Hurricane Lane 8/23/18

Hawaii is preparing and taking action to the biggest hurricane threat to strike the island chain in 26 years. The category 4 Lane is still packing winds up to 130 mph and one of the NOAA stations (buoys) are now in the eye of the hurricane. So valuable because aircraft can't fly into Lane anymore.

Satellite images present that Lane even though a massive area of wind shear to the southwest is impeding strength or development, it is still holding its own although it's fighting a losing battle.

All the islands have greater than 25 percent chance of receiving tropical storm force winds sustained through Sunday. On the present course, the center/eye of Lane will make its closest approach to the islands of Maui and Oahu Friday and Saturday. Rain is already falling on Maui and the Big Island with many areas of the Big Island already having a foot of rain in less than 24 hours.

Lane is moving north north-west at 7 miles per hour, a gradual decrease in forward speed is expected during the next 2 days, followed by a near 90 degree turn to the left after that and weakening is likely starting tonight.

Key Impacts Re: Lane

1. Even though Lane will begin to weaken more rapidly tomorrow and Saturday until it loses hurricane strength (different models have different opinions about this), the storm will uncoil like a snake, it's going to weaken however will get bigger in size so more of the islands will be impacted.

2. Rain: All four major islands can get over a foot of rain, I was referring earlier to the total already near Hilo of 12 inches and with two more days of rain (at least) we can double that in higher elevations. There is a meteorological term called the Orographic lift in which mountains and hills could possibly get double the rain total that cities down low get. If Honolulu gets 10 inches then it's quite a possibility that higher levels receive 20 inches. Flooding doesn't exactly happen with the total of rain rather the rate of rain. It's a complex process.

Also much like landfalls in Haiti/Puerto Rico/Central America landslides and mudslides will be a major concern to deal with.

3. Surge: With a small center, surge will not be a huge concern but still Maui and Oahu can get two to four feet water inundation tomorrow night as the center passes by.

4. Wind: Again, the core is small so hurricane force winds sustained are very unlikely right now as I type this rather every island will get tropical storm force winds for at least 24 to 36 hours satrting right now. Today is really the last day to prepare.

5. Uncommon occurrence: Lane is the first major hurricane to be within 100 miles of its current position since Iniki (1992), that category 4 hit the western islands doing terrible destruction. Oahu and Maui have never had this big of a threat before.

Beryl 7/6/18 and Potential Cyclone off NC Coast?

Beryl became the first hurricane of the 2018 Atlantic Hurricane Season overnight and there has been changes to the initial forecast at the National Hurricane Center (NHC)

And we have a disturbance that could be a tropical depression or named storm in the next few days.

Up above is the 5 day forecast for Beryl. A couple things to note:

1. As you will see in the satellite image in a minute, Beryl is a very small storm comapred to normal standards.

2. The forecast does not have Beryl making it though Wednesday. What does that mean? Here's the deal:

A. It will engage in either Hispaniola or Cuba, making it weak and with its size, those islands that have mountains and hills will tear the circulation up.

B. Shear (Wind in the air) gets control of Beryl and ripping it to pieces before it gets to those bigger islands.

C. It dodges both shear and the islands and becomes a threat toward Jamaica or the Cayman Islands in the middle of the next week.

I'm leaning toward A at the moment. Certainly Cuba is a big enough island to tear apart a storm, Haiti and the Dominican Republic are also large.

Past five days if/whatever is left will be headed north near the Bahamas as a weather pattern will pick it up and make it turn north and northeast. When it does that, the timing for the turn will be critical to whether effects will be felt in one nation or the other.

Of course, none of that matters if Beryl doesn't survive.

What you are looking at is the satellite image. If you look at it closely, right under the cloud break below the outflow, that's where the center of it is. It hasn't popped out an eye yet (Typically when hurricanes get higher at category 1 range, an eye will start to be seen, it hasn't happened yet)

HERE AND NOW

Strength: 80 mph, category 1
Movement: West at 15 mph (It's moving briskly)
Location: Near 1,000 miles away from Barbados and St. Lucia
Intensity: 994 mb (The lower the pressure, stronger or broader the storm is)

IMPACT
This will greatly depend on whether Beryl can make it to the Lesser Antilles or not. Either way, rain and wind will be on the rise for islands like Martinique, Dominica, St. Lucia, Barbados and others.

It is looking more likely that it will make it though those islands as a tropical disturbance. Water won't be the concern with this (Regarding water rise) but rain and wind could be (at least rain)

Beryl will roll though the islands Sunday night and Monday. Hurricane/Tropical Storm watches could be put up later today if required.

NORTH CAROLINA FEATURE

A cluster of thunderstorms has a high chance (80%) of forming in the next five days. It will drift toward the Carolinas this weekend and might sit and spin for a day or two next week before it gets picked up and taken out to sea.

My Thoughts On Political Developments

Man, man, man good fucking job liberals. Excellent job.

That was 100% sarcastic if you need to know that. By now, I'm sure we saw the video about a guy attacking a person at a Whataburger for wearing "Make America Great Again" hat. What the fuck is going on out here with you all? Let's dive into the subject shall we?

1. All you are going to do is for people to see that and stay away from you and vote either Independent and Republican.

2. How do you all get so mindfucked over a hat?? Seriously, the guy supports a dude that you don't. Get over it. You lost in November 2016 this is July 5th 2018. Give me a break.

3. We (the general population that has a brain) are tired of being called racists when we are not, a nazi when we are not and scumbags when we are not. Yes there is shady people on the right.

Disclaimer: I'm not a democrat, I'm not a republican. I'm an independent. I independently look at every fucking thing and develop my own fucking opinion.

When is the people on the left going to realize all they're doing and switching people away from you and you're not doing any favors to anyone? You gave something for Trump to tweet and look and say "See? This is why we got to go and prove these guys wrong."

In November, I can assure you if the Democrats lose more seats in the congress, they will be rioting in the streets and killing people because YOU FUCKING LOST. Much like a sporting game, a bingo contest, a drinking event, there's a loser. YOU ARE NOT GOING TO GET YOUR WAY EVERY TIME. Yeah, good deal.

Will the Republicans riot? I'm 60/40 no on that. Didn't do it when Obama won both terms, also in 2006 when the Democrats gained majority control.

Listen, Democrats. You are not all bad people. Just have different opinions then the other party. Had someone contend to me last night that America hates us. Three things:

1. Sore losers: How many times did we see CNN, MSNBC and even FOX tell you Trump is Hilter and all that? It's really not your fault most of you because the media fed it to you but you got Maxime Waters calling for attacks on Republicans. We got Nancy Pelosi saying goofy ass shit all day and we have Rosie O'Donnell calling for Martial Law. FOR WHAT??

Granted there are Republicans that say BS all the time but most of the time are not verified people with millions of followers on social media.

2. Hypocrisy: Remember Waters? She lives outside her district, has a $5 million dollar home and her district is among the worst in Los Angeles/Anaheim. We can attack them (Republicans) but they can't attack us back. During the Abolish ICE movement, the reason why the officials were there was to get people who used children for sex trafficking off the streets and into prison cells. And you protest that??

When Obama was in office he put children for trafficking as well. STOP THE BULLSHIT!! Stop it but of course the media won't put it on as top story, I wonder why.

There is over 2 million American children homeless, and over 40,000 American Veterans are homeless yet Democrats are not talking about them at all? If they care so much about people, WHERE ARE THEY?? Because they want to be pathetic and hate Trump every chance they get instead of maybe working with him like the Founding Fathers wanted them to do.

3. Much like communism. Many Liberal ideas are great on paper. "We're going to put the environment over the economy" Only a couple of very big flaws with that.

A) Do you realize that most of the pollution is coming from:

- Third world countries
- China and India

Those nations don't care about it and will ruin the planet long before we will.

AND B) The reason why Trump pulled us out of the Paris Accord is that there were too many regulations and an unbalanced way of payments meaning that countries like the USA, Netherlands, UK, France have to step up more even though we pollute less stuff instead of maybe teaching China and India how not to pollute.

The EPA still has to exist though because if it doesn't it's very dangerous because there has to be something or someone to regulate all of this pollution, hazy skies, etc.

Stop being in the ring with only Democrats or only Republicans. Learn both, don't favor one every single time. And then develop your own ideas and thoughts.

Get biased media out of here. Receive actual facts instead of leaning on a political party.

