Well it seems the Gulf Coast is in for a wet and windy start of the week. It will be interesting to see what hype the media tries to make out of this storm. I wonder if they learned anything from the overhype of hurricane tropical storm Irene last year?
Here’s the latest tracks and bulletins:
Live Tracking map:
Tracking map in high definition (updates every 3-4 hours, click to enlarge)
Track map in HiDef – click to enlarge:
I’m not too worried about it becoming a hurricane:
Click image to zoom in – Download GIS data: 0.1 degree .shp 0.5 degree .shp ![[Image of probabilities of hurricane force winds]](https://i0.wp.com/www.nhc.noaa.gov/storm_graphics/AT04/refresh/AL0412_PROB64_F120_sm2%2Bgif/152438.gif?resize=500%2C400)
BULLETIN TROPICAL STORM DEBBY ADVISORY NUMBER 5 NWS NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL AL042012 1000 AM CDT SUN JUN 24 2012 ...DEBBY PRODUCING TROPICAL-STORM-FORCE WINDS AND HEAVY RAINS ALONG PORTIONS OF THE NORTHEAST GULF COAST... SUMMARY OF 1000 AM CDT...1500 UTC...INFORMATION ----------------------------------------------- LOCATION...28.0N 86.2W ABOUT 190 MI...310 KM ESE OF THE MOUTH OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER ABOUT 140 MI...220 KM SSW OF APALACHICOLA FLORIDA MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS...60 MPH...95 KM/H PRESENT MOVEMENT...NE OR 40 DEGREES AT 6 MPH...9 KM/H MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE...994 MB...29.35 INCHES WATCHES AND WARNINGS -------------------- CHANGES WITH THIS ADVISORY... A TROPICAL STORM WARNING HAS BEEN EXTENDED EASTWARD ALONG THE NORTHWEST COAST OF FLORIDA TO THE SUWANNEE RIVER. A TROPICAL STORM WATCH HAS BEEN ISSUED SOUTH OF THE SUWANNEE RIVER TO ANCLOTE KEY. SUMMARY OF WATCHES AND WARNINGS IN EFFECT... A TROPICAL STORM WARNING IS IN EFFECT FOR... * THE COAST OF LOUISIANA FROM THE MOUTH OF THE PEARL RIVER WESTWARD TO MORGAN CITY...NOT INCLUDING THE CITY OF NEW ORLEANS OR LAKE PONTCHARTRAIN * THE MISSISSIPPI-ALABAMA BORDER EASTWARD TO THE SUWANNEE RIVER RIVER FLORIDA A TROPICAL STORM WATCH IS IN EFFECT FOR... * SOUTH OF THE SUWANNEE RIVER TO ANCLOTE KEY FLORIDA A TROPICAL STORM WARNING MEANS THAT TROPICAL STORM CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED SOMEWHERE WITHIN THE WARNING AREA WITHIN 36 HOURS. A TROPICAL STORM WATCH MEANS THAT TROPICAL STORM CONDITIONS ARE POSSIBLE WITHIN THE WATCH AREA...IN THIS CASE WITHIN 12 TO 24 HOURS. FOR STORM INFORMATION SPECIFIC TO YOUR AREA...INCLUDING POSSIBLE INLAND WATCHES AND WARNINGS...PLEASE MONITOR PRODUCTS ISSUED BY YOUR LOCAL NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE FORECAST OFFICE. DISCUSSION AND 48-HOUR OUTLOOK ------------------------------ AT 1000 AM CDT...1500 UTC...THE CENTER OF TROPICAL STORM DEBBY WAS LOCATED NEAR LATITUDE 28.0 NORTH...LONGITUDE 86.2 WEST. DEBBY IS MOVING TOWARD THE NORTHEAST NEAR 6 MPH...9 KM/H...BUT LITTLE MOTION IS EXPECTED DURING THE NEXT 12 TO 24 HOURS. A GRADUAL TURN TOWARD THE WEST IS FORECAST THEREAFTER. THE FORECAST TRACK WILL KEEP THE CENTER OF DEBBY MEANDERING OVER THE NORTHERN GULF OF MEXICO DURING THE NEXT FEW DAYS. MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS ARE NEAR 60 MPH...95 KM/H...WITH HIGHER GUSTS. SOME SLIGHT STRENGTHENING IS POSSIBLE DURING THE NEXT 48 HOURS. TROPICAL-STORM-FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP TO 200 MILES...325 KM FROM THE CENTER MAINLY TO THE NORTH AND EAST OF THE CENTER. BALD POINT IN THE FLORIDA BIG BEND RECENTLY REPORTED SUSTAINED WINDS OF 52 MPH...84 KM/H. THE LATEST ESTIMATED MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE FROM A RECONNAISSANCE AIRCRAFT WAS 994 MB...29.35 INCHES. HAZARDS AFFECTING LAND ---------------------- WIND...TROPICAL STORM CONDITIONS ARE ALREADY NEAR OR OVER PORTIONS OF THE NORTHEAST GULF COAST AND ARE EXPECTED TO REACH THE REMAINDER OF THE WARNING AREA BY TONIGHT...MAKING OUTSIDE PREPARATIONS DIFFICULT OR DANGEROUS. STORM SURGE...THE COMBINATION OF A STORM SURGE AND THE TIDE WILL CAUSE NORMALLY DRY AREAS NEAR THE COAST TO BE FLOODED BY RISING WATERS. THE WATER COULD REACH THE FOLLOWING DEPTHS ABOVE GROUND IF THE PEAK SURGE OCCURS AT THE TIME OF HIGH TIDE... SOUTHEASTERN LOUISIANA EASTWARD THROUGH APALACHEE BAY...3 TO 5 FT FLORIDA WEST COAST SOUTH OF APALACHEE BAY...1 TO 3 FT SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA...1 TO 3 FT THE DEEPEST WATER WILL OCCUR ALONG THE IMMEDIATE COAST IN AREAS OF ONSHORE FLOW. SURGE-RELATED FLOODING DEPENDS ON THE RELATIVE TIMING OF THE SURGE AND THE TIDAL CYCLE...AND CAN VARY GREATLY OVER SHORT DISTANCES. FOR INFORMATION SPECIFIC TO YOUR AREA...PLEASE SEE PRODUCTS ISSUED BY YOUR LOCAL NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE OFFICE. RAINFALL...DEBBY IS EXPECTED TO PRODUCE RAIN ACCUMULATIONS OF 5 TO 10 INCHES ALONG THE IMMEDIATE GULF COAST FROM SOUTHEAST LOUISIANA TO THE CENTRAL WEST COAST OF FLORIDA...WITH ISOLATED MAXIMUM AMOUNTS OF 15 INCHES POSSIBLE. GIVEN THE RECENT HEAVY RAINFALL AND WET SOIL CONDITIONS...THESE ADDITIONAL AMOUNTS WILL EXACERBATE THE FLASH FLOOD THREAT ACROSS PORTIONS OF THE CENTRAL AND EASTERN GULF COAST. TORNADOES...ISOLATED TORNADOES ARE POSSIBLE OVER PORTIONS OF THE WEST-CENTRAL AND SOUTHWESTERN FLORIDA PENINSULA TODAY. NEXT ADVISORY ------------- NEXT INTERMEDIATE ADVISORY...100 PM CDT. NEXT COMPLETE ADVISORY...400 PM CDT. $$ FORECASTER AVILA
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Awwwww, c’mon. Now that the result of the Rio Green Slime-fest is a secret, we need something to hype!
Not much of an eye. Where did it come from? The Atlantic looks a bit cold for it to be the corridor from W. Africa. I guess they can develop locally over warm water.
Will any rain bands reach Texas? They always celebrate a bit of precip.
Thanks Anthony. June storms make me think of busy 2005. We stayed and watched Dennis come ashore in the panhandle after we boarded up. To this day it is one of my kids fondest memories. More so than trips.
That part of Florida is the highest point in state with 40 foot dunes most people always thought would protect them. Force of water comes in and then just goes vertical and the force gradually takes out lineal foot after foot of dunes. Dennis took out 5 lineal feet including the crest.
Worst storm you could be out in because it was a tropical storm where we were but had gotten as high as a 4.
The ocean always wins.
It formed in the Gulf of Mexico.
Having first hand experience anchoring for Irene in a creek south of kingston, NY, which i later discovered drained an 1100 square mile watershed including parts of New Jersey, I can assure you that the effects were not trivial even if the windspeeds officially reported never met the criteria anticipated in the hype.
Anthony, why risk diminishing your credibility with a likely accurate but very term-specific criticism of the quality of the forecasts when the storm had isolated but significant adverse effects from North Carolina northward? Some of us could have used some insight into the possible effects of a whole lot of water showing up in a very short period. But over-hyped? maybe only in California.
