Hi Everyone,
Irene certainly made some news the last couple of days. I think the one thing that lacked in forecasting Irene was its intensity. In my thinking, I thought she would be a category 4 by the time it hit eastern North Carolina. But several issues developed with the system that prevented it from doing so. The biggest concern with Irene was the type of track she was going to take, which was right up along the coast. If she were able to fully strengthen, the amount of damage we could have seen from the wind could have been far worse than what was observed. So, the good news that she did not get too strong. I don’t think anyone is complaining about why she didn’t strengthen so much. Still, she was a large hurricane that impacted many from North Carolina to Maine. I still think we will eventually have a major hurricane that some day will hit the Carolinas and then impact points further north.
As far as the preparations for Irene, I thought the evacuations that were conducted in North Carolina, Virginia, Marlyand, Delaware, New Jersey and New York City was excellent. I thought Emergency Management, along with State and Federal did an excellent job in gettings to move out of harms way. Although some folks stayed behind, luckily the storm didn’t cost their lives. You can’t force folks to leave, so you can only do so much. Its really up to that person to make that decision. Hopefully, their decision is one to head out.
So, thats a brief overview of Irene. I’ll pass along any post-mortum discussions on Irene from NOAA in the weeks..
Now as we head onto into the future, whats ahead for the tropics? Right now, there are no tropical threats for this upcoming week. The European and the GFS model do show a new system that maybe a hurricane in the coming days and track across the Atlantic. But the system is so far east near Africa, that chances are it could recurve by the time it nears the US. Still, its too far to say that maybe the case. The one thing we do have to watch is what will the pattern be as we go into September. Plus what does it favor interms of whether more landfalling tropical systems we may have. Time will tell, but for now, things will be on the quiet side. I think we all could use some down time for now.
As for the audio videos I tried to put together. Due to several issues, they will not be posted. In the coming weeks, I plan to launch a new webcast video series that will focus on forecasting hazardous weather for the next two weeks. Stay tune for updates.
For now, have a great week. Definitely enjoy the final week of Summer, but we still have till September 20th..