Pull your head out of your ass, clean the shit off and take a look and join us in reality before you humiliate yourselves both to us and in the polls.

Alberto Non-Update

Really, the only thing that changed since we spoke last has been the time and the position of our Subtropical Storm Alberto. It's beginning to move to the north and will curve around to the northwest and will make landfall on Monday between Biloxi and Panama City. The 5 day track is below.

The thunderstorms associated with Alberto is to the right of the storm and based on a radar image I saw, once the rain comes in here tonight it's going to stay for a while.

A flood watch has been issued for pretty much all the state of Florida and a tropical storm watch has been issued for Tampa, Pensacola, Mobile, Gulfport and New Orleans. Those will be upgraded to warnings later this afternoon.

The key messages and satellite image is below.

DISCUSSION... At this hour, Alberto is partially tropical and non-tropical. . A tropical cyclone is a warm cyclone with a warm core or mostly wet air all the way around the system. A sub-tropical cyclone is partially tropical and partially non-tropical. The tropical part as you've guessed contains of very heavy rain and moist conditions fueled by the very warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico and a lot of thunderstorm activity is along and to the east of that as shown in the image below.

The non-tropical portion has an upper level trough of low pressure overhead and what that does is providing dry air a way into the system and that way the cyclone has a really tough time developing or getting lungs so to speak. Tropical cyclones tend to have high pressures overhead them instead of low pressures.

Imagine yourself being a forecaster at the National Hurricane Center and the first part of the forecasting process is to identify the center, that's the easy part of this. Very exposed in the center with just a few clouds in a circular shape.

You'll also notice that almost all the thunderstorms are along and to the east of the center so Cuba, Florida and Georgia are going to get very heavy amounts of rain from this and once again, rain is the primary threat with this. 

FORECAST... For the past three or four days, most of the models take Alberto and put the center between New Orleans and Panama City but remember from the discussion portion that people to the right of where Alberto makes landfall are going to have much greater impacts then to the left. 

Alberto will begin to move to the north and northwest with time. It has about 36 hours after Saturday afternoon with low winds in the atmosphere and moist air to work with to strengthen perhaps. 

Regardless, the odds of Alberto becoming a hurricane are relatively small and all the impacts will be to the east. In order from most to least likely, here are the threats:

Very heavy rain up to 12 inches in spots
Gusty winds, perhaps damaging in the central Gulf Coast
Tornadoes/waterspouts popping up (One or more tornado watches will be issued)
Lightning (Not very common in tropical cyclones)

If the models come to validate, Alberto will be making landfall sometime Monday and will slow down causing heavy rain in the southeast.

NASCAR Up For Sale Potentially. My Thoughts?

Two weeks ago, most of us read a report that NASCAR after being in control for 70 years with Bill France, Bill France Jr and Brian France might be up for sale amid loss of fan interest and TV ratings.


Disclaimer: I'm a old school NASCAR fan (anything up until about 10 years ago) and personally think there are several things wrong with how the sport is ran.

- Length of Races.

With the exception of some races (Daytona, Talladega, Darlington, Coke 600, Road Course Races,  and Richmond) people will not watch the sport for three or four hours at a time on Sunday afternoons. About 20 years ago, Dover and Rockingham addressed the issue by reducing their 500 mile races to 400 mile ones, since they were both one mile tracks, 100 laps were cut off.

I believe in order to get our generation to watch (High schoolers) to watch races on a constant basis they've seriously got to consider shortening some of these non historical races. Do you really want to watch 500 miles around Texas?

- NBC/FOX TV Deal

When NBC and FOX announced that they were going to reunite to cover the whole NASCAR season much like they did from 2001-06 many people were excited and rightfully so. The problem is that neither network shows that they really care about the viewers nor the race itself because both the networks have had their issues. With Jeff Burton's nearly nonexistent commentary and Darrell Waltrip's love affair with Kyle Busch and Jeff Gordon's saying "look at this" every damn time something is happening.

NBC's problems
FOX's problems

Back in the day, race fans even if they were not going to the track knew they were going to get awesome coverage every weekend in the 1990's. ESPN's example is here

Skip around portions of the race and tell me even before that historic race you would not be excited to see it with them is delusional. It was like friends at a BBQ on Sundays. Sadly it is not that anymore.

