Meteorologists Are Bald Now Because Hermine Has Them Pulling Out Their Hair

Hermine continued to spin south of Long Island this morning. 

Post-tropical storm Hermine, or whatever you want to call that stupid storm that's now south of New England, has frustrated EVERYBODY with its unpredictability.

I suppose the very good news is damage along the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast coasts is far, far less than initially feared.

But since the storm went more east than anybody thought it would and things weren't all that bad along the coast, the next dangerous storm might inspire people to not flee low lying areas because they'll assume forecasters are crying wolf.

Hermine kind of did what was forecast, performing stalls and little loops off the coast. It just did it further offshore than anyone imagined.

Forecasting the tracks of hurricanes, tropical storms and related storms has gotten much better in recent years, but there's still a lot to learn.

For instance, kudos to the National Hurricane Center for absolutely nailing their forecasts for the strength of Hurricane Hermine and its landfall location in Florida last week.

Hermine tracked along the southeastern United States coast Friday and Saturday as expected, but things really went off the rails starting Saturday night with the forecasts for Hermine.

It was supposed to stall much closer to the coast than it did, and it was supposed to hang out over the very warm Gulf Stream waters, and would have strengthened back up to hurricane power.

But it went further east out to sea before stalling.

As hurricane expert Bryan Norcross wrote in Weather Underground, forecasting the path of tropical systems in notoriously difficult when atmosphering steering currents are weak, as has been the case for Hermine off the Mid-Atlantic coast.

Forecasting computer models were all over the place with this.  The National Hurricane Center did acknowledge the forecasting problems as they were trying to track this thing but might have underplayed the uncertain in their statements that went out to the public.

The NHC was probably trying to act out of an abundance of caution and figured it would be better to get people out of harm's way, rather than throw some uncertainty into the minds of the public that could lead them to stay on dangerous shorelines.

Which in the case of Hermine turned out to be not so dangerous.

Hermine is still harassing the Northeast. It's now finally turned back toward the west. Yesterday, it gave parts of Cape Cod and the Islands tropical storm conditions with peak wind gusts of 55 to 60 mph in spots like Nantucket.

That wind blew down quite a few trees and branches and caused pretty widespread power failures in southeastern New England.

 Conditions aren't so bad today, but the continued presence of Hermine will continue with the wind, the rough seas, the dangerous rip currents and beach erosion. That state of affairs should continue much of this week

Forecasters think - and we hope - Hermine will finally dwindle away and head away from the coast toward the end of the week or the early part of next weekend.

Good riddance!

Pot Tornado Strikes Oregon! (Really A Marijuana Devil)

A "pot devil" crashes through a marijuana
farm in Oregon recently.

You've heard of tornadoes. Firenadoes.. Even Sharknados.

But a security camera in Oregon captured a Potnado.

It wasn't a tornado, but it WAS an unusually strong dust devil blasting through a marijuana farm in southern Oregon that ripped at least one pot plant from the ground and tossed it 15 feet into the air, says Oregon Live.

The potnado was at Siskiyou Sungrow, a legally sanctioned regulated marijuana production farm in Oregon.

It was really a dust devil, something I've written about before.

They form on sunny, warm days with light winds. The sun heats the ground, air rises, and a slight breeze tilts the updraft sideways. That sideways updraft will sometimes concentrate itself into a whirlwind, which is the dust devil.

Dust devils resemble tornadoes, but are never nearly as destructive as twisters. Still, dust devils can cause minor damage.

Here's the video:

Quick Hermine Update: Bad But Not End Of World

As of Sunday morning, it looks like Hermine, that monster storm about to stall off the Mid-Atlantic coast, is a little more to the east than many forecasts indicated.

That means it will still be bad along the East Coast, with storm surge flooding, gusty winds, dangerous surf and LOTS of beach erosion.

But it likely won't be a full-on Superstorm Sandy like disaster. Just bad, damaging weather.

Still, stay out of the ocean water on the East Coast today, and stay out of low lying areas through Tuesday along the Northeast Coast, especially in the Mid-Atlantic. Storm surge flooding is still a good bet in many areas.

Even though its a little further east, Hermine looks like it will still become hurricane force for a time by tomorrow. It's moving over the super warm Gulf Stream, which should fuel thunderstorms that will power up Hermine.

