Hurricanes....Coming Soon

Well as everyone is well aware I am a hurricane freak. Thats right I love to follow and watch hurricanes as they build across the atlantic and then pound into the carribean and souther united states. I myself dont find this morbid, as for me it is awe-inspiring or awesome. Hurricanes seem to fill me with the hope that nature still has something powerful enough to put us in our place, and show us our own "smallness".

For those in the know Hurricane season started a few months ago, and pretty much goes till the end of November, howerver most, or all Hurricanes normally start popping up in late august and early September. Thus, we should be in for a show anytime now, with my current prediction that we will get our first one within the next ten days. In fact, from what I can see, i believe the tropical wave that is currently at 20 degrees west and 15 north will hopefully get organized in the next week as it moves across the atlantic, and should, if we are lucky give us our first hurricane. Being a hurricane tracker I am lucky enough to have a multitude of satellite links on my computer, offering me daily images to keep me salivating over the week. I will try to share at least two of these images each day over the next month, so that everyone can see where Hurricanes come from, and how they eventually make land fall in the Gulf of Mexico.

The first image I will show you, is from the Accuweather Hurricane center. This is the best place to start when you want to get an idea of what is happening in the hurricane world. From here, you can narrow your search.

Hurricanes are born as the hot air from the interior of africa is blown out across the atlantic where it begins to pick up moisture and form clouds and if you are lucky thunderstorms. When they first start they are called TROPICAL WAVES. I dont know what that means, but for an amateur it basically means pocket of rain and clouds.

The next step, if the wave becomes organized is a TROPICAL DEPRESSION. This basically means that a group of thunderstorms has begun to get organized, and that, working together you begin to see the rotation that could evolve into a hurricane. A tropical depression gets its name because the barometric pressure within the system is depressed, that is, it is lowering. And for all of you who remember your high school physics, air moves from High Pressure to Low pressure. In other words a low pressure system sucks things into it. So basically a hurricane is a powerfull low pressure system that sucks things into it, making it bigger and bigger and more powerful as it does it.

A good way to judge a storm is by finding out its pressure in Millibars....the lower the millibars....the more powerfull the storm. By checking the millibars daily, you can tell whether a storm is getting better organized, or less organized. For example hurricane Katrina got as low as 902 millibars, whereas tropical deppresion chris from a few weeks ago was around 1012 millibars, so that give you an example of the beginnings of a storm and its most catostrophic finale.

Looking above, it is easy to see the tropical wave off the west coast of africa (between senegal and guinea). It is pretty big and for this reason, i think it should be able to get organized. But there are many factors that determine whether a storm can get organized. Two of them that I have learned have a great affect are water temperature and wind sheer. Water temperature affects how much energy the storms can pull up into them, and sheer from above, determines whether the storm is getting ripped apart from the turbulant forces above it. Needless to say, if there is little sheer, and warm water, the storm will normally become organized as it moves across the atlantic. And thats when things get really interesting.

The Next shot comes from NOAA GOES satellite.

Once a storm manages to get organized in the atlantic, it this satellite image that gives us the greatest detail on where the storm is, and where it might be heading. The image you see is actually a still shot, from a video that usually covers a 24-48 period of the weather in the area. So if you are interested you can go to the NOAA web page and see the storm in its full glory. As you can see from the image there are currently no tropical storms or hurricanes in the shot, but hopefully that will change soon.(That weather you see off the coast of Florida is simply a Low pressure system. It should be noted that this could get organized and form into a depression, but is not expected to do so. But again we will have to wait and see, AFTER ALL WEATHER IS CHAOS, IN ITS GLORY)

I am going to leave you there. I promise to update those two photos daily over coming weeks so we can all watch as hurricanes are born, grow, and finally wreak havoc on mankind. LOL. Man do hurricanes rule.