Category: Weather
Potential tropical development and a touch on hurricane history
I’m a weather guy, just a bit. I get a lot of entertainment / comfort out of reviewing Doppler radar in the Tampa Bay area and Florida. I keep myself informed regarding the tropical weather situation because it’s a looming issue at play annually.
I’m a little flabbergasted this afternoon though as I reviewed the latest update on the Bay News 9 tropical update page that Tropical Depression #6 for the Atlantic hurricane season is out there. Read that again, people, Tropical Depression Number six…. No, I’m not trying to play up the total as if it set some record and illustrates this-and-that of environmental development. I’m surprised and shocked because of how few tropical systems have been out there as this is only the sixth weather system with the potential to develop in the summer of 2016.
There is the negative shocker to be worried about here too: Last time I can remember a tropical season starting so late (meaning developing a depression into a storm or hurricane) was 1992 when Hurricane Andrew started the process of development on August 16 (via Wikipedia). It was only the third depression of the season and the first one that developed. And man, did that thing develop…
If you’re in South Florida or on the Atlantic coast of the US, make sure you follow this system and in general keep an eye on the tropics now. We’re at the height of the hurricane season and that brings the most threats as well as the most potential catastrophe.
A month late
As a follow up to this post, I submit to you the current temperature from the Pinellas County weather station:
42 degrees, 47 the high...
Why couldn’t I have had this a month ago? Bah, humbug.
Eighty-One. Bah, Humbug.
The high for December 24th
81 degrees in Pinellas County, Florida on Christmas Eve. There are millions of Americans that have endured the cold of the late fall and the first few days of Winter with sub-freezing temperatures, snow, ice, and all the weather that marks the season (and the problems they cause).
I get eighty-one degrees… And I’m not in the seasonal mood one bit because of it.
I don’t mean to play the Grinch, or make those up north jealous and play out like I’m ungrateful for having temperate weather as we pass the winter solstice… But I don’t get into the seasonal spirit any more seeing green trees around me (where trees won’t finish shedding leaves until February/March and grow them right back again). In fact it makes Christmas displays feel like Las Vegas light shows instead of the true time of the holiday that I know. It’s easier to tell the season by looking at store displays than with the weather outside.
In Florida you get two seasons: Spring and Summer. Oh, it gets chilly once in a while but every Spring has it’s cold days. And while some may want to defend the fact that it’s winter right now, even in Florida, I must ask how many places consider winter a growing season? In the northern hemisphere, I mean…
Eighty-one degrees… On Christmas eve. I’m sitting here with the grass-is-greener-on-the-other-side-of-the-fence mentality. 20 years ago I was jealous of my father being in Florida while we froze our buns off in New York. Right now, I’d rather endure the seasonal shift to cold — because not only would it ring in the time of year better, but it’d make me more appreciative of the warmth of summer. It’s hard to do that when your average temperature is 90 degrees with a sixty percent humidity for most of the year.
Maybe the new year will afford me the chance to escape Tampa Bay. I’d take it, but I don’t think that’s in the cards.
Fay-zed out
OK, it was cute leading up to the week how worked up people were getting about the storm. It was a tad annoying being told Armageddon was upon us and we had to be prepared, but it was cute in it’s anxiety breeding ways.
But here we are, Friday, and Fay still hasn’t left the state of Florida. Oh, she’s finally over the ocean again but technically? She’s still here… I mean, those are Florida waters.
And I must say: as a 20 year resident of Florida, following the likes of storms both tropical, non-tropical, frontal, and just standard summer storms… I have never seen a storm take such an abrupt, hard turn before:
Fay -- on Radar -- from Monday (August 18) thru Firday (August 22)
I'll give Fay this…
I’ll give the ongoing weather caused by Tropical Annoyance Storm Fay this credit: It paints one damn beautiful picture…
Just a glimpse
My friend Jason on Skyscraperpage.com has been down in Ft. Myers, helping his own family repair damages to their houses. He also took a few pictures to give everyone a better glimpse of the damage.
This has been a very sobering wakeup call for west-central Florida. We were lucky — 15 degrees north and the damage would have been the worst disaster in United States history…
That was a forrest… Just imagine what happened to the homes… or click on the link provided above.
There’s a sexual joke in here somewhere regarding Hurricane Charley
Hurricane Charley has decided not to give Tampa Bay a blow job but instead decided to go down on Charolette to the south.
Figures
OK, power was never turned off here and I am angry at my kneejerk family who decides to give me vague news. The huge news is we in the Tampa Bay Metroplex have escaped the full wrath of Charley and are instead getting second-hand frontal bands in his wake.
In a related Story 10 Tampa Bay News has been the absolute worst storm broadcast I have ever seen. It doesn’t help things when your studio is in a prime evacuation zone well away from urban centers in St. Petesburg or Tampa, but when your transmission quality bottoms out in your new location and you stop getting outside information? That’s horrid.
Give Paul Delagato big props for not only carrying the ball passed to him by his mentor and Flrodia weather guru Roy Leap, but for goving above and beyond to get news information and updates to people at home when the information becomes availible. Of course, Howard Shapiro and “Drunk” ANdy Johnson also deserve props for being part of teh best weather coverage in Tampa / St. Pete, but Delagdo is WTVT’s main weather personality and head meteorologist.
More weather coming in so we aren’t in the clear yet but this was a big, big, BIG escape for Tampa Bay. No one was crying wolf with this storm from the get go and the region handled the evacuations and such swimmingly.