Water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico are running 2.5 degrees F above average. (Credit: National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service)
Hurricane experts are predicting average or below average activity in 2012, and part of the reason is that ocean temperatures in the tropical Atlantic have cooled considerably this year. But with the mild North American winter, the Gulf of Mexico is a different story.
Sea Surface temperatures in the Gulf were the warmest on record in March, according to Weather Underground. And April is on pace for another all-time record.
All that heat may provide more fuel for tropical systems that make it into the Gulf this season. But it’s already having an effect on spring storms in the Plains, according to Weather Underground’s Jeff Masters. “The record warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico are a key reason for the high risk of severe weather over the Plains this weekend,” he says. The higher heat content allows for more evaporation, and a lot of that moist air gets drawn toward the north.
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We’ll never see another Hurricane Irene. The name has been retired from the list of Atlantic storm names by the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) hurricane committee, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Friday. It will be replaced by the name “Irma.”
The 2011 hurricane caused $15.8 billion in damage in the U.S. Originally forecast to slam South Florida, it pounded the Bahamas instead and went up the U.S. East Coast.
Storm names are recycled every six years. Irene is the 76th name to be retired since 1954.
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Free lawn watering: A quarter of an inch of rain fell at Palm Beach International Airport between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. Friday. The cells were driven into the peninsula on winds out of the east at 15 mph. But the showers were scattered, and both Fort Lauderdale and Miami came up with goose eggs. The only other major station on the peninsula to report rain overnight was Pompano Beach, where 0.26 of an inch fell.
A satellite station in Palm Springs reported 0.78 of an inch; Delray Beach 0.11 of an inch. Boca Raton had 0.31 of an inch. There were no reports of rain on the Treasure Coast.
The reason for our good fortune was a trough of low pressure that extended from the Bahamas west into Palm Beach, the National Weather Service in Miami said. This will “slowly wash out,” forecasters said, but the occasional shower remains a possibility through Saturday night.
Breezy weather arrives again on Sunday and sticks around through next week, with gusts of up to 25 mph near the beach. Highs will be near 80 and lows near 70 in Palm Beach.
As I mentioned Thursday, April is very unfriendly to tropical storm development with only one storm in recorded history, Ana, in 2003. So a tropical or sub-tropical storm would be highly unlikely this month.
Nevertheless, Crown Weather’s Rob Lightbown said today that sub-tropical development was possible next week near Bermuda — the same area that spun up Tropical Storm Ana 9 years ago. He said the European model is forecasting a non-tropical system to organize near 30 degrees north, then track to the southwest.
“Looking at the wind shear forecasts from the European model, it appears that wind shear values will be low enough to support transition into a sub-tropical storm as we get into later Monday and Tuesday,” he said. Even if a system does get the attention of the National Hurricane Center, expect it to accelerate out to sea before it has a chance to impact any land areas.
