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.

Weird Storms Have Weather Geeks Geeking Out. You Might, Too

This "medicane" in the Mediterranean Sea is threatening Greece and Turkey

A couple of odd storms have formed in different parts of the world, making us weather geeks take notice.

Some of the storms are dangerous, some are not really that scary. At least for now.  But they are interesting

"MEDICANE" THREATENS GREECE

A storm in the Mediterranean Sea has taken on a lot of the characteristics of a tropical storm or hurricane, which is somewhat unusual for that part of the world.

The Mediterranean is usually considered too small, and often too chilly to support any kind of tropical storm. But sometimes, a regular storm in that region will take on tropical characteristics, and that's what this storm has done.

Regular storms have warm and cold fronts, and often the strongest winds are away from the storm's center. Tropical storms feed off warm ocean water, are symmetrical and have thunderstorms and strongest winds closest to its center.

According to the British Met Office, the storm got its non-tropical start the way most non-tropical storms do. Cold air from the Balkans clashed with warm air from the Sahara and boom! You had a storm.

The storm then sat over the Mediterranean, and gradually become more and more like a tropical storm as it steep itself in the effects of the warm Mediterranean.

The "medicane" will bring gusty winds to parts of Greece and torrential rains to Greece and western Turkey. Flooding is definitely a threat.

Medicanes do happen from time to time. The Met Office notes there medicanes in the region in 2014, 2016 and 2017.

SUBTROPICAL STORM LESLIE

Some of us have pretty complicated backgrounds and so does Leslie, a storm out over the Central Atlantic.

It began life as a tropical storm, like how I described above. It had a warm core, it fed off toasty ocean water, looked pretty symmetrical and had its strongest winds near the center.

Then a cold front and a powerful upper level low pressure system plowed into Leslie. That turned it into just a regular storm system, with warm and cold fronts. It was a powerful one, with very strong winds and waves. It's sending rip currents and dangerous surf toward the East Coast as we speak.

Now, this storm is heading slowly toward the southwest, over warmer ocean waters. It's beginning to take on the characteristics of a tropical storm again. Right now it's a hybrid, know as a subtropical storm.

As it continues toward the southwest, it's expected to become fully tropical again, and grow into a hurricane. It's path is pretty unusual too, possibly heading almost due south for a time in a few days.

It's unknown if Leslie will ever become a threat to land. For now, it's kind of meandering out there.

HURRICANE ROSA TO SOAK ARIZONA OF ALL PLACES

A hurricane named Rosa was pretty powerful off the west coast of Mexico over the past few days. It's weakening, but it's taking a path that will take it across Baja California and into Arizona of all places

By the time it hits Arizona, Rosa will be just be tattered remnants of her former self. But the storm will spread torrential rains into the normally arid Desert Southwest, which will include a big chunk of Arizona, southern California, and southern Nevada, including Las Vegas.

Flash flood watches are already up in this region, effective Monday afternoon into Wednesday. Rainfall rates might go to one to two inches an hour in this area, which is extraordinary for the Desert Southwest.

On the bright side, some of this tropical moisture looks like it will make it up into Utah and parts of western Colorado, which are very dry and under a forest fire danger at the moment.

We'll have to watch the remains of Rosa in a week or so. Its left over upper level energy could spark some heavy rain in the upper Midwest - places like Wisconsin and Minnesota- which have had flooding problems and is very wet already.

While this tropical situation in Arizona is kind of rare it is by no means unique. In October, 1983, the remnants of Tropical Storm Octave caused a disastrous flood in Arizona that killed 14 people and caused about $370 million in damage.