Christine Hudnall

Can you believe the weather recently?

While winter storms, snow, tornadoes, hail, wind and whatnot have been keeping some in the U.S. busy, down in the Caribbean, the Cayman Islands, Jamaica, and Cuba had to worry about Hurricane Paloma, a very powerful Hurricane Paloma at that. And a 6.5 magnitude earthquake struck in northwest China, in the remote Qinghai provence. The China Earthquake Administration confirmed the quake, but said that according to their scales, it was a 6.3 mag quake. As of this posting, I still found no information on if there were any casualties or what kind of damages, so, because this was a remote area, let us hope that there were none. Wouldn’t that be awesome. On a side note, just in the last 7 days, the Puerto Rico region has been highly active coming in with unofficial count of 102 earthquakes! That is not including the Virgin Islands region, nor the Dominican Republic region, but just what is listed for the Puerto Rico region. Holy Cow!

On Wednesday, November 5th, Tropical Depression SEVENTEEN formed near Honduras and Nicaragua. As of the 4:00AM advisory issued by the National Hurricane Center for November 6th, SEVENTEEN, was now Tropical Storm Paloma and the Cayman Islands were already being told to keep monitoring the storm. From the 7:00PM intermediate advisory, Tropical Storm Paloma is now Hurricane Paloma and had now started her predicted turn to the north, instead of north-northwest. Hurricane warnings were now in effect for the Caymans, with Cuba and Jamaica monitoring closely.

As of 7:00AM, on Friday, November 7th, hurricane watches were issued for some provinces in Cuba, as the Cayman Islands braced for Paloma to arrive sometime late Friday night or Saturday. She was still a category 1 storm, with strengthening likely to happen, bringing her to category 2, possibly even 3.

At the 4:00PM update, Paloma was a category 2 hurricane and already starting to lash her winds over Grand Cayman. The government of Cuba upgraded the hurricane watches to hurricane warnings for the provinces of Sancti Spiritus, Ciego de Avila, Camaguey and Las Tunas. She was now heading north-northeast, having finally made her turn sometime between 10:00AM and 1:00PM. At the 7:00PM update, Paloma was upgraded to a category 3 hurricane, which is a major hurricane, listed with a damage level of extensive.

On the 10:00PM update (still Friday!), the first thing the update starts off with is:

…MAJOR HURRICANE PALOMA LASHING GRAND CAYMAN WITH STRONG WINDS AND HEAVY RAINS…
…NOW HEADING TOWARD LITTLE CAYMAN AND CAYMAN BRAC…

… she is now heading northeast and was expected to either pass near or over Little Cayman and Cayman Brac.

Image link will take you to the full image
Hurricane Paloma eyewall right next to (if not on it) Cayman Brac island.

Saturday, November 8th, the National Hurricane Center issued an update at 5:08AM - Paloma was now an extremely dangerous category 4 hurricane, with sustained winds now at 135mph. By 7:00AM winds had increased to 140mph and Paloma was just southeast of Cayman Brac. Some warnings were discontinued and added others as she headed toward Cuba.

At the 4:00PM update, winds had increased to 145mph and she was about 75 miles south-southwest of Camaguey, Cuba and headed toward the south-central coast of Cuba, expected to emerge in the Atlantic sometime late Sunday.

At 6:20PM the National Hurricane Center sent out the following update:

AT APPROXIMATELY 620 PM EST…2320 UTC…HIGH-RESOLUTION GOES SATELLITE DATA AND A RECENT POSITION FIX FROM AN AIR FORCE RESERVE UNIT HURRICANE HUNTER AIRCRAFT…PLUS SURFACE OBSERVATIONS AND RADAR DATA FROM CUBA…INDICATE THAT MAJOR HURRICANE PALOMA LIKELY MADE LANDFALL NEAR SANTA CRUZ DEL SUR CUBA AS A STRONG CATEGORY 3 HURRICANE WITH MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS NEAR 125 MPH…200 KM/HR.

