The latest post from Dr. Jeff Masters has an alarming title — "Bahamas tropical disturbance a threat to the Gulf of Mexico" — but it sounds like he suspects Proto-Noel won’t amount to much:

Any storm that forms is forecast to move west-northwestward across the
Gulf of Mexico, pushed by a strong ridge of high pressure expected to
build in. An upper-level anticyclone aloft is expected to develop as
well, providing an environment favorable for intensification. However,
intensification will be slowed by the presence of all the dry air
dragged into the Gulf of Mexico by the upper low, and by the transition
of the storm from subtropical to tropical. The models project a
landfall in Texas or Louisiana on Friday or Saturday. The Hurricane
Hunters are on call to fly into this system Tuesday afternoon, if
necessary.

On the other hand, we’ve been reminded by Humberto and Lorenzo — in case we’d forgotten from 2005 — that tropical systems in the Gulf of Mexico will sometimes take full advantage of even the tiniest window of opportunity to intensify. And Friday/Saturday is a long way off. So Proto-Noel (which is just a mass of thunderstorms with a weak surface rotation at this point, not even a Tropical or Subtropical Depression yet) certainly bears watching. Jeff Gammons has more on it.

Meanwhile, Brian Neudorff is blogging about La Niña. The arrival of La Niña (which, as I’m sure Chris Farley would agree, is Spanish for "the Niña") could herald a busy hurricane season next year. I know, I know, you’ve heard that one before — but even storm-count skeptic Alan Sullivan writes: "If La Nina persists through 2008, next year could be a bad one for hurricanes."

Then again, this year may retroactively turn out to have had one more hurricane than we currently think. Max Mayfield says Tropical Storm Karen may be reclassified as a hurricane when the NHC takes a fresh look at the data after the season. Speaking of Karen, Bob King celebrates her demise, but tries not to get too cocky about it:

Two years ago, I was way too quick
to gloat over the demise of Tropical Depression 10. But some of 10’s
remnants later became Tropical Depression 12, which then grew into
Hurricane Katrina, and we all know how that turned out. Hence my
ironclad rule: Don’t taunt the hurricanes!

So I’ll just settle for this: Oh ghost of Karen, would you terribly mind not coming back? Pretty please?

Another tropical storm, Melissa, has come and gone this weekend while I’ve been too busy blogging about college football to pay attention to the tropics. Also since my last update, Lorenzo has made landfall and died over Mexico, and Karen has petered out over the Atlantic. Alan Sullivan explains:

This season is just plain strange: it has brought an exceptional number of duds. Evidently long-range forecasters like Dr. Gray were half-right. Preconditions for a real storm-fest were present, but tropical systems have been snuffed by unusual upper winds that I began to notice in May. Only Dean and Felix escaped, running straight west at very low latitude.

Sullivan also thinks the National Hurricane Center is “getting sensitive to blogosphere charges of count-padding.” He notes a line in the discussion from when Karen was designated that he interprets as meaning, effectively, “Hey, guys, we didn’t even want to name this one, so back off.”

Hurricane Lorenzo is about to make landfall along the central Mexican Gulf coast. If you don’t remember hearing me mention Lorenzo before on the blog, that’s because I haven’t: like Humberto before him, Lorenzo blew up very quickly, from a tropical depression as late as 11:00 AM today to a hurricane as of 8:00 PM. Now he’s at 80 mph, and some additional slight strengthening is possible before landfall in the next few hours.

Meanwhile, out in the middle of the Atlantic is Tropical Storm Karen, struggling with wind shear and currently no threat to land. That could change eventually, but it’s very hard to say at this point. Alan Sullivan writes: “If conditions were right, this would have been a mighty hurricane. As it is, we will see a feeble, sputtering tropical storm headed slowly northwest then west for days to come. The GFS model keeps Karen alive long enough to recover strength off the East Coast, recurve, and pass just off Cape Cod as a sizeable hurricane.” That’s just one computer model, though, and it’s trying to predict something a long way off (like ~10 days), so take it with several buckets full of salt.

Those crazy liberal Al Gore-worshipping nutjobs in the Bush White House are officially on the global-warming bandwagon.

Also, I am officially a bad person for categorizing this post under “Weather.” It’s climate, not weather, you moron!  Yeah, but I don’t have a “climate” category…

Tropical Storm Karen, which I first blogged about yesterday, has strengthened to 50 mph and is expected to become a minimal hurricane tomorrow before weakening due to increased shear. Karen appears to be no threat to land. Meanwhile, Tropical Depression 13 has formed in the Gulf of Mexico. It could become T.S. Lorenzo as it meanders westward toward the Mexican coast, but is unlikely to reach hurricane strength. SciGuy has more.

We’re two weeks past the climatological peak of hurricane season, but still in the “active” part of the season historically, and it looks like things could get a bit more active this week. Dr. Jeff Masters says “three tropical depressions may form by Wedneday in the Atlantic.”

UPDATE: One down, two to go!

MORNING UPDATE: T.D. 12 is now Tropical Storm Karen.

Subtropical Storm Jerry has formed, way out over the Central Atlantic. He is no threat to land.

Once again, Alan Sullivan is unimpressed, declaring Jerry a “marginal designation” and the latest symptom of the National Hurricane Center’s “zeal to pin a name on any storm in the Atlantic Basin.” In an earlier post, he wrote of Jerry’s formation, “Such storms can occur at any season in the North Atlantic. If NHC gets in the habit of designating them, it will be scaring the public with hurricanes in winter.”

Of considerably more potential significance are Invest 94L in the Gulf of Mexico, Invest 97L east of the Lesser Antilles, and Invest 96L way out in the Cape Verde region. Dr. Jeff Masters and Eric Berger have more on 94L; Sullivan has more on 96L and 97L.

Tropical Depression Ten is coming ashore near Fort Walton Beach, Florida. Earlier this afternoon, it made the transition from subtropical to tropical, but it did not, and now almost certainly will not, strengthen into Tropical Storm Jerry. So forget “proto-Jerry” — that will be some other storm, some other time.

Subtropical Depression Ten has formed in the northeastern Gulf of Mexico. It could become "Jerry" as it moves westward toward — gulp — New Orleans.  But it’s very unlikely to become anything serious.  In Eric Berger’s words, "this low-pressure system is running out of time to turn into anything
more than a minimal tropical storm as it moves toward New Orleans. It
seems unlikely to cause significant damage." However, Berger also opines:

The bottom line is that tropical systems are incredibly unpredictable.
Any system in the Gulf is a threat to lots of people because we simply
don’t know, for sure, where the bad weather will go, nor how bad it
will get. It’s possible, although unlikely, that this depression could
pull an Humberto and strike New Orleans as a Category 1 hurricane
tomorrow. Probably not, but we just don’t have the knowledge to
forecast these things with certainty even a day in advance.

For his part, Alan Sullivan is distinctly unimpressed:

You ever heard of [a subtropical depression] before? In the past these systems were (with
some hestitation) given names when and if they got as strong as
tropical storms. This one is a joke. … This is lame, lame, lame. What is happening at NHC? It has become an instrument of alarmism.

The official NHC discussion straightforwardly admits calling this storm a Subtropical Depression "probably strains the definition a bit," given the relative dearth of convection. But they’re designating it anyway "because of the potential for additional development right along the coastline." In other words, for fear of Humberto Part Deux.

Anyway, "lame" or not, Tropical Storm Warnings are up from Apalachicola, Florida west to the mouth of the Mississippi River in Louisiana, including New Orleans and Lake Pontchartrain. But there’s no need to "get the hell out" this time, unless perhaps to "get the hell out…to a convenience store and buy yourself an umbrella." Though even that may not really be necessary, according to Dr. Jeff Masters: "with the storm expected to move inland by Saturday afternoon, it does
not appear [S.T.D. 10] has time to generate the kind of tropical rains that
would make it a serious flood threat."

[UPDATE, Friday morning: Arrrgh, I should know better than to say “nothin’ brewin’ in the tropics” before readin’ what Dr. Jeff Masters has to say on the topic, m’lads! Yesterday, Dr. Masters believed that the system near Florida was a threat to the Gulf Coast, but today he says the threat is diminishing. Arrr! Well, that be good news, at least. Shiver me timbers!]

Ahoy, maties, it be a good day for piratin’, for Calypso has not seen fit to unleash her fury upon the seas, though it be the climatological peak of hurricane season, arr.

Tropical Storm Ingrid — the storm that that the skipper of this here blog was so eager so see named "Humberto," so that it could terrorize stripeys and waisters alike with the fearsome name "Hurricane Humberto" — came to naught, as howlin’ wind shear tore her right apart and sent her to Davy Jones’ Locker on Monday mornin’.  And naught has followed on Ingrid’s heels.  It’s slim’ pickin’s in the latest Tropical Weather Outlook:

FOR THE NORTH ATLANTIC…CARRRRIBBEAN SEA AND THE GULF OF MEXICO…

A WEAK SURFACE LOW PRESSURE AREA ALONG THE FLORIDA EAST COAST AND AN UPPER-LEVEL LOW NEAR THE FLORIDA PENINSULA BE PRODUCIN’ A LARGE AREA OF DISTURBED WEATHER OVER THE WESTERN ATLANTIC…THE CENTRAL AND NORTHWESTERN BAHAMAS…PORTIONS OF THE FLORIDA PENINSULA…AND THE EASTERN GULF MEXICO.  YE LANDLUBBERS IN FLORIDA CAN BE EXPECTIN’ SHOWERS…SQUALLS…AND LOCALLY HEAVY RAINS DURING THE NEXT DAY OR TWO.  YE CAN ALSO BE EXPECTIN’ THE LOW TO MOVE INTO OR REDEVELOP OVER THE EASTERN GULF OF MEXICO DURING THE NEXT DAY OR SO…WHERE A SUBTROPICAL OR TROPICAL CYCLONE COULD FORM.

DISORGANIZED CLOUDINESS AND THUNDERSTORMS EXTENDING FROM NORTH OF THE LEEWARD ISLANDS NORTHEASTWARD FOR NIGH A HUNDRED LEAGUES ARE ASSOCIATED WITH THE REMNANTS OF INGRID AND AN UPPER-LEVEL TROUGH, BUT NEVER FEAR, ME HEARTIES.  UNFAVORABLE UPPER-LEVEL WINDS BE KEEPIN’ INGRID CONFINED TO HER WATERY GRAVE.

ELSEWHERE…YE OUGHT NOT TO BE EXPECTIN’ ANY TROPICAL CYCLONE FORMATION IN THE NEXT 48 HOURS. ARRR.

Walk the plank, Al Gore, you scurvy scum! There be no hurricanes to speak of!

But nay, it still be too early yet to be talkin’ about a less active hurricane season than what we was expectin’.  There be a good five or six weeks yet for Calypso to send more storms our way, and we’d best be watchful!  Keep a weather eye on the horizon satellite images, and don’t be fooled by the calm! She could unleash another Dean or Felix on us, and then we’ll be sorry we rejoiced early, aye!!

Now stop reading this blog and get back to work, you mangy bilge rats!

Since this blog (or at least some incarnation of this blog) largely made its national name during Hurricane Katrina, I thought it might be appropriate to provide my thoughts on the new series on Fox this fall, K-ville.

As you might be able to gather, K-ville is shorthand for Katrinaville, not an affectionate nickname for Knoxville.  The show is set in current day, two years post-Katrina New Orleans.

On the surface, it seems to be your garden-variety cops vs. bad guys drama, focusing primarily on officer Martin Boulet (Anthony Anderson).  Officer Boulet is a resident of the Ninth Ward, where he is the gung-ho leader of the "Let’s Rebuild It" movement.  Unfortunately for him, he seems to be the only one interested.

During Katrina, his partner punked out on him in the middle of crisis, and he’s been twisted because of that, too.  I’m shocked, really.  A cop, with a lot of stress and problems, in a TV series.  How novel.

His new partner Trevor Cobb (Cole Hauser) is an ex-military man from Cincinnati.  Needless to say, this raises red flags with Boulet.  Talk about adding coals to a fire.  Give a man with trust issues someone new that he has to trust and let’s see what happens.

The initial story in the pilot is one that isn’t exactly new, either.  Evil corporate types trying to keep the Ninth Ward from actually being built back, so they can profit from the cheap prices on the dirt.

From a cinematographic perspective, the show looks a lot like Blackhawk Down or Syriana, with a gritty, grainy quality that makes it truly seem like a battlefield.  The scenes of NOLA in the show are clearly focused on the destruction from Katrina that remains uncleared.   

There are a number of opportunities to take jabs at FEMA et al., and in that way it ham-handedly makes its political statement.  This, like so much of K-ville, seems very forced and contrived.  I know it’s a work of fiction, but it just tries too damn hard to get to where it’s going for my taste.

Lots of shoot-em-up scenes, interspersed with post-Katrina wreckage,
capped off with the personal trials of Boulet, pretty much takes the
whole hour.  It could be an OK cop drama, but I don’t know that it’s going to hang around long enough to evolve into something really good.

Overall, it’s something like a C+ at best. 

Tropical Depression Eight, the storm I wanted to be Humberto, has finally earned the name Ingrid, strengthening to minimal tropical storm status as of 11:00 PM. It lost the “race” by a whopping 33 hours.

Ingrid will probably strengthen slightly in the next day or so, but after that, there’s a lot of wind shear in the storm’s path, so weakening is likely; indeed, Ingrid may be “completely torn apart” before she can ever amount to much of anything.

