Time For A Deeper Dive Into Two Tropical Storm Threats

This map from the Weather Channel depicts insane amunts of rain
from Cyclone Mekunu in Oman and Yemen. In an area that gets
normally gets roughly five inches of year, up to a foot and a half
could come down in just a couple days. 

There are two odd threats looming in the tropical storm department:

A powerful storm is threatening to bring disaster upon Oman and Yemen this week, and a messy tropical system threatens flooding in the southeastern United States early next week.

Let's go overseas first, where the bigger of the two problems is looming.

CYCLONE MEKUNU

As of last night, Cyclone Mekunu was a borderline Category 1/Category 2 hurricane. (They're called cyclones where this one is, but a hurricane and a cyclone are the same thing.) Sustained winds are in the dangerous 90 to 95 mph range.

Mekong could easily end up becoming the strongest tropical cyclone on record to hit the Arabian Peninsula when it makes landfall near the Yemen-Oman border, says the India Meteorological Department.

According to Bob Henson in the Category 6 weather blog, Mekunu is worrying for two principal reasons: It's going to hit land at a nearly perpendicular angle, which would increase the winds, waves and storm surge in Oman.

It's also likely hitting near a populated area: The city of Salalah, Oman, population about 340,000, can expect a nasty storm surge and major flood.

The normally arid area where Mekunu is expected to hit will probably get eight to 16 inches of rain, with more in the nearby mountains. This in an area that normally gets just roughly five inches of rain per year. You can imagine, then, how destructive the floods will be with a storm that brings two year's worth of rain in a day or two.

This will be a major, deadly disaster, folks.

WANNABE TROPICAL STORM ALBERTO

A big area of the Southeast can expect flooding rains from a
tropical system to form in the Gulf of Mexico in the coming days
Areas in red and oranage at this point look to be at most risk.

It looks almost certain now that some sort of tropical system will affect the eastern or central Gulf Coast of the United States in the coming days.

What exactly that will be is still open to question, but dangerous flooding is becoming an increasing risk.

That weather disturbance that was near Belize the other day has moved north to near the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico and will emerge into the Gulf of Mexico in the next day or two.

Normally, this time of year, upper level winds are too strong in the Gulf of Mexico to support a tropical system.

These upper level winds rip apart thunderstorms that would form into a tropical storm, so they don't happen. Over the next few days, those upper level winds over the Gulf aren't all that strong, so this thing has the potential to develop.

It'll probably form into a tropical or subtropical depression in the coming days. (A subtropical system has characteristics of both a tropical storm and a regular old storm system.) There's a chance this storm could become strong enough to be declared a tropical storm, with sustained winds of 39 mph.

If it achieves tropical storm status, it will be named Alberto.

Whether or not this thing becomes a tropical storm, it will bring boatloads of moisture into the southeastern United States, so flooding is a real concern in that part of the country. It doesn't help that parts of the area that are in for a soaking from Wannabe Alberto are already quite wet from previous rains, so this could be a real troublemaker.

Wannabe Alberto will never become one of those nice pinwheel shaped tropical systems or hurricanes that you often see in satellite photos. It'll be a messy mass of clouds and downpours that will slowly invade the Southeast.

The Atlantic tropical storm season officially begins on June 1, so this might form before then. But tropical systems sometimes form before the "official" start of the hurricane season. Just because this is early doesn't necessarily mean the overall hurricane season will be especially nasty, like last year.

It's too soon to tell how bad the upcoming hurricane season will be, but here's one hopeful sign: Water temperatures in the area of the Atlantic where the most powerful hurricanes tend to form in August and September are cooler than average. If this state of affairs continues, that could cut down on hurricanes since these things need warm water to thrive. And the warmer the better, as far as hurricanes are concerned.

Then again, the National Hurricane Center today issued a forecast calling for a near normal to busier than normal hurricane season. We shall see!

Two Bad Storms: One In Peru, One In Australia

Devastating mudslides and floods have been htting Peru
in recent weeks. Photo by Ernesto Benavides/Getty Images

Every once in awhile, I like to take you on a tour of weather elsewhere in the world, so here we go.

Last week, Peru was hit by one of the worst storms on record to hit that South American nation.

According to the always reliable and informative Weather Underground blog by Bob Hanson and Jeff Masters, the world's costliest disaster so far in 2017 has been going on or the past several days in Peru.