… yes, you read that correctly, according to the update she had weakened a little before she made landfall, but I’m sure that the people that were dealing with it were not saying, whew, that was close, at least it wasn’t a cat 4! No, when going through a major hurricane, that 20 miles per hour difference is negligible to how you perceive it. Damage wise, well, and remember I am absolutely no expert, but as far as I can tell, from past experience, the damage would be about the same. I know, there are those out there who are far more knowledgeable than I am who are saying it makes a big difference, but I haven’t seen a lot of difference for 20mph. That is just my opinion, for what it is worth. (It is interesting to note however, that according to several news sources online that I found, they say that per the NHC Paloma was still a category 4 when she made landfall near Santa Cruz del Sur. Just Google: news hurricane Paloma landfall Cuba. Yes, I know, I just finished saying earlier the difference doesn’t matter all that much when going through it, just thought it was interesting, that’s all.)

As of 10:00PM last night (Sunday), parts of Paloma were still over Cuba, but had weakened during the day back down to a tropical depression with sustained winds around 30mph, with the final remnants expected to emerge from the north coast of Cuba, sometime during the night/this morning. Still not a lot of information at this time coming out of Cuba, but that is to be expected, I’m sure that everything is still being assessed and from what I read a major communications tower was toppled.

You can read about the damages and recovery efforts for the Cayman Islands at the Cayman Net News Online. From what I read, anywhere between 75 - 95% of homes and businesses have been damaged, with some being completely devastated, depending on which article you read.

My thoughts and prayers are with all that have gone through Paloma and will have to face the recovery part, especially those in Cuba, as they are still trying to recover from Hurricane’s Gustav and Ike, which hit in August and September of this year. And always to those here in the U.S. as you recover from all of your crazy weather happenings.

Wow, this post is so long, so I won’t talk much more, but did want to share a new feature that has been implemented. I sort of wrote about it already, but did not have it working quite like it should. Well, I tweaked a little here and there, and ‘think’ that I have it as far as I can get it.

What is it you might be wondering, well, it is called live-comments-preview. What it does is exactly what it says, it shows you live, as you type, what your comment will look like! And, for those that have gravatars, it is supposed to include your gravatar in the comment. On that part I cannot comment, since I do not have one, so, for myself and those without, we will just have to be content with just our names. Oh the horrors! ;-)

Live Comment Preview Plugin

It is a plugin that works with Wordpress, I do not think that other programs can use it, but you can always ask Brad, he added the gravatar support and fixed some bugs, and is now continuing the development of it.

Go ahead and test it out - just don’t get too scared. The colors and font-size, etc. while adding comment in preview, are strictly just for the preview. It will look a little different once you submit the comment.

To my thinking, it is easier with the live preview, since there is no scrolling back in the text-box, you can immediately see if you made a typo, well, that is if you know how to spell to start with. :-D

I hope that you like it and will make use of it, and if you use WP, go and grab it from the plugin page listed above.

Enjoy - have fun - and have a great day!

Cumulonimbus storm clouds over Highlands and Okeechobee Counties, Florida

It all started the week before last when I dragged my Mom out storm chasing with me. I was not able to get any structural shots of the storms, but I was able to get some cloud shots. We drove down some roads that we probably should not have and browsed on some that we look forward to going back to. We missed the hail in one storm we went through, and got caught in rain so thick in another that we had to turn around and find a different route.

There is one not so pleasant thing about chasing around my neck of the woods, it is not always easy finding roads that go where you need them to. Take east-west for instance, we can go south to 98 or 70 or north to 60 if we want to go east / 64 if we want to go west, but there are not other roads that take you all the way. And some of the back roads, well, I wouldn’t want to break down on them, especially not if Baby Firefly or any of her family could be around. ;)

Down in the tropics we had been watching some waves, some low pressure areas, a couple not doing much except dumping rain where they do not need any more rain, but others a little more persistent and turning into Tropical Storm Nana, Hurricane Omar and Tropical Depression Sixteen.

Cumulonimbus storm clouds over Highlands and Okeechobee Counties, Florida

Family wise, the one we were watching was Omar. A week ago this past Thursday we got a phone call from one of my cousins, her and her husband would be stopping the next day on their way down to Fort Lauderdale, to catch a cruise ship. Would just be stopping for late lunch/early dinner type thing. Where they were headed, in case you haven’t guessed it by now, is the Caribbean. Have a wonderful time, but keep your eyes on tropics, especially the area right below Puerto Rico and the islands. (My mom was able to meet them at Olive Garden, but unfortunately I wasn’t able, which stinks, it has been I think, 3 or 4 years! But I sent info about storms with Mom and of course, sent them newest updates as well as link to the National Hurricane Center.)