Hermine Update: Entire Coast From North Carolina To New England Still Under Threat Big Time

Damage from Hermine's storm surge in Florida on
Friday. Many coastal homes and structures from North
Carolina to New England could face damage
like this as Hermine continues to spin off
the Mid-Atlantic coast. 

Hermine, whether you want to call it a hurricane, a tropical storm or some weird big regular storm, continues to cause massive problems today and will continue spreading these coastal problems more and more toward the north over the rest of the Labor Day weekend.

A tropical storm watch has been upgrade to a warning for the New York City area, New Jersey, Long Island and the southern New England coast all the way to Watch Hill, Rhode Island.

A new tropical storm watch is up further north and east along the New England coast to include all of Cape Cod and the islands. 

The National Hurricane Center is still warning of "life-threatening inundations" for storm surges along the coast from the Hampton Roads area of Virginia (ongoing now!) all the way up through New Jersey.

Storm surges along the coast could reach five feet, near record highs in some spots. I don't think this will be quite as bad as Superstorm Sandy, but bad enough.

Plus, we have to get more people out of the way than we did with Sandy. More people are near the shore on Labor Day weekend than the time of year Sandy hit, which was late October in 2012.

If you're on the Jersey Shore, or Long Island, or down in Delaware and Maryland and Virginia and near the coast and they tell you to leave. Do it! The life you save might be your own, goes the cliché and it's true here.

You'll also want to leave before the tides and storm surges start coming in, because the escape roads are usually the first to go underwater or get washed away.

There already has been quite a bit of storm surge in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, you know, the area around Norfolk and Virginia Beach, reports the Virginia Pilot.


Storm surge flooding from Hermine in southeastern Virginia
this morning. Photo by Kimberly Pierceall, Virginia Pilot 

As I said before, Hermine isn't really a tropical storm anymore, but ignore that distinction. It's actually gotten stronger in terms of winds and waves and that kind of thing.

Gusts I'm coastal Duck, North Carolina reached 84 mph this morning as Hermine re-entered the Atlantic Ocean from the southeastern United States.

Hermine is still heading out to sea, and will end up just offshore. She'll meander and do loop de loops off of New Jersey, possibly getting very close to the coast at some point Sunday or Monday.

And it'll keep strengthening into Monday and probably be a hurricane or at least hurricane strength Sunday and/or Monday.

The storm surges, the winds and the rains will hug the coast, and you won't have to go too far inland in New Jersey and elsewhere in the East for the impacts to be much less dangerous and extreme.

If you're, say, 25 miles inland, it might be gusty and cloudy and sometimes rainy, but I don't think there will be tremendous damage away from the coasts.

But the Northeast coastline is so built up, there's a lot of property along the shore to get trashed.

The forecast track into early next week for Hermine has trended a little north, which is why southern New England is now under a tropical storm watch.

Up here at my perch in Vermont, we're still expecting few impacts from Hermine. Since it's going a little further north, many of us will gradually find ourselves under more and more high, thin clouds as we head toward Sunday and especially Monday.

Far southern Vermont might even get a few showers out of this, maybe, but don't hold your breath on that one.

Weird Thunderstorms In Norway and Siberia

A large isolated thunderstorm in Siberia recently
looked like a very bad nuclear bomb going off. 

Last week, there must have been quite a lightning bolt in Norway.

Hunters discovered 323 dead reindeer in the Hardangervidda region of Norway, home to thousands of reindeer. 

Apparently, a lightning bolt did them in.

Turns out, this isn't a once in a lifetime event for groups of animals dying in lightning strikes. Writing in Forbes, Marshall Shepherd documented several cases of lightning killing herds of animals.

About 600 sheep in Utah once died in a lightning storm. Just this past May, 21 cows were killed in McCook County, South Dakota when lightning struck as they were feeding out of a metal container. About a decade ago, a giraffe died from a lightning strike at Walt Disney World in Florida.

So yes, lightning is dangerous for us humans. It's also a risk for animals caught out in thunderstorms.

Lightning is something to be afraid of, and people in Siberia recently found something else to fear.

As you can see in the photo in this post, a distant thunderstorm photographed recently near the Siberian city of  Kemerovo really, really looked like a nuclear explosion, and of course such explosions are something to fear.