Torrential rain has fallen on normally dry terrain in Peru in recent weeks, causing flooding that has killed at least 80 people and displaced about 110,000 others.

Reuters reports large swaths of Peru, including the capital cit of Lima, schools have suspended classes and running water has been restricted because treatment plants are all screwed up by mudslides. Food shortages are developing in some towns because roads are so damaged by floods and mudslides that trucks can't move goods around.

The trouble in Lima, Henson and Masters say, developed despite the fact that little rain has fallen in most  of the lower elevation parts of the city.

The climate there is normally such that the city gets high humidity and fog fairly frequently, but the cool Pacific Ocean water just off the coast of South America helps prevent the kinds of updrafts that can trigger storms and heavy rain.

The flooding this year is in elevations above Lima, but even there, it is normally very dry, so what happened in the past couple of months to change that?

It's complicated and a bit weird, climatologically, but here we go. El Nino, that periodic warming of eastern Pacific waters, messes up weather patterns all around the world. It can really cause problems in Peru, which of course is right next to the eastern Pacific.

The water in the eastern Pacific gets warm, so you get more of those updrafts and storms that can cause heavy rain in Peru. That situation caused severe flooding in Peru in 1997 and 1998.

There was another very strong El Nino in 2014 through early 2016, but oddly, there wasn't all that much flooding in Peru then.  That puzzled scientists.

Now, El Nino is gone, so you'd think Peru would be safe from any big floods caused by this oceanic and atmospheric phenomenon. However, for some reason, the water temperature just off the coast of Peru skyrocketed in the past few months.

Scientists are even more puzzled by that.

This warm patch off the coast of Peru could lead to a more widepread El Nino, but so far that hasn't happened.

But the warm water lingers in the waters off Peru, so more flooding is a threat.

DEBBIE DOWN UNDER

Meanwhile, in Australia, Cyclone Debbie has hit the northeast part of the nation with devastating force.

Cyclones in that part of the world are another name for hurricanes.

Satellite view of Cyclone Debbie in northeastern Australia.

And Debbie is a biggie. It just hit land overnight our time on the U.S. East Coast, which is during the day Tuesday in Australia.  Winds were reported as high as 165 mph.

Since the storm was ongoing as I write this, details from the disaster zone are sketchy.

Early reports and video emerging from near where the cyclone made landfall indicate major damage, with roofs blown from homes, storm surges and other damage. We don't know yet if there have been any deaths, but injuries have been reported, according to The Guardian. 

Debbie made landfall at a series of very nice islands and coastal locations popular with tourists.

One tourist stuck there during the cyclone said the streets are littered with metal roofing and golf carts that have been flung around by the winds. In hotels, people stayed away from windows as the panes flexed in and out amid the destructive winds, The Guardian said. 

The tourist, named Peter Langtree, said the noise from Debbie was incredibly loud and scary. "The noise is like nothing I've ever heard before I guess if you had to explain it, it would be similar to standing next to a 747 at take off."

Cyclones hit Australia from time to time, almost always on the northern coasts of the nation, but this one was much stronger than usual. It was the worst cycline since at least 2007. It might turn out to be one of the worst cyclones in Australian history.

Some videos:

This video shows damage and strong winds from Debbie in Airlie, Australia:



This rather loud video shows Debbie at peak force. Looks scary to me!

Image From Space: Incredible Photo Of Lightning Flashing In Hurricane Eye

Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti captured
lightning flashing in the eye of Cyclone Bansi last week.  

My new best friend is Samantha Crisoforetti.

We never met each other, but I, like everyone else in the weather geek community,  has spent the past several days gaping at awe at a photograph she took, the one in this blog post.  

Click on the image to make it bigger and easier to see.

She's an astronaut on the International Space Station, and she snapped a nighttime photo of very strong Cyclone Bansi in the southern Indian Ocean.

(Hurricanes are called Cyclones in the Indian Ocean.)

When she took the photo, a flash of lightning popped in the eyewall of this storm. As noted in the Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang, the flash illuminates the clouds lining the eye of the storm. They curve backward from the center, giving the eye the appearance of a stadium.

You also see one low cloud extending across the base of the eye, which I often see in strong hurricanes for some reason.

The lightning flash brilliantly lit up the eye, but also slightly illuminated the entire eyewall around the cyclone. You can see the swirling, chaotic cloud structures with the intense storm.