Of course, I went online and found the destination map for their cruise and what do we see, they are supposed to be heading to St. Thomas and St. Maarten as part of their stops. Sent off an e-mail on Monday, the 13th, not knowing if they would be able to read it (turns out yes, but no replies because it cost a small fortune to do e-mail on board they found out).

TD Nana is the one between Africa and Lesser Antilles - moving W-NW @ 7mph. TD Fifteen (if it keeps up - soon to be TS Omar) - is the one that is causing problems over the islands right now. It is below PR, but is causing Flash Flood Warnings since yesterday - moving NW @ 2mph (it is just drifting as of right now).

I read the map again of where they are heading and what stops, for how long, etc., and see now that they should have left one island and heading toward St. Maarten, I switch over to the Hurricane Center site, then pull up the satellite loop. Hmmm, it is now Tuesday, and TD 15, has not only become Tropical Storm Omar, but surpassed it turning into Hurricane Omar. Luckily their ship has a bridge cam, so of course we would check it, and finally, it showed that they had turned around and were heading to Grand Turk, which was on their list, but as last stop before heading home. (Stop by Dewdrop’s blog and you can see all the satellite images that she grabbed and I forgot to as I was watching - Duh!)

Thankfully Hurricane Omar buzzed right by the islands on a course for the Atlantic, could almost hear the sigh of relief from those that live in the Caribbean as it squeezed on by. So, off I go to look at the bridge cam again and now they have them down at Ocho Rios, Jamaica. So, I go and look at the satellite loop again, gee, isn’t that Tropical Depression Sixteen sitting out there? It really did make me wonder about who makes the decisions as to change course on the ship, when I next saw that they were over at Grand Cayman.

Here is what my cousin had to say about the cruise, in e-mail to me before reaching home:

Cost a small fortune to do email on board! So Frank paid bills, and I stayed off the computer. LOL!

All is well. We disembarked this morning about 9:30 and are now about 50 miles south of Savannah.

Cruise was great. We changed course (a very smart move!) just south of the Turks and Caicos as our itinerary had us heading straight for St. Thomas and St. Maarten - right into the storm. We were supposed to visit those two islands, then circle around and visit Grand Turk on our way back to Florida. Things got a bit bumpy (not real bad, we just all looked drunk as we tried to walk - LOL!) before the powers that be granted us permission to change course to avoid Omar. (duh)

We headed back to Grand Turk and made that our next island. (Our first was Princess Cays - a very small island on the southern tip of Eleuthera, owned by the Princess Cruise Lines.) Grand Turk was a lovely beach, small shopping area, but only 4 hours because of our change in itinerary made our stay all too short.

Next we visited Ocho Rios in Jamaica. Crowded. Seedy. Overrun with people hawking anything and everything. We hadn’t scheduled a tour (as we weren’t prepared for that island) so stayed close to port. Margaritaville does serve the best margaritas that I’d ever had, so the island wasn’t a total loss! Actually, we’d like to go back - perhaps only once - but to book a tour to see what else the island has to offer. We may be disappointed, but I’d hate to base an opinion on what little we saw.

Then on to Grand Cayman…. LOTS of shops - too many to visit with as hot and humid as it was that day. We did “go to Hell” and found they didn’t even have hand baskets! But the coral there looks like cypress knees sticking out of the water. Blacker than the ace of spades, but white inside where it has broken off. Definitely not lava, as lava is black in its entirety. I did take pictures and will post as soon as I have a little more time. We also went to the Tortuga Rum factory. Never had flavored rum before but it was delicious. Will definitely add it to our holiday stash.

We left Grand Cayman about 6 pm Friday, and arrived back in Ft. Lauderdale at 6 am Sunday. Saturday was just a nice relaxing day at sea - or it should have been if we’d not had to have our suitcases packed and outside of our room by 6 pm - BEFORE we went to dinner! Yikes!

