Hurricane Michael A Big Threat To Florida Panhandle

Here's the projected path of soon-to-be Hurricane Michael
at least as of this morning. 

UPDATE 11 AM MONDAY

The National Hurricane Center says Michael, as expected, is now a hurricane. The 11 a.m. update has it at 75 mph.

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION:

OK, the headline in this post is temporarily inaccurate.

As of this writing early Monday morning, Tropical Storm Michael was not yet a hurricane. But it extremely likely will be by later today, and it's a big threat to the Florida Panhandle.

This storm developed more quickly and more robustly than expected. Early yesterday morning it was a sloppy mess of a tropical depression, with top winds of just 30 mph. Yawn.

Forecasters thought at first it wouldn't strenghten too quickly, because upper level winds were preventing it from organizing. They figured it would get into the Gulf of Mexico, then rev up.

Nope, by the end of the day Sunday, Tropical Storm Michael had top winds of 60 mph, despite the high upper level winds, called wind shear, that were trying to rip the storm apart.

By this morning, top winds in Michael had increased to 70 mph. As Michael moves north into the Gulf of Mexico, the wind shear is expected to lessen, and the storm will be moving over very warm water.

That's a recipe for a very fast increase in intensity, and Michael could be a very dangerous hurricane by the time it reaches the Florida Panhandle late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning. By this time it could be a Category 2 or 3 hurricane, with top sustained winds of 110 to 125 mph.

All that said, meteorologists and hurricane experts have gotten a lot better in recent years in predicting the track of hurricanes, but not so good at predicting a hurricane's strength.

That's not a slap or insult at the National Hurricane Center or any other meterologist. It's just that the science isn't there yet. We humans have not completely figured out the ins and outs of why or when a hurricane will strengthen or weaken.

All this means is that people in the Florida Panhandle can expect anything from a gusty storm that causes some damage to a hurricane with major damage.

The hurricane will move inland and the winds will quickly weaken during the day Thursday. It will move through the southeast, and go over or near the flood disaster zone in the Carolinas, left behind by Hurricane Florence.

Michael, or its remains will dump heavy rain on the Carolinas, which of course is really bad. The good news is that Michael, unlike stalled Florence, will zip right through, so it won't have the opportunity to dump heavy rain over the course of many days. It will pour during many hours, just not many days.

By the way, Michael won't affect us here in Vermont. It will be too far south. It'll rain here Thursday, but that will be because a cold front will be approaching, then passing through.

REMEMBER HURRICANE LESLIE?

Way back at the end of September, one of my blog posts mentioned the formation of Hurricane Leslie, way out over the central Atlantic.

Believe it or not, all this time later, Leslie is still there, alternating between tropical storm force and hurricane force, as its top winds fluctuated above and below 75 mph. Right now it's a tropical storm, with top winds of around 50 mph

It looks like Leslie will finally get moving, moving southeast, then east, then northeast across the central and eastern Atlantic Ocean.  It was over cool-ish waters this morning, which is preventing it from getting stronger, but soon it will move over warmer waters, and the National Hurricane Center thinks Leslie will become a hurricane again. 

Leslie could threaten Portugal and Spain toward next weekend. By then, Leslie will likely be converting itselt from a hurricane to a regular storm, albeit a strong and windy one. That's something those two countries need to keep an eye on.

HURRICANE SERGIO'S WET U-TURN

Meanwhile, out in the eastern Pacific Ocean, Hurricane Sergio last week was heading harmlessly westward, where it would have encountered colder water and died. But then it did a U-Turn, and is heading toward Baja California.

It will have greatly weakened by the time it gets there, but it will probably end of pushing another surge of very odd, wet weather into the Desert Southwest.

That's bad, because the remains of Hurricane Rose set up lots of flash flooding in that region last week, especially in Arizona.

The Southwestern deserts are now oddly wet, so Sergio could set them up for a lot more flooding. Stay tuned on that one.

SPEAKING OF FLOODING....

There's a big risk of flash flooding today and tomorrow in a broad swath in the middle of the nation from western and central Texas all the way up to southern Minnesota and Wisconsin.

A nearlh stalled weather front is dumping heavy rain in the region. Today, the biggest threat of flash flooding is in parts of Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas, where the National Weather Service says there is a high risk of possibly life threatening flash flooding.

This region has been plagued by heavy rain for many weeks, and there have been repeated flash flood. This could be the worst round het in the three states I mentioned. We'll follow the news today and tomorrow to see where this goes.