50 years ago, we’d never have counted this as a tropical storm. As outlined recently in New peer reviewed study: Surge in North Atlantic hurricanes due to better detectors, not climate change, its the technology that enables counting storms that would not have been counted before. Ditto for tornadoes and sunspots.
From NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center via Eurekalert:
NASA and NOAA satellite video shows Tropical Storm Beatriz fizzle in 6 hours
Satellite data from NASA and NOAA showed that Tropical Storm Beatriz went from a strong tropical storm to a remnant low pressure area in six short hours after running into Mexico’s western mountains. An animation of imagery from the GOES-11 satellite showed how quickly Beatriz fizzled.
The animation of imagery from the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite called GOES-11 was created by the NASA/NOAA GOES Project at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. It shows satellite imagery in 15 minute intervals from June 20 at 13:00 UTC (9 a.m. EDT/6 a.m. PDT) until June 22 at 1315 UTC (9:15 a.m. EDT/6:15 a.m. PDT) as Beatriz battered southwestern Mexico’s coastline and weakened quickly.
GOES-11 captures imagery of weather over the western half of the U.S. continually, every day. GOES-11 is managed by NOAA and provides forecasters with visible and infrared imagery of weather systems.
According to reports from Agence-France Presse, Beatriz downed trees and left flooding in her wake. Coastal areas reporting flooding include Acapulco and Huatulco, in Oaxaca state.
At 5 p.m. EDT on June 21, Beatriz had maximum sustained winds near 60 mph, and as Beatriz interacted with the mountainous terrain of Mexico its strength waned quickly.
By 11 p.m. EDT the center of circulation was no longer well-defined and maximum sustained winds dropped to 30 mph. It was a quick drop in strength over six hours and transformed Beatriz from a strong tropical storm to a weak tropical depression. At that time her center was located near 19.0 North latitude and 107.0 West longitude and moving westward near 10 mph (17 kmh).
Today, June 22, Beatriz’ remnants are slowly moving over cooler sea surface temperatures. As a result, the low pressure area has a slim chance of regenerating because temperatures of at least 80 degrees Fahrenheit are needed to maintain a tropical cyclone, and these waters are near or below that threshold.
As of 8 a.m. EDT today, Beatriz’ remnants were about 175 miles southwest of Cabo Corrientes, Mexico. The National Hurricane Center noted today that the chance for regeneration is now “near zero.”
NASA’s Hurricane Page: www.nasa.gov/hurricane
In about 5 hours a Tsunami could strike the PNW from a just in 7.4 mag quake in the Aleutians, if a Tsunami forms.
rb;
Nope, a tsunami has been waved off. So sorry, no walking walls of water today! ;(
The media has to share most of the blame. Bad news days serve to urge these people to find a scare story and the latest storm, regardless of size or route, is a good bet.
I am a great believer that we are given a false impression that the number of extreme weather events is increasing due to nothing more than better news coverage and to some extent better instrumentation with higher resolution etc.
Given the increased observational data available due to satelitte telemetry etc, a better metric for comparison purposes (comparing like with historical like) is comparing the number of landfalls.
One reason why the Bermuda Triangle myth gained such traction was that MSM would take a look out of the window and see fine weather. They would then assume that a boat or aircraft that went missing 500 miles away would have been in good conditions too, when in fact it might have been in a major storm. Still, simple bad weather doesn’t sell papers like a good old fashioned alien invasion.
In 2006, Tropical Storm Ernesto became a hurricane for a few hours while off the coast of Haiti. It then weakened to a tropical storm and never regained hurricane status. It’s maximum sustained wind speed was 75 mph.
8/27/06 5AM 70 mph tropical storm
8/27/06 11AM 75 mph Cat 1 hurricane
8/27/06 5PM 60 mph tropical storm
A simple interpolation suggests that hurricane status lasted less than 2 hours. I emailed NOAA at the time and asked whether it was likely that Ernesto would have been designated as a hurricane back in the 50’s or 60’s. Public affairs officer Frank Lepore promptly responded “Short answer to your question is yes Ernesto would have been identified as a hurricane in the 1950 and 60’s both through aerial reconnaissance and ship observations.”
Sounded like very wishful thinking to me. There must have been lots of planes and ships around to make it “likely” that they would detect a shortie among shorties.