Meanwhile Humberto, the storm I wanted to be Ingrid — because I anticipated it being an “unexciting storm” that I didn’t want a “great name” like Humberto to be “wasted on” — turned out to be anything but “unexciting.” On the contrary, it was historic. Cue Forecaster Franklin’s 11:00 AM discussion about Humberto’s unexpected rapid strengthening:

BASED ON OPERATIONAL ESTIMATES…HUMBERTO STRENGTHENED FROM A 30 KT DEPRESSION AT [11:00 AM] YESTERDAY TO A 75 KT HURRICANE AT [5:00 AM] THIS MORNING…AN INCREASE OF 45 KT IN 18 HOURS. TO PUT THIS DEVELOPMENT IN PERSPECTIVE…NO TROPICAL CYCLONE IN THE HISTORICAL RECORD HAS EVER REACHED THIS INTENSITY AT A FASTER RATE NEAR LANDFALL. IT WOULD BE NICE TO KNOW…SOMEDAY…WHY THIS HAPPENED.

Eric Berger says Franklin’s comment is humbling, a reminder that “we understand relatively little about the fundamental physics of hurricanes despite the avalanche of data we collect about them.” Alan Sullivan, for his part, has a theory about what happened. And Dr. Jeff Masters says we were lucky: “If Humberto had had another 12-24 hours over water, it could have been a major hurricane that would have hit without enough time to evacuate those at risk.”

P.S. Brian Neudorff has a whole post about this issue. In it, he quotes AccuWeather’s Joe Bastardi, who seems to think the apparently rapid wind increase is more a result of measurement inaccuracy than anything else, and who concludes, “The true measure of increase in energy was the 15 mb pressure drop from 1001 to 986 in only 12 hours … This is not that astounding at all in a developing system.” Neudorff also quotes former NHC director Max Mayfield, who writes on his blog:

National Hurricane Center forecasters have repeatedly stated that one of their greatest concerns is intensity forecasting. This has been listed as the No. 1 priority to the research community for years. Humberto’s rapid and unexpected strengthening is an example of the need for improved guidance on intensity forecasting. None of the models used as guidance by the NHC indicated such rapid strengthening. …

One hates to think about the impacts if people had gone to bed expecting a Category 1 and ended up experiencing a Category 3 or higher hurricane. Without improved intensity guidance, one of these days this will happen and the result will be devastating.

P.P.S. In another post, Neudorff notes that Ingrid’s formation means 2007 has tied 2006’s named-storm total… and we only just passed the climatological peak on the season on Monday.

It’s official! Against all odds, Humberto has managed to become a hurricane and, if you will, earn his alliterative stripes. So Texas is about to experience the first U.S. hurricane landfall of the 2007 season — indeed, the first since Wilma in 2005 — and it’s from a hurricane with a cool-sounding name, to boot.

Here’s the live radar view.

Now watch, T.D. Eight will never actually become a hurricane, and my "race for Humberto" post will look utterly foolish.

UPDATE: Humberto made landfall at 3:00 AM EDT as a Category 1 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 85 mph, all confined to the north side of the eyewall. Here’s a radar image of the storm making landfall, and you can clearly see that strong north side where the hurricane-force winds were occurring:

Here’s an archived animated radar loop of Humberto coming ashore. And here’s the current radar loop.

P.S. I wrote yesterday that "’Hurricane Humberto’ has a certain ring to it, like ‘Hurricane Hugo,’" but I neglected to mention — because I had forgotten — that "Humberto" is in fact the replacement for "Hugo" on list of hurricane names, which rotates every six years.

The name "Hugo" was retired after the devastating 1989 hurricane, which was the first and only storm to bear that name. It was replaced on the list by "Humberto," and in 1995, the first Hurricane Humberto formed, becoming the basis for my Spanish-class name but otherwise remaining rather unmemorable, as it strengthened to Category 2 status but remained out at sea, never threatening land. The second Hurricane Humberto, in 2001, was also a Cat. 2 "swimmer." So this is the third (and weakest) "Humberto," but the first to make landfall. Hopefully it won’t cause enough damage to be retired, and we’ll have another "Humberto" in 2013.

The next name on this year’s list, Ingrid, is a replacement for the retired "Iris."

It appears that Tropical Storm Humberto is bound and determined to erode my undeserved reputation as a clairvoyant hurricane prognosticator. :) Less than 12 hours ago, before Humberto had a name, I confidently wrote that “the Gulf system will never become a hurricane.” Once it got the name “Humberto” (rather than “Ingrid,” which it would have been named if Tropical Depression Eight in the Central Atlantic had become a tropical storm first), I lamented the fact that there would be no alliterative “Hurricane Humberto”: it was, I said, “a great name wasted on an unexciting storm.”

