Tag Archives: Tropical

How’s the hurricane season looking?

Hurricane season runs from June 1 through Nov. 30. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been making seasonal forecasts for about the last decade. Their Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook for this year indicates there is a 70 percent likelihood of having 13 to 20 named storms, of which seven to 11 could become hurricanes, including three to six major hurricanes. Continue reading

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What can we learn from Hurricane Sandy?

Nearly a week after Hurricane Sandy struck the Mid-Atlantic coast of the United States, the affected region is still reeling from the shock. This really was an unprecedented storm in the truest sense of that word.

Among the amazing aspects of the event was the extraordinarily accurate and early forecasting of the storm. Numerical forecast models were latching on to the correct scenario, including the unusual and rapid leftward turn off the Mid-Atlantic coast, as early as five to seven days before the event (depending on the particular model in question). Continue reading

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What is the source of energy for hurricanes?

Hurricanes are large weather engines, and any engine needs energy to run.

The secret energy source of a hurricane is the large latent heat of water. Air over the tropical oceans is drier than you might think. Although both the air and water may be warm and calm, evaporation can take place because the air is not at 100 percent relative humidity. Continue reading

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When does Hurricane Season begin?

The Atlantic hurricane season officially began Friday, although there already has been some tropical cyclone activity in the Atlantic this season.

Throughout much of last week, the Southeast dealt with Tropical Storm Beryl. Typical for early season storms, Beryl was not very well organized and did not pose the kind of threat storms can later in the season. Continue reading

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Do the tropics influence the weather in Madison?

It may seem implausible at first glance, but current research in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at UW-Madison is exploring connections between tropical cyclones (hurricanes) near the Philippines and extreme weather events in southern Wisconsin. Continue reading

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