TNN's example (This is presently known as the Paramount Network)

- Too much technology

How many times have you've seen a driver had a great race only to be messed up by fuel issues? In 2012, NASCAR announced that they were switching from carburetors to fuel injection systems. This didn't take long to have issues with drivers.

Kenny Wallace Duel
Tony Stewart Phoenix
Brad Keselowski Texas

At least three issues in the first seven races of 2012 and it occasionally pops back up. Also back in the 1980s instead of going directly to a mechanic or putting a computer chip back in, you get underneath the car and get grease on yourself and you would be proud as hell if you got the issue fixed yourself.

With technology, every teenager gets less and less interested in watching races or being a car guru. There are exceptions I'm aware.

- Season is too long

Unfortunately the video I intended to use for this example was deleted but Kyle Petty in 2012 said we have way too many races and I agree with the statement he made. There have been 36 races for the last 18 years and now NASCAR won't announce attendance figures, I wonder why...

In 2016, only 20 percent of seats were sold at the Brickyard, From 1994-2007, Indianapolis was the most attended track. What changed?

- The addition of Chicagoland and Kentucky to the schedule.
- In 2008, there was a major tire issue that NASCAR essentially made the race heat races themselves.
- Muggy weather in late July

I think for a sport like NASCAR to continue to the next generation, they need to cut down from 36 to about 28 races. Look at IndyCar/Formula 1 and NHRA are the greedy and return to a race track twice? They know better than to do that. What can go?

All of these racetracks have two races, one can be taken off
- Pocono
- Kansas
- Texas
- Phoenix
- Las Vegas
- Dover
- Spring Richmond
- Michigan

That leaves 28 races, the season can still start in February but either end in October or be stretched out to November still. 36 races are way too many especially cookie cutters like most of those above.

- Caution Clocks/Stages

Formally known as debris cautions, these stop the race after a certain number of laps to bunch up the field. I completely understand the reason why they do this with short attention spans but with NASCAR not doing this until now, why?? Here are examples where it ruined people's days for either a car brushing the wall or no debris.

Tony Stewart 2007 Phoenix
Kasey Kahne 2009 Fontana
Carl Edwards 2016 Homestead

In 1992, Kyle Petty led 484 of 492 laps at Rockingham, did they throw a debris caution once? Nope. Everyone wasn't as good as him that day and they went onto the next race, not cry and complain.

- Chase for the Cup/Points System

Take a look at Matt Kenseth's 2003 Championship season. 1 win but 25 top tens and an average finish of 10.6 but with ONLY one win many people cried and moaned until NASCAR announced that they were going to start with a playoff the following year.

Initially, the reception was mostly positive but quickly fell out of favor with changes in 2007, 2011 and 2014. My issues with those are:

- 16 drivers is an insane number, they need to go back to ten. Even in those ten, there are only three or four drivers realistically able to win the championship.

- The point system changes every other race it seems like. Hell, I'm 17 and if I can't keep up with it how is anybody going to understand?

How about go back to where it was from 1949-2003 and let the driver with the most points win the championship or the driver with the most wins? Not that hard. Keep it simple. The simpler, the better for new fans to understand.


- Also NASCAR can never make their mind about rules. Not going to get into detail but watch a race and you'll see.

- Toyota in, Dodge out

If NASCAR is an American sport then why is a Japanese manufacturer competing?? When Toyota was going to enter the top level in 2007, most people gave Toyota the black eye so to speak and rightfully so. Races in America=Only American cars right?

Dodge after a 15 year absence returned to NASCAR in 2001 with the advice of one of the best crew chiefs of all time, Ray Evernham. After little success though its first 11 years back and with Evernham, Petty and Penske all leaving the manufacturer, Dodge in 2012 stated it wouldn't be back in 2013.

I watched the announcement live and couldn't believe it. I will admit, Dodge is my favorite car but this hurt NASCAR racing in bigger ways then expected.


Closing Thoughts:

Everything evolves and after 70 years of control from the France family, it's time to experiment with new owners. Hopefully, the sport will start to see its faults and fix them one step at a time and will start catering to NASCAR fans, not TV networks or the average person channel surfing on the weekend.

NASCAR needs to take a long, hard look at itself or its next chapter can be far less than desirable.