Maybe Dr. Mann will publicly state that the intense rainfall from Debby is due to global warming that caused the Gulf of Mexico to be abnormally warmer than usual.
That’s what he stated regarding the recent US storm named Irene (tropical storm, I think).
Here’s the latest (today’s) SST anomaly plots. Doesn’t look very much warmer (if any) to me.
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.gif
Ah Little Debbie. With respect to “I’m not too worried about it becoming a hurricane”, you never know if these things are going to spin up, or die off.
The hype should be surrounding the clueless models this week. They are still currently flipping coins for forecasting purposes. Heads – East,,,,,,, Tails – West 🙂
j ferguson says:
June 24, 2012 at 10:45 am
Having first hand experience anchoring for Irene in a creek south of kingston, NY, which i later discovered drained an 1100 square mile watershed including parts of New Jersey, I can assure you that the effects were not trivial even if the windspeeds officially reported never met the criteria anticipated in the hype.
Anthony, why risk diminishing your credibility with a likely accurate but very term-specific criticism of the quality of the forecasts when the storm had isolated but significant adverse effects from North Carolina northward? Some of us could have used some insight into the possible effects of a whole lot of water showing up in a very short period. But over-hyped? maybe only in California.
Amen to that, cut off by floods for two days at home, many townships far worse, no power for 48hrs (many off for as much as a week).
John Norris says:
June 24, 2012 at 10:53 am
Ah Little Debbie. With respect to “I’m not too worried about it becoming a hurricane”, you never know if these things are going to spin up, or die off.
How about a direction? The highly refined, ultra accurate and mega expensive computers that state that we should bow to the Lords of Anthropogenic Global Warming have this to say about where it goes…
GeoLurking
But at least they admit it.
“WE MUST BE READY TO MAKE A CHANGE OF THE FORECAST TRACK
AT ANY TIME.
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2012/al04/al042012.discus.005.shtml?
In Hansen-supporter lingo, they are setting the groundwork for being able to say “We were right!….once we figured out where we were wrong.”
It is fun trying to figure out if it will go east or west. It is sort of like a marble rolling up a rise: If it gets over the crest it will roll down to the east, but if it fails to get over the crest it will roll back to the west.
What really drives the forecasters nuts is when it gets to the crest, and just teeters there, neither going east nor west. In that case it is like flipping a coin, and having it land on its edge.
Another thing that must drive the forecasters crazy is the fact it is not a nice, solid marble. The center keeps reforming. The old center dwindles away, and a new one wraps up. Each time it does this it is like the “center of the marble” jumps east or west fifty miles, and the computer has to recalculate everything based on a new “center of the marble.” So the model can say it is rolling east at noon, and an hour later say it is heading west, until the poor forecaster is just about ripping his hair out.
It is very humbling to anyone who thinks we have chaos figured out. And, while it is fun to watch the storm, it is sometimes even more fun to watch the forecasters.
GeoLurking says:
June 24, 2012 at 11:45 am
——–
ain’t it the truth?
Warning for those who live in a submarine. Screen doors on a submarine may not keep the water out. Recommended precaution is to keep the doors above sea level.
In the town where i was born,
There lived a man,
Who sailed the seas,
And he told us of his life,
In the land of Submarines,
So we sailed into the sun,
Till’ we found a sea of green,
And we lived beneath the waves,
In our yellow submarine,
-Chorus-
We all live in a yellow submarine,
A yellow submarine,
A yellow submarine,
We all live in a yellow submarine,
A yellow submarine,
A yellow submarine.
And my friends are all aboard,
Many more of them live next door,
And the band begins to play,
( a band plays a short song )
-Chorus-
We all live in a yellow submarine,
A yellow submarine,
A yellow submarine,
We all live in a yellow submarine,
A yellow submarine,
A yellow submarine.
And we live a life of ease,
Everyone of us,
Has all we need,
Sky of blue (echo) Sky of blue
And sea of green (echo) Sea of green
In our yellow (echo) In our yellow
Submarine (echo) submarine!
-Chorus-
We all live in a yellow submarine,
A yellow submarine,
A yellow submarine,
We all live in a yellow submarine,
A yellow submarine,
A yellow submarine.
Was there a ‘vision’ by the Beatles in these lyrics in the day? Or not.
The local TV stations told us to expect rain yesterday (Space Coast) but nothing happened. Finally the rain is here a day late and a dollar short. More of a sprinkle than a torrent.
