Bob Tisdale writes in with:
What Do You Suppose They’ve Been Doing At The National Hurricane Center This Summer?
http://i27.tinypic.com/im1m2r.gif
Source: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/
Bocce maybe? Horseshoes?
UPDATE – Ryan Maue of Florida State University writes in comments:
Global (Northern Hemisphere) tropical cyclone ACE for the months May – June – July is the lowest in at least the past 30-years or more.
I, for one, am not surprised. Continued inactivity should persist for the next few weeks until the atmosphere catches up with the radiative warming of the tropical oceans due to the season called summer.
2007 was a dud. 2008 was saved from being a record year by 2007. 2009 is behind the pace of both years. Amazing how natural variability affects tropical cyclone formation, tracks, and intensity. Who would have thought?
Ryan’s Tropical web page at Florida State University has this graph that shows accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) :
Sorted monthly data: Text File
Note where 2009 is in the scheme of things.
The primary reason for no hurricanes in the Gulf is because the jet stream is too far North. And the reason it is North is because of the condition of the PDO. This all results in the oceanic conditions of the Atlantic not having to fight the jet stream. So the turbulence that sets up hurricanes is taking a siesta. However, the occasional swing of the jet stream to its southern track can still happen during a cold/neutral PDO.
Rock, scissors, paper?
Sudoku?
Organize ipod lists?
Bet on lap times when the groundskeepers are mowing?
Word on the street is everyone’s fingernails there look great.
Not that unusual. Hurricane Andrew didn’t strike until the last week in August, which is when things really pick up.
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/gifs/peakofseason.gif
There are NO tropical cyclones globally right now either. None. Nowhere.
Even better is the comment at the top of their site:
NHC predicts a near-normal season…have your disaster plan ready!
I wrote to NHC and asked what was the latest date for a first named tropical storm or hurricane. In the modern era, since 1966, the latest date for a first named storm was August 30th 1967, Arlene; and the latest date for a first hurricane was September 11th 2002, Gustav.
Rooting on the El Nino, perhaps.
They are probably worrying about the increasing number of LNG regasification facilities in the Gulf of Mexico, since those chill the ocean surface and act as hurricane preventers. Or minimizers.
I wrote: “One other thing about importing LNG, especially into the Gulf of Mexico. Re-gasification requires great quantities of heat, and that heat is derived from ocean water in some processes. The ocean water cools in the process. This is just the opposite of how power plants heat a local body of water with once-through cooling for their steam condensers. It may not be enough to notice or even to measure, but it could help cool the surface waters so that hurricanes (which require warm water to sustain their winds) decrease in strength or even disappear. Another benefit in the Gulf of Mexico might be that cold water absorbs more oxygen compared to warm water, and that could help the notorious “dead zone” in the Gulf.
The floating LNG regasification system referenced above uses a two-tier vaporizer with a closed-loop system of propane vaporizing the LNG, then ocean water is used in the second tier to warm the cold propane. The net effect is colder ocean water with high-pressure natural gas produced for moving via a pipeline to shore.”
I think no matter what the outcome we can shoe-in ‘climate change’ as the fault.
Maybe they’ve just been going around in circles?
They are not even getting occluded fronts, cut off lows or Tiny Tims for count padding! They must be on suicide watch down there.
What Do You Suppose They’ve Been Doing At The National Hurricane Center This Summer?
Maybe they have been trying to clean off the Oscar and the Nobel Prize that Al Gore won because they sure has been collecting a lot of tarnish lately. His jumbo size heated pool could always use some extra cleaning as well.
RE: The primary reason for no hurricanes in the Gulf is because the jet stream is too far North.
Too far south. Cold fronts are reaching the Gulf. That is more like mid to late October than late July / early August.
They’re trying to come up with ways to threaten California’s fruits and nuts.
Pan-Pan, Pan-Pan, Pan-Pan.
Just one other thing–June and July are usually relatively slow months for hurricanes in the Atlantic, and it’s not unknown for a season to start late (Andrew was around Labor Day in 1992). September is the peak of the season. Let’s wait until at least Labor Day, or maybe the Equinox, to start getting critical…
The NHC may have missed a chance to name a subtropical storm last week.
Things weren’t windy at home near Concord NH, but apparently it was plenty windy near the track of a “subtropical nor’easter” off of Massachusetts. The wind field of extratropical storms is wide enough so I was quite surprised at the reports from last week closer to it.
See http://www.weathernewengland.com/tim-kelley/walks-like-a-duck-tropical-storm-or-not/1004027.html for a lot of discussion from the weather staff at NECN (New England Cable News Network).
Tim Kelley reports:
Tonight we are sharing some inside information regarding the characteristics of this second major Nor’easter for New England this summer of 2009. The first one lasted three days from June 21 to June 23. This one came through in 28 hours from 4 PM July 23 to 8 PM July 24. Each storm hit during an astronomically high new moon tide. Thank goodness, we had the worst of the wind during low tide early Friday July 25th. I woke up to the sound of my grill slamming to the ground after an estimated gust to 48 mph about 5:35 AM.
Both storms had peak gusts of 45 mph. The June storm had a central pressure of 994 Millibars or 29.35″. That one was clearly a cold core storm. This one however, had many tropical characteristics, with ingredients form Africa, The Bahamas, And The Pacific. The central pressure was about 1000 Millibars or 29.53″. The temperature was 63 degrees with a dewpoint of 61, clearly not a true tropical storm. But the characteristics of the wind and the rain appeared tropical in nature.
