No, not the Christmas season, although I certainly like that. To borrow a meme from Irish and modify it a little.
That's not completely true. It can start in December if the month is on the cool side. While it hit 85 today, a couple of days of cooler weather is coming. This is the time of year for outdoor projects. All antenna projects begin with saying, "when it cools off."
On the other hand, hurricane season is over, we never got any warnings that would have made me test my new radio tower bracing system (early photo toward the bottom). Not being hurricane season is a major feature of the next six months.
I thought the hurricane season was pretty much NBD - No Big Deal. There were many stormy areas that the models predicted would become a tropical storm but never did. My mental model of El Nino seasons, like this one, is that storms tend to go north earlier in their trips across the Atlantic than in La Nina years. We saw almost every storm turn northerly and not threaten Florida.
I have long thought that the high sea surface temperatures that all the
forecasters were wringing their hands over were a result of the explosion of
that underwater volcano in the Pacific back in January '22, Hunga Tonga-Hunga
Ha’apai,
which put far more water into the upper atmosphere than first estimated.
NOAA makes a big deal of the numbers of the storms that formed and created some messy days for some fish and other critters. Take a careful look at the parts of this quote I'll highlight for you:
The Atlantic basin saw 20 named storms in 2023, which ranks fourth for the most-named storms in a year since 1950. Seven storms were hurricanes and three intensified to major hurricanes. An average season has 14 named storms, seven hurricanes and three major hurricanes.
Oh. So you're saying we had an average season except for a higher number of named storms. Probably due to the higher sea surface temperatures - which is probably going to be the case for the next few years. It has nothing to do with global warming or climate change. It's due to "almost 40 Trillion gallons of water vapor ... injected into the upper-atmosphere" by that volcanic eruption.
Hurricane Idalia was the only U.S. landfalling hurricane in 2023. It made landfall as a category-3 hurricane on Aug. 30 near Keaton Beach, Florida, causing storm surge inundation of 7 to 12 feet and widespread rainfall flooding in Florida and throughout the southeast.
Tropical Storm Ophelia made landfall as a strong tropical storm with 70 mph winds on Emerald Isle, North Carolina, on Sept. 23 causing widespread heavy rainfall, gusty winds and significant river and storm surge flooding in portions of eastern North Carolina.
All that tells me it was a quiet season despite all the hand wringing over 20 names storms. The Atlantic hurricane season gave us one category 3 hurricane and one tropical storm. Having been through seasons where we got two category 3 hurricanes in less than one month, that sounds almost idyllic to me.
I think the named storm thing is to support the Narrative (of AGP/Climate Change). They are better able with satellites to detect the conditions for naming tropical storms. I seem to remember seeing one this past season that made the parameters for naming for only a few hours before it went back to tropical depression status.
ReplyDeleteThat seems to happen a few times every year. A couple of years ago, I remember them naming a storm that lasted a few hours before going ashore in Portugal and then across Spain. Yeah it was in the Atlantic for like 12 hours, but why does the US National Hurricane Center get involved? I guess there's no European hurricane center, although lots of storms that start out coming off Africa end up in the north Atlantic.
DeleteThe NHC folks don't seem to think much of the "climate change making storms worse" narrative, although maybe it's the older guys with the most experience. It could be just pushing the narrative because the boss (NOAA) says to push it.
Up here in The Great White North the mosquitos are usually gone by mid-November. Freezing, y'know.
ReplyDeleteIt's one of the things that make me consider moving farther north. Yesterday morning while out doing my morning bike ride, I stopped at a county park to use the restroom. Gotten bitten by skeeters twice and a third kept trying to dive for me between swats to keep it away.
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