Well, think again, Katrina Boy! Humberto has put on an impressive burst of intensification, and its winds are now up to 65 mph as it approaches the Texas coast. Hurricane strength starts at 74 mph. Humberto’s probably got one more NHC advisory over open water (2:00 AM), and will probably just be making landfall around the time of the 5:00 AM advisory. Will it get to be a hurricane for, er, three hours or so? Maybe:

SOME ADDITIONAL STRENGTHENING COULD OCCUR BEFORE THE CENTER MAKES LANDFALL EARLY ON THURSDAY…AND WINDS COULD BE APPROACHING HURRICANE FORCE OVER A SMALL AREA NEAR HUMBERTO’S CENTER WHEN IT REACHES THE COAST.

It doesn’t really matter, though. Humberto’s main threat will be flooding rains. Eric Berger looks at the sitaution in already-saturated Texas.

Meanwhile, proto-Ingrid (a.k.a. the aforementioned T.D. Eight) is not strengthening yet. But Alan Sullivan is continuing to worry.

At 11:00 AM EDT, the National Hurricane Center designated not one but two tropical depressions: T.D. Eight in the Central Atlantic, 1,130 miles east of the Lesser Antilles, and T.D. Nine in the Gulf of Mexico, 85 miles SSW of Galveston. (Given the simultaneous designations, I don’t know how they decided which would be #8 and which would be #9.)

Now the race is on: which T.D. will become Tropical Storm Humberto, and which will become Tropical Storm Ingrid? (Assuming, of course, that T.D. 9 actually reaches T.S. status before landfall, which is not a given. But the forecast says it will: Tropical Storm Warnings are up along the Texas and Louisiana coastlines.) This question is of special significance to me, since my "Español name" in Mrs. Betters’s freshman-year Spanish class at Newington High School — picked during the then-record-setting 1995 hurricane season, two full hurricane name cycles ago — was "Humberto." (There’s no Spanish-language equivalent for "Brendan," so I picked the name of the hurricane, which was active on the first day of school.)

Personally, I’m rooting for Eight to become Humberto and Nine to become Ingrid. "Hurricane Humberto" has a certain ring to it, like "Hurricane Hugo" — and the Gulf system will never become a hurricane and will make landfall within 24 hours, whereas we’ll be most likely hearing about the Central Atlantic system for a good week or two.

So, where are these storms going? T.D. Nine "will drift ashore before it can turn into anything worse than a weak tropical storm," but after landfall its track (or the track of its remnants) is uncertain, and it could create a "serious flooding event" for Texas.

As for T.D. Eight, it’s "far too early to say whether the storm will affect the United States" — but Alan Sullivan, who is in vacation while a friend watches his boat in south Florida, is worried:

It seems less likely that the atmosphere will sustain continuous westward movement through the whole length of the Caribbean, as it did for Dean and Felix. The present slow motion is indicative of a trickier forecast. The season is getting more advanced. Frost in Fargo, ten days early! The storm, whatever name it gets, will take a more northerly track. Will it run Yucatan Channel into the Gulf? Will it cross the Greater Antilles to threaten South Florida, Carolinas, even New England? An island crossing means a weaker storm, at least for awhile. Or will it wobble WNW enough to stay in the Atlantic and approach Florida via the Bahamas? This is the course I fear most. Models mostly do aim this storm NE of Puerto Rico. Historically, Florida’s worst hurricanes have come westward from the open Atlantic. (Wilma was a freakish exception.) I shall breathe easier if this system gets into the Caribbean.

The other big question is how much Eight (proto-Humberto? domo arigato…) will strengthen, and how fast. Cue Eric Berger again:

This system should continue passing across warm seas and is under low wind shear right now, so there’s no reason to believe it won’t develop further.

How much? The models aren’t as aggressive strengthening this system as they have been with other storms this year, such as Dean and Felix. Why? Because this wave — probably a tropical storm by week’s end — is forecast to move under 25 mph or greater wind shear by Friday or Saturday, which will give it a very hard time.

Still, Dr. Jeff Masters says T.D. Eight "has the potential to become a large and dangerous major hurricane next week."

UPDATE: D’oh! Tropical Depression Nine — the one near Texas — just became Tropical Storm Humberto, as of 2:00 PM EDT. Harumph! A great name wasted on an unexciting storm!

So, it’ll be (eventually) Hurricane Ingrid churning up the Atlantic and giving Alan Sullivan heartburn in the coming days. Doesn’t sound nearly as fearsome as “Hurricane Humberto” would have, but I suppose we’ll get used to it.