Local emergency services were inundated with calls from people who were afraid a nuclear war had started and everybody was about to die.

Happily, this was just a thunderstorm.  Nobody died.

Usually, the anvil top of a thunderstorm, that big outstretched flare of clouds you see at the top of the storm, heads mostly in one direction or another, as winds blowing near the top of the storm push the clouds along.

Another view of the scary, but basically harmless
mushroom shaped cloud in Siberia that was NOT a nuclear
explosion, but just a thunderstorm. 

Upper level winds must have been near calm above this thunderstorm, so the anvil top of the storm pushed out equally in all directions.

The storm was also isolated, with no sign of other storms developing around it, which is also unusual.

The atmosphere must have been "capped," meaning a warm layer of air was preventing the updrafts that usually lead to thunderstorms. 

However, something made the air start rising forcefully where that thunderstorm developed, so the rising air broke through the "cap" and continued upward, creating this big thunderstorm.

I'm guessing the thunderstorm was probably severe, or at least borderline so, with strong, gusty winds, maybe hail, torrential downpours and dangerous lightning.

But, on the bright side, it wasn't nuclear. It was just beautiful instead. Phew! 

Hermine Hits Florida, Will Hassle East Coast For Days

Hermine in Georgia this morning. Much of the East Coast
is in for coastal flooding and damaging, battering
waves all weekend from this thing. 

5 PM FRIDAY UPDATE:

Tropical storm watches have been upgraded to tropical storm warnings as far north as Sandy Hook, New Jersey.

Tropical storm watches extend further north to Watch Hill, Rhode Island.

1 PM FRIDAY UPDATE:

Hermine is going to be a very dangerous storm along the East Coast over the next few days.

Really bad storm surges and coastal flooding is a good bet from North Carolina to as far north as southern New England over the next few days. 

As I noted in this morning, (in the discussion below) Hermine now inland over South Carolina, will head off the North Carolina coast Saturday morning.

From there, it will probably turn into this weird tropical storm/mid-latitude storm off the Mid-
Atlantic coast. It will feed off the record warm offshore waters and basically stall, or at the very least move only very, very slowly northward.

Hermine could regain hurricane force strength again while off the Mid-Atlantic coast this weekend.

Here's the takeaway: If you were planning on going to the Jersey Shore, or pretty much anywhere on the East Coast between Georgia and New England for a Labor Day beach getaway, don't even bother.

Stay home.

If you insist on going to the shore, stay out of the water!!!! The rip tides and currents and waves will be extreme, and you will die if you go in for a swim. Don't be stupid, ya hear?

Tidal surges could reach four feet high along the New Jersey shore, with coastal flooding all the way as far north as Long Island and Rhode Island. Tropical storm watches are up for these areas, as well as the Jersey Shore, Delaware and coastal Maryland.

Tropical storm warnings are in effect further south.

Since Hermine will be hanging around off the coast for days, repeated high tide cycles and constant, battering waves have the potential to cause severe damage along many parts of the East Coast. This could well be the worst disaster in New Jersey since Superstorm Sandy in 2012, and possibly one of the worst storms in that region's history.

The odd thing is, depending upon where Hermine sets up and stalls, there might not be much rain in some of the Northeastern coastal areas that could have a lot of destruction along the shore.
It could rain hard, but there might even be times the sun is out while strong winds and battering waves trash coastal properties.

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION:

As expected, Hurricane Hermine came ashore in northwestern Florida as a Category One hurricane with sustained winds of at least 75 mph.

Early reports indicate roofs and porches have been blown off houses in the hardest hit areas, there's extensive flooding and power failures are widespread. The majority of Tallahassee, for instance, has no electricity.



Hurricane Hermine eroded this Alligator Point, Florida
road well before the storm made landfall.

The Tallahassee Democrat reports extensive damage in Taylor County, Florida, with a storm surge that reached as much as ten feet high.
Nearly 19 inches of rain - incredible - fell near Baskin, Florida and several towns reported more than a foot of rain.

Hermine is inland now, and weakening, because hurricanes always do when they go inland.  But it's still going to cause a lot of flooding, strong winds, and the risk of tornados in parts of Georgia and the Carolinas today and tonight.

