I basically watch Tropical Storm activity because they can adversely impact our lives here in Florida.  I don’t care what the politicians say, global warming is a reality.  Man made pollution is contributing to our weather cycle and I am quite impatient with those who say otherwise.  Katrina was a big wake up call because it devastated a major American city.  You can argue all you want about whether or not New Orleans should even be there but the point was a CAT 5 hurricane pretty well obliterated that part of the Gulf Coast.  More recently, Tropical Storm Sandy became a superstorm and made the Jersey shore a wasteland continuing up into Vermont where flooding decimated many picturesque small towns.  And, folks, that is not the end of the story.  I recently read that we will be in “superstorm” potential until at least 2100.

I watch tropical storms so I can understand their potential impact as far in advance as I can.  In fact, I watch the Saharan dust activity which is a good indicator of a potential storm.  Mostly, I watch the NOAA ( NHC) and Wunderground web sites.  Over the years, the tools that they have developed are amazing.  I can see the storm as it comes off the tip of Africa.  I can understand the atmospheric conditions that impact storm developments (dry air masses and wind shear).  I can understand the future weather conditions that will drive the storm’s directionality.   However, as advanced as these tools have become, Mother Nature is quite the teacher so I have learned to REALLY respect her and her vagaries.

Tropical storms also sometimes develop out of large masses of low pressure that come together.  This tends to happen mostly in the Caribbean, Gulf, and South Atlantic.  These masses show up on NHC maps and looking at weather conditions, I can usually successfully see which storms will develop and which will be bad rainstorms.  Analyzing storms now takes about half the time that it formerly did because of the advances in meteorological science.

I began posting my little status updates on Facebook a couple of years ago.  I have a number of people who follow the postings up and down the East Coast of the US.  This has become a small hobby and my knowledge of tropical storms and what drives them as they develop grows almost daily.