Comments on: Hurricane Season Start Up

By: Eric Lund

Eric Lund — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 14:23:35 +0000

There are at least three ways to produce a hurricane, at least in the North Atlantic. Most hurricanes that form during the peak hurricane season (August/September/early October) form, as you say, from tropical waves originating in Africa. But you can also form hurricanes at the edges of stalled-out cold fronts; 98L, now Tropical Storm Bret, is such a case, as was Cyclone Catarina in the South Atlantic. Early and late season North Atlantic hurricanes tend to be of this type, and they tend to form in the Gulf of Mexico/Caribbean/western Atlantic because that’s where the waters are warmest in the North Atlantic basin. There are also cases where extratropical lows transition to tropical systems; it was found in retrospect that the Perfect Storm of 1991 was briefly a hurricane before transitioning back to an extratropical system.

I don’t know about other basins. I would think a tropical wave like generating mechanism exists for the Western Pacific, as many storm tracks there seem to follow paths that differ from Cape Verde systems mainly in longitude. There might also be such a mechanism in the South Pacific and South Indian oceans. There is no such mechanism operating in the South Atlantic (one of the reasons tropical storms are so rare there), and most of the North Indian ocean systems seem to generate other than via tropical waves (these storms often seem to start out moving northward rather than westward).

By: Bacopa

Bacopa — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 05:38:06 +0000

I’m actually hoping for a tropical storm or hurricane to hit southeast Texas pretty soon. We need the rain. Plus I want Rick Perry’s prayer meeting to be canceled.

Rita was a disaster. Everyone freaked out and there was meyham on the highways. Ike reshaped the shoreline and killed people, but I had fun during Ike. I had power at home after two days, but my workplace was out for a week. We worked half days when the morning sun came through the windows and then we partied. We learned from the Rita debacle and everything was quite orderly during Ike.

Allison was much worse. That storm formed just off the coast and hit us on a Tuesday, went back out to sea and hit us again on Friday with 20 inches of rain. Moved back out to sea and plastered Louisiana and made it overland to Philadelphia.

We really need a couple of tropical storms here in Texas. And we need one to cancel Perry’s rally.

By: Greg laden

Greg laden — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 00:37:31 +0000

I’ve got every Atlantic track record map in a dir here somewhere. Just have not had a chance to look. Will blog later.

By: harrync

harrync — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 23:55:02 +0000

Yes, the hurricane point of origin maps are there [based on 10 day intervals, not weeks] at weather.com. Just click on ‘Hurricane Central” when it drops down from “Severe Weather”.

By: harrync

harrync — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 23:48:29 +0000

Occasionally the Weather Channel runs a map showing where in the Atlantic storms are most likely to form for a given week of the hurricane season. Generally, they form in the western Atlantic [including the Gulf] early in the season, off the coast of Africa late in the season. It just occurred to me they may have these maps on their web site [weather.com] – I’ll have to go check.