Thoughts?

Flood Watch Issued Though Monday

* From the National Weather Service in Melbourne.

Flood Watch
National Weather Service Melbourne FL
400 PM EDT Fri May 25 2018

...FLOOD WATCH IN EFFECT FROM SATURDAY AFTERNOON THROUGH THE
HOLIDAY WEEKEND...

...FLOOD WATCH IN EFFECT FROM SATURDAY AFTERNOON THROUGH MONDAY
EVENING...

The National Weather Service in Melbourne has issued a

* Flood Watch for a portion of east central Florida, including
  the following areas, Coastal Volusia County, Indian River,
  Inland Volusia County, Martin, Northern Brevard County,
  Northern Lake County, Okeechobee, Orange, Osceola, Seminole,
  Southern Brevard County, Southern Lake County, and St. Lucie.

* From Saturday afternoon through Monday evening

* A prolonged period of heavy rainfall potential is expected
  across the area as Alberto moves northward through the Gulf of
  Mexico and pulls deep tropical moisture over east central
  Florida. Widespread rainfall amounts of 3 to 5 inches are
  possible. Storm total rainfall amounts may reach up to 6 to 8
  inches in localized by Monday. This will cause a concern for
  flooding across east central Florida, especially in areas that
  received heavy rainfall earlier this month.

* Heavy rainfall will have the potential to cause flooding on
  roadways and in low-lying and poor drainage areas. Do not drive
  across flooded roadways.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

A Flood Watch means there is a potential for flooding based on
current forecasts. You should monitor later forecasts and be
alert for possible Flood Warnings. Those living in areas prone to
flooding should be prepared to take action should flooding
develop.

First Storm Of The Year

Almost two weeks ago, I stated that there was a pre-season storm to be named the last three years. Make it four because..

We have a new subtropical storm and its name is Alberto. The first storm of the 2018 Atlantic Hurricane Season has formed east of Cancun in a very weak steering environment. That's important because in about a day, it's going to move more to the north and northwest and eventually make landfall in the gulf coast somewhere as a fully tropical storm.


DISCUSSION... At this hour, Alberto is partially tropical and non-tropical. . A tropical cyclone is a warm cyclone with a warm core or mostly wet air all the way around the system. A sub-tropical cyclone is partially tropical and partially non-tropical. The tropical part as you've guessed contains of very heavy rain and moist conditions fueled by the very warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico and a lot of thunderstorm activity is along and to the east of that as shown in the image below.

 The non-tropical portion has an upper level trough of low pressure overhead and what that does is providing dry air a way into the system and that way the cyclone has a really tough time developing or getting lungs so to speak. Tropical cyclones tend to have high pressures overhead them instead of low pressures.

Imagine yourself being a forecaster at the National Hurricane Center and the first part of the forecasting process is to identify the center, that's the easy part of this. Very exposed in the center with just a few clouds in a circular shape.

You'll also notice that almost all the thunderstorms are along and to the east of the center so Cuba, Florida and Georgia are going to get very heavy amounts of rain from this and once again, rain is the primary threat with this. The key messages from the NHC are below.

Right now, an aircraft is en route to the storm and will be back with information regarding Alberto sometime tonight. After that, the computer models that predict storms will have a much more detailed understanding and will be able to produce more accurate forecasts.

FORECAST... For the past three or four days, most of the models take Alberto and put the center between New Orleans and Panama City but remember from the discussion portion that people to the right of where Alberto makes landfall are going to have much greater impacts then to the left. 

Alberto is sitting and spinning right now because there is nothing yet to pick him up and steer to the north but in the next day, Alberto will begin to move to the north and northwest with time. It has about 36 hours after Saturday afternoon with low winds in the atmosphere and moist air to work with to strengthen perhaps. 

Regardless, the odds of Alberto becoming a hurricane are relatively small and all the impacts will be to the east. In order from most to least likely, here are the threats:

Very heavy rain up to 12 inches in spots
Gusty winds, perhaps damaging in the central Gulf Coast
Tornadoes/waterspouts popping up (One or more tornado watches will be issued)
Lightning (Not very common in tropical cyclones)

If the models come to validate, Alberto will be making landfall sometime Monday and will slow down causing heavy rain in the southeast.

Update tomorrow.