I found the link below to be quite impressive because it is consistent with what happened here yesterday and today. I wonder how good the forecast for tomorrow and the day after will turn out to be.
Notice how the heaviest rain fell over the Gulf of Mexico and early next week is forecast to be off the east coast of Florida:
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/06/23/debby-does-padre-island/
Gary Pearse says:
June 24, 2012 at 9:53 am
Where did it come from?
=======================================================================
George Bush, of course. Just ask Al Gore.
Phil. says: June 24, 2012 at 11:14 am
I had a conversation much like this with Joe Bastardi in Chicago last month. I live on the shore just outside of New Haven harbor and remarked about Irene being “over-hyped”. Joe gave me a sit-down lecture, in almost excruciating detail, about why my experience of the storm was different than that of someone like you. If nothing else, I came away with the realization that Joe not only knows his hurricanes, he is passionate about them.
While I came away from the conversation with a sense that perhaps I am a bit too sanguine about tropical storms (hey, the waves were impressive, but they never did reach the road between my house and the beach) I am also convinced that the question we should be asking is why were we so unprepared? It has been quite a few years since the North East has been hit by a truly powerful storm (Joe would be able to tell us exactly when and just how powerful it was and lots, lots more), but I’m convinced that the discussions about the storm, pointing to the damage, suggesting that climate change is at work, is a convenient smokescreen for the failure by both utilities and civil authorities to deal with the aftermath.
I’m glad I’m not forecasting this one. Barely developed, near the coast, no clear driver.
Just been alerted by our national broadcaster in Australia that Debby is the fourth ‘cyclone’ this month which they say is ‘unprecedented’ for June. Can anyone verify?
We had three tornadoes in the last two days, Today’s cut power for the morning.
None were that big, fortunately.
Robert E. Phelan says:
June 24, 2012 at 1:47 pm
Serves you right! You coastal dwellers live in fear of wind and surge, but us inland folks learn (usually the hard way) that a stalled tropical storm overhead is bad, bad news. Some of the worst flooding has come from storms that never reached hurricane status.
Vermont was much more damaged that New Hampshire. The biggest impact to me were a couple washouts that made access to our yurt on Mt Cardigan problematic. “Vermont ain’t flat,” as any bicyclist will tell you, and several important roads follow river valleys. They and towns along them were severely impacted. The best photos I’ve see are at http://www.mansfieldheliflight.com/flood/index.html
The references to Rt 100 have special meaning to me, as it’s the central route through Vermont, and a wonderful road for bicycle touring. Except for the northernmost southernmost which are very annoyingly “not flat”.
The easy part of that answer is to compare the current AMO induced active period (starting in 1995) with the last one.
We’ve had nothing like the Hurricane of 1938, Great Atlantic Hurricane of 1944, Carol (1954), Edna (1954), and Donna (1960). Plus several close calls and some that had more impact on downeast Maine and Canada than Connecticut.
As for why we haven’t had anything like that so far, I tell people we’ve just been incredibly lucky Joe D’Aleo agreed with me about that, and I expect Joe B would too.
Heck, some of the storms we had during the negative AMO have been more impressive than the recent active period, e.g. Gloria (1985), Bob (1991), and Floyd (1999).
Might want to remove or update the data so folks don’t think these are current. Looks like it might be relegated to frog strangler before it’s over.
kasphar says: “Just been alerted by our national broadcaster in Australia that Debby is the fourth ‘cyclone’ this month which they say is ‘unprecedented’ for June. Can anyone verify?”
We are running ahead of schedule on the count of storms so far (why does Australia care about Atlantic Storms?) but I would read to much into it. Debbie has set a record for earliest fourth storm of the season, beating out 2005’s Hurricane Dennis (July 5). But keep in mind that counts of total storms are almost certainly higher today than they would have been before satellites: the past is under-counted. So we can’t say for sure whether this peculiar statistic-early storms-is really “unprecedented” IMAO.
Anyway, it’s still early in the season. Since I kinda doubt that the seasonal forecasts of all the major groups (including Phil Klotzbach and Bill Gray) are going to be wildly wrong, I expect the season to slow down when El Nino really gets going.
Ric Werme says: “Heck, some of the storms we had during the negative AMO have been more impressive than the recent active period, e.g. Gloria (1985), Bob (1991), and Floyd (1999).”
Um…AMO switched Postive in 1995, you said so yourself, so Floyd (1999) ain’t from the negative AMO period…