remembers Hurricane Delta's Cat 2 landfall in Creole, Louisiana just last year? Or Hurricane Laura's impact on Holly Beach? The media and the weenies probably want Louisiana to stop hogging the storms.

Definitely a very nasty hurricane season. If you put a gun to my head and asked what seasons in the last 20 years of tracking were "epic" in my memory, I'd categorize them as something like this: EPIC 2004, 2005, 2017 ALMOST EPIC 2008, 2018, 2020, 2021 Alot of people might chastise me for not including 2020 in the "epic" category, and it certainly was in terms of named storms. But I don't know...there was something about 2020 that was just barely lacking. I can't figure out what it was. I think September was sort of a letdown. We had the slew of fish (Omar, Paulette, Rene, Teddy, Vicky, Wilfred) and Hurricane Sally which I actually thought was worse than it ended up being. I was kinda surprised the name wasn't retired. 2004, 2005, and 2017 had those "violent" epic long-trackers. Frances, Ivan, Irma. Something different about those years. The Charley and Harvey Cat 4 explosions in August. Funny enough: They're the only three seasons to hit over 200 units of ACE for a hurricane season the last 20 years. 2020 didn't. Maybe that's what I mean by the difference in the intensity of the seasons. 2004, 2005 and 2017 just had a different vibe.

I think he'll eat the fish.

Welp, assuming we get Sam tomorrow and then the orange in the North Atlantic becomes Teresa...we're prolly gonna exhaust the damn name list again. What the heck?

That ain't happening. My guess is low-end TS at best.

Definitely a memorable season. Cat 3 Grace into Mexico, Cat 4 Ida into Gulf Coast, and Cat 1 Nicholas into Texas. However, there are two beautiful waves out there that could become awesome long-tracked Peter and Rose and they do look like they will remain out at sea, so it keeps the September "excitement" for trackers down.

Models seem convinced this thing will turn.

Yeah. I'm guessing the 150 mph seems pretty right now. You can have ridiculous gusts with a 150 mph storm. Look at Charley in 2004.

Welp they got a hurricane landfall, so it's checked off the list.

I'm surprised at the lack of Cape Verde hurricanes. We get one a year, but I recall many over and over back in the 1990s.

Here's a new video update on Hurricane Nicholas, for those interested https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ornvkAODxoo

988 mb. Woah. That's a bit different from the 1001 mb five hours ago. Still no Hurricane Warnings?

That shear is clearly saving the Texas coast from a Cat 2 hurricane.

I'm gonna say this tries to crank to a cane right at the coast. It may not make it but I think it'll try.

If each of those things got a name, we'd have Nicholas, Odette, Peter, Rose, and Sam.

What did I say that was incorrect? I gave several points about how for atleast one or two decades, hurricane experts have told me that natural Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillations are responsible for hurricane activity. Thus the bursts of busy years followed by bursts of inactive years. For example: 0 Major hurricanes hit US in a 12 yr period of 2005-2017, but in the 4 years since 2017, the US has seen 6. (Harvey, Irma, Michael, Laura, Zeta, Ida). I would think my multi-paragraph arguments would illicit more than a three letter acronym.

I had a few hours where I began to doubt strengthening.

So the media narrative is that Hurricane Ida is a result of climate change. I have been a hurricane/climate change skeptic for decades. I remember Dr. William Gray telling me at a 2005 Hurricane Conference that climate change was a "red herring" and that natural multi-decade cycles caused more hurricanes. So, I don't want to be "anti-science" and ignore all the voices, but when the late, great Dr. Gray himself told me it was not the result of climate change, I find myself skeptical. I think a few factors are at work: 1. Better technology to name storms. Even in 2001, we didn't name sub-tropical storms, and half of these weak "Julian" type storms would never be named. I remember back in 1999, there was an obvious tropical storm that developed between Hurricane Floyd and Hurricane Gert, and it was never named and quickly dissipated. When you have weather enthusiasts posting close-up visible loops of a naked swirl with a popcorn thunderstorm over it, it becomes much easier to spot and classify. 2. The media. In the post-Katrina world, CNN does non-stop coverage of insignificant non-US tropical systems. Go back to when I was a teen, circa 2000, even a Cat 4 Hurricane like Hurricane Keith near Belize only got a few short mentions on a network like CNN, and even The Weather Channel didn't go into their "super graphics special report" coverage for it, since it was a non-US storm. In a post-Katrina world, every wave gets mentioned, even on mainstream news networks. 3. Social media. How many videos of this flooding would we be seeing if the year was 2001? Remember, even twenty years ago, nobody had smart phones. (Imagine the horror of people live-streaming from the World Trade Center). Everyone having a camera today creates a world where every funnel cloud, every wave, every weather event can be seen by millions all over twitter and facebook within seconds. That's great for weather enthusiasts, but it creates a perception of a NEW constant severe weather climate, when it actuality, it was always there. It was just the social media that wasn't. 4. Population growth. I'm stunned (and uncomfortable TBH) about the massive population explosions along the coastlines. The populations have growth enormously over recent years. I don't mean from 1950 to now...I mean from 2000 to now. It's insane the amount of growth. More growth equals more people and property to feel the wrath of weather.

I always remember years like 1998. Hurricane Georges didn't even form until Sept 13th or 14th.

Video Update as Ida weakens and leaves Louisiana in ruin. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjOwDNnAfAw