Whenever a hurricane threatens land, almost all of the focus is on preparing for the strong winds. It’s not always the wind that gets you—it’s the water. The storm surge in a hurricane is arguably the greatest threat with these landfalling terrors, and it’s one that too many people seem to ignore until it’s too late.
Summer weather is characterized by long periods of mind-numbing monotony followed by short bursts of terrifying chaos. We’re in one of those chaotic periods right now, where the August doldrums collapsed and gave us a tiny but powerful hurricane in the Atlantic, and a potential hurricane threatening Hawaii next week.
Talk about feast or famine—it’s like the tropics looked at the calendar and decided that they needed to shift into high gear. Not only are we tracking Hurricane Danny as it makes its way toward the Caribbean this weekend, but there are three more systems—two in the Atlantic and one in the central Pacific—that could try to develop into tropical cyclones as we head through next week.
A new tropical storm in the Atlantic Ocean is going to get a lot of play in the news over the next couple of days as official forecasts expect it to become Hurricane Danny by the end of this weekend. The system has plenty of obstacles along its path and it’s a long way from land, but we’re nearing the peak of hurricane season, so it’s worth watching closely.
An interesting feature southwest of the Cape Verde Islands is slowly getting its act together, and it’s likely to become a tropical depression or tropical storm over the next few days as it moves west toward the Caribbean. Its future is uncertain right now, but it bears watching given its location and the time of year.
Hurricane activity in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans really begins to pick up intensity at the beginning of August, building up to the peak of the seasons in the middle of September. Right on cue, we have our seventh named storm in the eastern Pacific—possibly threatening Hawaii—while the Atlantic Ocean is dead quiet.
The National Hurricane Center gives this sad blob of clouds over the eastern Atlantic a 10% chance of turning into a more organized sad blob of clouds over the next few days as the environment is “marginally conducive” to development. It probably won’t amount to much, but if it miraculously pulls through and becomes a named storm, it would be called Danny.
Eh.
Asia and the Pacific Islands are getting slammed by the tropics this year, as storm after storm spins up and tears toward land, threatening millions with ferocious winds and dangerous surges of water. Here in the U.S., though, it’s quiet—almost too quiet—and it’s likely going to stay that way for a little while longer.
As Tropical Depression Bill swirls its way through northern Texas this afternoon, the storm looks more impressive over land than it ever did over the ocean. The storm is still producing very heavy rainfall, and flash flooding is likely as it continues sloshing towards Oklahoma and eventually the Midwest.
Tropical Storm Bill made landfall on Matagorda Island in Texas at 11:45 AM CDT, or 12:45 PM EDT. The storm had 60 MPH sustained winds at landfall. It should start to weaken as it moves farther inland, but the threat for flash flooding is just beginning.
After hours of teetering on the edge, the National Hurricane Center finally took the plunge and declared a swirling mass of thunderstorms in the Gulf of Mexico a tropical storm, the second of the Atlantic hurricane season. The greatest threat with Bill is very heavy rainfall that could lead to flash flooding.
A major flash flood event could unfold over the next couple of days as what is likely to become Tropical Storm Bill limps its way towards Texas. What the storm lacks in vivacity it will more than make up for in intense rainfall. The storm will produce flooding rains from Houston to New York City, causing major flash flooding in areas that already have more water than they can handle.
We’re three days away from the start of hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean, and we’ve already seen one tropical storm this year. Tropical storms in May aren’t all that rare, but they aren’t exactly an omen, either. Forecasters expect a below-average hurricane season, but it just takes one to make a mess.
A pathetic clump of swirling clouds and weak thunderstorms shamefully churning off the coast of South Carolina became Subtropical Storm Ana last night. The storm is the first tropical cyclone we’ve seen in May since Alberto in 2012, and the earliest in the year since Ana (no relation) in 2003.
Welcome to May! We are now two-thirds of the way through spring, and right on schedule, the atmosphere has a mini heat wave in the forecast for most of us east of the Rockies. On top of that, models are trying to spin up some sort of a tropical cyclone-ish thing off the East Coast next week.
The stroke of midnight this morning closed the record books on yet another quiet hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean. We only saw a handful of newsworthy storms, but the real story is what didn't happen. It's been nine years—3,326 days—since the last major hurricane hit the United States.
With one month to go, it looks like this year's Atlantic Hurricane Season will go down as the least active season in seventeen years. Here are five graphics that show how such a quiet hurricane season managed to be so interesting.
The small island nation of Bermuda—sitting in the Atlantic about 650 miles east of North Carolina—is in grave danger from category four Hurricane Gonazlo as the intense storm approaches. Bermuda could experience winds of up to 120 MPH if the storm tracks close enough.