Hermine, or some weird post-tropical hybrid version ot it, will contnue to create problems for the next several days.

Hermine will track toward the northeast just inland from the coasts of Georgia and the Carolinas today and Saturday, then head back out to sea, then probably stall off the Mid-Atlantic coast for days.

Its path north is going to be blocked by a strong ridge of high pressure over northern New England and southern Quebec.

There's a lot of uncertainty as to exactly where Hermine will slow down or stall, so that makes forecasts tricky. For now, tropical storm watches extend all the way north to New Jersey.

Coastal areas from Long Island south can expect storm surge flooding, battering waves and beach erosion through several tide cycles this weekend, so the damage could be nasty.

How bad things get depends upon how close to the coast Hermine or its post-tropical version of itself gets. If it's close to shore, it will be bad. But then again, if it stall further offshore, it will feed off record warm waters, and possibly strengthen.

Either way, you're screwed.

You'll hear talk of Hermine becoming a non-tropical storm, then maybe taking on tropical characteristics again if it sits over that  warm water off the coast.  

The distinction of whether Hermine will be a tropical storm or a regular big storm is really not important in a practical sense. Coastal areas, especially in places like New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia better brace themselves. No matter what you call the storm, tropical or not, it could prove dangerous for those along the coast.

It would be nice if Hermine went a little further north and dumped a lot of rain on drought-stricken southern New England, but at this point, it doesn't look like it will rain all that much there.

For my Vermont readers, since I'm based in Vermont, Hermine won't really have any effects on us. That ridge of high pressure that will block Hermine from moving north will be overhead or close to it over the weekend, so expect sunshine and mild weather in the Green Mountain State.

Hermine might throw some high level clouds our way, especially Monday, but it won't be a big deal. If you're planning a trip to the New England coast, though, beware of terribly dangerous rip currents and possible local coastal flooding.

Tropical Storm Hermine A Big Flood Threat To Florida, Southeast

Northwestern coastal Florida could face storm surge
flooding like this from Tropical Storm (or Hurricane) Hermine. 

After teasing forecasters for weeks, Tropical Storm Hermine blossomed yesterday in the Gulf of Mexico. She's strengthening as she heads towards northwestern Florida, where the storm will cause a big mess.

There's an excellent chance Hermine will be a hurricane by the time it hits the coast tonight.  As of 8 a.m. today, maximum sustained winds in Hermine had gone up to 65 mph.

Landfall is expected around midnight, or a little after. The weather will worsen all day today in northern Florida.

Basically, Hermine is causing every kind of tropical storm-type threat imaginable. The storm surge threat has gotten worse, with flooding from the ocean possible reaching four to seven feet above normal tide levels.

There's a LOT of low lying property along and near the northwestern Florida beaches, so you can imagine there will be a lot of damage.

People ought to get out of the way of this storm surge pretty darn quick, if they haven't already. That's because some storm surge flooding will probably start before Hermine's strong winds and heaviest rains arrive.

The rain is another problem. Some areas in northern Florida and southern Georgia could get a foot of it.  Which means people who are inland enough to escape the storm surge flooding from the ocean will still get inundated.

Yep, this will be yet ANOTHER flood disaster for the nation.

The wind will cause quite a bit of damage, too, since some coastal spots in northern Florida could see gusts to 85 mph. Power will be out for days.  That'll be a lovely lack of air conditioning in sultry early September Florida. Of course, for the people whose houses flood, no air conditioning is the least of their worries.

Hurricane warnings are up for northwestern Florida, including the cities of Tallahassee and Apalachicola. Tornadoes are also possible in much of Florida and parts of Georgia and South Carolina as Hermine approaches, then moves through.

It looks like Hermine will then move along the Georgia and South Carolina coasts, then offshore a bit while probably turning into a non-tropical storm.

But don't let that conversion to a non-hurricane type storm. There are signs it could stall off the mid-Atlantic coast, throwing battering waves and high tides against the shore starting Sunday and possibly continuing for days.

Expect lots of beach erosion and possibly some structural damage. And, unfortunately, maybe some deaths among those foolhardy enough to go into the water for a swim amid the extreme rip currents and waves all along the East Coast.

How bad things get depends upon where Hermine or ex-Hermine stalls, if it stalls. The closer to the coast it meanders, the worse things will be.