Yes, I was busy keeping up with the storms, but also, worrying about Dewdrop (see link above), because she had a procedure done on her back, but there had been no relief yet, even after she finally started to rest. So, of course she has been on my mind and in my prayers. And then one of my sisters decided to drop by for a mini vacation and as I’m trying desparately to get out a blog post (this one) that I started back on the 9th of October, I am waylaid once again.

Between family, storms and things not working like I wanted them to inside the blog, this post is now coming to you today, 12 days after I started it! Gee, could I get any slower.

And for those that have looked and kept seeing a locked post (passworded), this is the post, nothing secretive, just wasn’t ready to be seen by all. Happy now Chris?! ;-)

Updated: 12:06AM - 093008 - added image by James Reynolds of TyphoonFury below.

The tropics and Atlantic have been busy, as well as the Pacific - so get ready for a long post!

Let’s start in the West Pacific where they have been getting hit hard by storm after storm. The latest to hit was Super Typhoon Jangmi, which is now listed as a Severe Tropical Storm. There is also Tropical Storm Mekkhala and Tropical Depression Twenty-one out there too.

Just yesterday (can that really be?) Tropical Storm Jangmi was Super Typhoon Jangmi, that by Atlantic Basin standards had gotten up to Category 4, with 155 mph winds. (Do typhoons get rated the same as hurricanes - hmmm, something to look up and learn!) It crossed over Taiwan, north of Hualien. It is now back over water, and according to the history on Wunderground, after it became a tropical storm, it actually hit category 1 again, before going back to tropical storm. Scroll down and look at the coordinates. Nothing is showing that it will return to a typhoon again, but I do wonder, since it is headed back toward warmer waters. Click on the satellite image to get larger image.

Then there is Tropical Storm Mekkhala - forecast is not showing that Mekkhala will become a typhoon before landfall, latest information is showing winds at 45mph. With the high sst’s, it might just pick up a little more, we shall keep watching.

Also worth watching is newly formed Tropical Depression Twenty-one (TD 21) - located at 8.7N 131.6E, winds at 30mph.

The following section has been updated.

Want to know and see more about our hurricane cousins, typhoons, then head over to TyphoonFury, website of James Reynolds. With luck, I will update this post later with small image that James took of surge coming into Hualein harbor. Absolutely amazing! Just am waiting to hear back if I have permission or not. Keep your fingers crossed. Received reply back from James, he is such a sweetie!

Hi Christine.

Thanks for the email. Please feel free to download that pic and any other and put it on your website and thanks for offering to link the image too! I love your website, it great to see typhoons being featured.

Take care and if there’s anything else I can help you with please let me know.

Cheers,

James.

Isn’t that the nicest! First, thanks for looking, and second thanks for saying yes! :) Will only use the one image for now, but people should absolutely go and look at the video - amazing! YouTube video by James of Super Typhoon Jangmi. All copyrights and usage terms belong to James for his image, all his rights are reserved. I asked and received permission to use, you need to do the same.

Onto the Atlantic:

I haven’t posted anything but honestly we did have a Hurricane Kyle out there, he is now post-tropical according to Environment Canada, which is where he is right now. From looking at satellite image, if he had a center, it would be located over Anticosti Island in Southern Quebec. Kyle had just weakened to a tropical storm as he made landfall last night at 9:30PM, just north of Yarmouth, Nova Scotia.

Sub-tropical Storm Laura is located, as of 5:00AM, at 37.2N 47.3W, winds at 60mph. From satellite images, she looks to be heading WNW, but is forecast to start her turn toward the north east. It will be interesting to see if she will be upgraded sometime today, even as she is heading toward cooler waters.

Here on the homefront we are listed at 70% of showers likely for today with 40% 50% (I just love when they change it while typing) chance for thunderstorms tonight. Would it be wrong to say, please, please, please - I need more lightning shots! :-D

Okay, now for some kudos to go out. Dewdrop has been giving out awards on her site to others, myself included in the receiving. Well, I figured it was my turn to give out some, even if noone reads my blog, but for the Dew. I stand corrected, not only does the Dew read it, but the Milkman does too! ;-)*laughs* That’s okay, I read other sites and I have listed 5 that have helped me or inspired me. That’s not to say that many others don’t, I just had to narrow it down and 5 was a nice number. :D

I won’t repeat the list here, but will send you to the newly formed Kudos page, located in the top links of the blog. Don’t want to scroll all the way back up, that is okay, I wouldn’t either, so here you go, a handy-dandy quick link to the Kudos page.

