Meteorologist Bastardi: The whys of the hurricane season so far

https://www.cfact.org/2024/09/30/the-whys-of-the-hurricane-season-so-far/

By Joe Bastardi

The Impact “Scoreboard” so far has us at a record tying amount of hurricanes that have hit the US thru September 4th.  The record for the total season is 6. But what has not happened is the orgy of numbers that I had in the preseason ( and was lowered to 15-20 with the September 3 update) Keep in mind the numbers game is a red herring. My mandate for clients and emphasis is on showing before hand where the storms are going, the why before the what and that is doing very well as you can see below:

On our power and impact scale, Alberto, a non-US landfalling tropical storm received a .5 for its impact on the Texas coast. Beryl was 1.9 for the US, Debby 1.7 for its gulf impact, and .5 for the southeast coast. Francine 1.9 for its gulf impact. A non-named event received .7 based on ACTUAL WIND and a landfalling closed rotary circulation that in many other years would have been named. Helene received a 4 for its Gulf impact and 1 for its impact on the Atlantic coast. The scale does not take into account rain, just the storm power and impact ranking at its closest approach ( or in most cases, landfall).

To review why this is superior to Saffir Simpson, both in the total power of the storm and to better objectively quantify the storm and put it into perspective as far as its place in history, Saffir Simpson is a spot wind speed at the center of a storm. A dime-sized dynamo like Charley does not quantify nearly the total power of the storm vs Ian which was larger, or the biggest of them all to hit Florida, Donna in 1960 Why should all 3 be a 4? Charleys hurricnae force winds, for instance, one of the metrics, only extended out 15 miles. Ian was more like 50. Donna was over 150. So my scale uses Sea level pressure, Maximum wind ( like Saffir Simpson) but  the extent of 64kt, 50 kt snd. 34 kt winds with a formula to come up with a rating for total power of the storm. That total is divided by 5, but then a PRESSURE TENDENCY factor is used. If pressures are rapidly rising as the storm comes to the coast, the category is reduced. If falling it is enhanced. The physical reason for that is an intensifying ( weakening) hurricane will have the proper set up up to bring the strongest winds to the surface (. not allow the strongest winds to come to the surface). With intensifying storms for instance, over 90% of the flight level wind may make it to the surface. Weakening storms may be as low as 50%. Idalia, which rapidly weakened the last 10 hours before landfall had no evidence of damage of winds to cat 3 levels. Same with Lili in 2002. Storms like Ida and Charley that were still deepening and the amount of wind maintained inland with Helene showed they by and large lived up to their power and impact ratings. But each of those ratings were not the exact same as the other strength of my scale is it can be used in tenths. Why should a storm that is 5 mph from being a category higher be listed as the lower category? Even with the outdated Saffir-Simpson scale. the National Hurricane Center should go to tenths.

But this will also eliminate the nonsense we heard after Helene that storms are getting bigger. That is not true. It’s the opposite. The size of storms has decreased and the average ACE/storm has decreased. But of course, climate people who don’t actually forecast the weather will be happy to say the opposite, apparently clueless or deceptive on the size of hurricanes in the past.

In any case, the current season has a total impact score of 12.2 which is fourth place since 1995 behind 2020.2005 and 2004.

But why did the season come out of the gate strongly but disappear in mid-season? And was climate change ( not man-made) involved?

To understand this, we must look at the vertical velocity patterns. From early July into August there was a favorable vertical velocity pattern that resembles most closely in the means a phase 2 of the Madden Julian oscillation.

MJO phase correlation

8/1/2/3 are the highest impact phases of the MJO

8/1

2/3

Helene occurred in phase 8/1

and went right where the correlation said it would ( red area). notice how those correlations continue inland.

But during the middle of the season, we were in unfavorable phases

phases 4.5..6.7 are unfavorable and this is phase 4/5

landfall impact is way down

This happened at the heart of the season. And Climate change likely played a role. How so?

Well it was extremely warm in China and the NW Pacific at the heart of the season. This likely led to the MJO, due to the increased vertical velocities and lowering of SLP, slowing down in those phases that favored the upward motion over Asia.

Look at the sea level pressures for this period this year:

vs 2005. high pressure all over the place:

temperatures were near to below normal in 2005:

nothing like this year:

Look at the difference in SST 2005:

this year:

Now I want to ask you a question  Where do you see anyone taking the time to explain this kind of stuff to you? Or show how weather on the other side of the world may be impacting your weather here.

I wrote this on Sept 3rd:

https://www.cfact.org/2024/09/05/updated-hurricane-forecast-additonal-big-impact-still-expected/

Since then we have had the 2 strongest hurricanes of the season and an unnamed tropical storm hit the US.

This tweet first went out Sept 8 but was put out over 100 times after warning Gov DeSantis and the SE governors what was coming the last week of September.

I simply lined up that pattern that was coming with past patterns, most recently 2022.

Why was I so bold? Because cooling, both seasonally and in the means was going to occur to allow the MJO progress into the favored phases mid Sept into October. This happened in 2022 also. And so it did:

China is cooling considerably both in the seasonal aspect and the deviations vs normal.

( btw may see a major cool outbreak in the eastern US by Columbus Day).

Is climate change responsible? Yes to some extent The lack of numbers, but the high impact on the US coast means the distorted warming chickens are coming home to roost. When you warm areas away from the tropical oceans too much it distorts the pattern needed for tropical cyclone production. We have been seeing this in the Pacific basin. Look at how warm the water is:

Globally this is one of the lowest Ace years on record. And its likely because of the distortion of warming I have written about this many times so I am not going to rehash it but this has led to weaker-than-average vertical velocities over the tropical oceans, a reduction of clods and a compensating increase of the tropical land masses from southeast Asia to Africa.

If the function of tropical cyclones is to take heat out of the tropics and redistribute it, if its already being done, whats the need?

And the ability of CO2 to warm the oceans with it only able to penetrate a mm of the ocean surface means as I have opined in over 15 blogs here, it is likely the geothermal spreading of the last 35 years and the redistribution by the thermohaline circulation that has led to what you see above, vs what it was below when that increase started.

Do you realize if that’s right an entire cottage industry built around arguing over this, plus the whole world governance idea that stems from all this, is on the ash heap of wrong ideas? This is an interesting quote supposedly from Upton Sinclair.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

In any case I hope this helps you understand the hurricane season so far. And the late activity is a sign the MJO, like 2022, has more in store ( including perhaps later this week or early next week). And the implication is that it may roll back around into these phases in December, which in winter, promotes cold weather. We saw that in December of 2022 after the late hits that year.

Notes and Asides. Starting Sunday, Oct 6th I will be hosting a 1-hour weather based radio show called the “Wise Guys of Weather” on AM970 The Answer in NYC. Going to have some fun as well as try to get out in front of weather and climate events and show people how they may be affecting them in the upcoming weeks from driving your car and buying groceries to market and hedge funds, And of course we will be trying to make sure people see both sides of the issue in any weather event. So if you can, tune in.

Going to be fun. After all, we should enjoy the weather, its the only weather we got.