I feel terrible about how badly I missed the Marine Forecast. If we had a named storm boaters would have been better prepared. The wind at Island Shoals Buoy was sustained at 39 knots this AM, 5 knots great than Tropical Storm Force. We had no statements form any National Hurricane Center or Weather Service that tropical storm conditions would prevail this morning. Matt Noyes was the lone voice of reality yesterday, thanks for the heads up Matt. So far there are no reports of injuries. But as Joe posted earlier, we have many reports of trees down and flooding. This is how the sea looked in Massachusetts Bay at 5:40 AM.
[From another NECN met.]
“It seems NHC is not calling everything a T.S. like they have in the past, which I think is a good thing. To many storm wannabees doesn’t help us get the message across. I can think of 3 others this season they have not named which have some of your same “duck” qualities”. Sure in the past I could see this being named a subtropical storm. I believe tropical systems and nor’easters are much more related than most think, and the line of purity between the 2 is rather thin.
That said, too much points to a RARE late July subtropical nor’easter loaded with tropical moisture. PW values around 2 !! I think this situation should have been a big deal from the local offices with wording and special statements. I haven’t seen all the discussions, but it seemed by Thursday night it would have warranted stronger wording. Sustained winds even well below TS strength along with the super wet soils you guys have had resulted in dozens of non t-storm wind damage reports. Sometimes as Mets. we focus on what the storm is not, rather than what it is.”
Yes I do think we are more vulnerable.
July 2009 Rainfall records are rivaling July of 1938!
[The hurricane of ’38 took down huge swatchs of trees and wind and rain were aided by saturated soils. References to 1938 are worrisome, though I’m not sure if the weather pattern is similar. OTOH, the pattern this year with the persistant low in the upper great lakes helped steer this nor’easter this way.]
I have more to say but it’s the weekend.. JJ take over form here. Tell us about how this is the wettest July on Record in at PVD (Warwick RI), and how this is this second coldest July on record at NYC (Central Park NY).
Make the connection to Global Cooling.
Bob Tisdale:
Are you crazy, man? What if the Watts Effect applies to cyclonic storms as well as sunspots? You’re going to have live with what you’ve done….
Jim Cripwell (10:03:15) – nice initiative… so a prolonged spell without hurricanes is not THAT unusual.
No warm water, no hurricanes, big chief says…
Pamela Gray (09:45:12) :
“The primary reason for no hurricanes in the Gulf is because the jet stream is too far North. And the reason it is North is because of the condition of the PDO. This all results in the oceanic conditions of the Atlantic not having to fight the jet stream. So the turbulence that sets up hurricanes is taking a siesta. However, the occasional swing of the jet stream to its southern track can still happen during a cold/neutral PDO.”
Sorry Pamela, but that makes no sense. Currently, the jet stream is actually further south and closer to the Gulf than usual. That is why it is so cool for this time of year over the eastern half of the US. Furthermore, the jet stream does not help with hurricane formation.
Well if anyone from the NHC is bored and has some hurricane modelling software can I suggest….
Flood basalt events cause ground temperatures of > 50C over 1000s of sq. miles, what sort of hurricane will that set off (24/7 geological heating of course)??
Well, since the global warming have been masked by global cooling so have the hurricanes been masked by doldrums.
Andrew is a good example; or rather the 1992 Hurricane Season is a good example of what might happen this year. Relative to normal we may have few named storms this year. Of course, in respect to anyone who may experience a named storm, its good to remember, it’s not the number of named storms in a given year, it’s the number of named storms that make landfall that is most important.
The 1992 Hurricane Season only had 6 named storms, (1 subtropical storm, which today would be named) if that were to occur this year, it would make the ‘Forecast’ of around 11 named storms, wrong… …again.
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2009/20090521_atlantichurricane.html
I’d say they’re doing some inner reflection, that maybe alarmism isn’t such a good idea after all.
Jeff Masters at wunderground.com (who is a strong AGW supporter, by the way) has a very interesting blog about the late starting hurricane season. According to records, some of which he admits is incomplete before weather satellites, only 2 out 10 hurricane seasons that started in August was above average for the number of storms the season produced.
In any event, it is going to be a mild year. Ever since that season which we had so many Atlantic hurricanes that we ran out of names, it is like a light switch was turned off.
The mantra was “Look what global warming is going to do.” Then suddenly, poof, quite. The season was so mild the past several years that the NHC now classifies a tropical storm the hour it happens, even if it is an official tropical storm just for an hour. The result was, of course, many more named storms than in years past. Thus, people still thought global warming makes more hurricanes. Still, accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) was calculated to be WAY down. (It just so happens, that NOAA uses ACE along with the number of named storms to determine how active a season is. Since NOAA and the NHC are now overzealous in naming storms, this makes the season appear worse than it really is.) When look at just the ACE, it has not been this calm in 3 decades. It was like someone turned off a light switch for hurricanes.
http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/tropical/
I am interested to see when a hurricane will hit New York City. New York is actually overdue for a strong hurricane. That last Category 3 hurricane to hit New York was in the 30’s. It only takes one hurricane to make a season memorable. When, not if, a strong hurricane hits New York, I believe it will make Katrina look tame. Will this finally be the year?