Was talking with one of my sisters, who still lives down in Homestead, and it got me to thinking. We’ve talked at least once a day (or every other day) since the start of Hurricane Ike, back when he first formed into depression on September 1st. (Can it really only be 5 days ago?!) We both said, he needs watching. Later that day he was Tropical Storm Ike and we watched as he gathered strength and two days later he was renamed Hurricane Ike.

Well, Ike continues to gather strength and is a major hurricane. Sure he has lost some strength as he went along, and then regained it adding more, which is all a normal part of the eyewall replacement cycle, which is a naturally occuring phenom in intense cyclones, that was discovered during the U.S. Government’s hurricane modification experiment called Project STORMFURY.

I was going to discuss a little bit about Project STORMFURY and the effects of seeding hurricanes and clouds, but have decided not to and just close with, we can try an mess with Mother Nature, but it will bite us in the butt in the long run. Leave nature alone, we’ve messed with it enough over the years.

To get back to topic, my family are Hurricane Andrew survivors, yes, we’ve been through other hurricanes, some major ones, but they always get compared to Andrew. And so far (thankfully) none have surpassed him. So, we take watching the tropics seriously and getting as prepared as we can, seriously.

Now, when Andrew came through, my youngest nephew was just a couple of months over two years old. And he has been through some since then too, but with Ike, my sister was telling me, he is getting concerned. The others it was, yeah get prepared, but we’ll be okay. Not this one.

So, what is so different about Ike that has people, in the words of my now teenaged nephew “going friggin crazy”?

Could it be that the shear compact strength of him and not to mention the looks are very reminescent of Andrew? Are people having déjà vu? I know for me personally, sure, I watch hurricanes come and go on radar, satellite and in my different weather programs, and like to go out and feel the power of them, but with Ike, I have been watching closer. So, am I under the same influence as others are? Is that why my heart beats just a little harder whenever I look at Ike?

Hurricane Andrew was basically a bomb that exploded over our area. NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML) states it best in their FAQ’s page on Hurricanes, Typhoons and Tropical Cyclones, and someone asked “Why don’t we try to destroy tropical cyclones by ___ (fill in the blank)“.

For example, when Hurricane Andrew struck South Florida in 1992, the eye and eyewall devastated a swath 20 miles wide. The heat energy released around the eye was 5,000 times the combined heat and electrical power generation of the Turkey Point nuclear power plant over which the eye passed. The kinetic energy of the wind at any instant was equivalent to that released by a nuclear warhead.

Thank you AOML - those of us that lived through it have been saying it all along.

Be prepared, keep watch, be safe, but don’t “go friggin crazy”. Remember what happened, but don’t let it rule you, there is still a whole lot of changing in a cyclone that can happen, namely, direction.

Newest coords:

REPEATING THE 1100 PM AST POSITION…21.2 N…70.9 W. MOVEMENT
TOWARD…WEST-SOUTHWEST NEAR 15 MPH. MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS…135
MPH. MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE…947 MB.

Re-analysis Project - The upgrading of Hurricane Andrew

Whew! Have been so busy haven’t had time to update, let alone really talk to anyone, so thought I would share some useful, if not just pretty neat, Google Earth stuff that I’ve located that pertains to weather. I’ve also included the FEMA GE flood stuff that I found because living in Florida, this is a need to know thing! :-)

They are listed in no particular order, I will add on to them as I find them. Also, some of these are to the respective pages that I found the information on - so that credit goes where it should - for those files that are the actual .kmz or .kml, it was only because either I don’t remember where I found them or they were given to me from someone else. After a couple of days this post will go up into the ‘Latest News’ section - for easy finding.

• http://tropicalatlantic.com - Info about Atlantic Hurricanes: Hurricane Recon (super cool), Tropical Overlays (plots, models, etc.)
• http://www.msc.fema.gov/ - FEMA - National Flood Hazard Layer - look for Google Earth link on right side list. If you think you are in flood area, you can check it here.
• Sunlight , Cloud Cover, Temperatures & Low Level Winds.kmz - I think I got this from Google Earth Community. Go on, it’s a good place to look, they have some great stuff.