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Category Archives: Tropical
What is the hurricane cone of uncertainty?
Starting in the 1950s and up until the 1980s, meteorologists forecast the path of hurricanes using statistical prediction based on past data and current climatological data.
Today, weather computer models are primarily used for the forecasting. Continue reading
Category: Meteorology, Severe Weather, Tropical
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Can we modify hurricanes?
There have been several suggestions on how humans might modify the intensity or path of a hurricane.
One method suggested was to change the “energy budget” of the environment around the storm. It was suggested that this could be done by dispersing, from aircraft, carbon soot. That soot would absorb solar energy and warm the atmosphere, which would enhance the evaporation of ocean water and promote the formation of thunderstorms. Continue reading
What is warm rain?
Warm rain results from the joining together of a cloud’s liquid water droplets. For the rain to be warm, temperatures throughout the cloud must be above freezing, so ice particles are absent.
Rainmaking is not easy. A single, small raindrop is a collection of about 1 million cloud droplets. A typical cloud droplet is usually 10 times smaller than the periods in this article. Continue reading
Why are there so few hurricanes every year?
We are about five weeks away from the climatological peak of the hurricane season, which stretches from early June to November.
During that period, even in a particularly active year, not many hurricanes actually develop. Forming over tropical oceans ensures that warm sea-surface temperature (SST) provides a mature hurricane with a means to warm and moisten the air that flows toward the important eye-wall convection. Thus, it is not surprising that hurricanes struggle to develop if the SST is not 79.7 degrees or warmer. Continue reading
How accurate was the forecast for Hurricane Michael?
Five days in advance of Hurricane Michael’s landfall, the National Hurricane Center forecast showed the storm making landfall near Mexico Beach, Florida, with 80 mph winds, just above Category 1 hurricane force.
As we all know by now, the storm lashed the coast with winds in the 155-mph range, or strong Category 4 intensity. Continue reading
Category: Severe Weather, Tropical, Weather Dangers
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