Re: and now Kyle
Posted by
Chris in Tampa on 8/14/2020, 11:05 pm
From 5pm EDT Friday NHC discussion:
"Kyle is the earliest 11th named
storm on record for the Atlantic basin. The previous record was
Katrina, which became a tropical storm on August 24, 2005."
They give their reasoning for naming it in that discussion. Archived discussion:
https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2020/al12/al122020.discus.001.shtml?
As long as they always do it the same way, that's the best way. Unless they want to start doing it so that is has to exist for awhile first, but then you could have a case where something is rapidly strengthening before landfall and they wouldn't want to wait a certain period before naming it. So I guess this is the best way.
I am starting to think that maybe the number of hurricanes in a season is a more important metric we should consider, rather than named storms. On another message board I saw someone put together information about how the number of short lived storms has increased over time. Clearly, storms are being named more often now. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but it's clear that before the satellite era storms would have been named less than they are now. And more recently with additional satellite tools, like better satellite imagery and better, and more, satellites sensing surface winds, they can name things faster. And sometimes that would mean something getting a name that they otherwise would not have had enough evidence to ever give a name. It's good we have more tools, it just makes comparing things more difficult when it comes to weaker storms. You can kind of tell what is and isn't a hurricane in the satellite era. There has too be a lot more borderline cases on whether something was a tropical storm, depression or even just a wave for example.
We'll see how this season progresses in terms of the number of hurricanes. Of course as always, it only takes one. If any season is busy, or not, landfalling storms, usually hurricanes, are the most important metric to most people, especially when it impacts you directly. Meteorologically, I think the overall number of hurricanes, regardless of where they are, is one of the most important metrics. A more complicated metric that is even better is Accumulated cyclone energy (ACE):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accumulated_cyclone_energy
But that doesn't take into account the size of the storm, so even better, Integrated kinetic energy (IKE):
https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/ike/
(site down at moment, backup copy: https://web.archive.org/web/20200629000310/https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/ike/)
But that gets more complicated for people to understand.
I have been updating links on my pages and I have noticed how many wind products there are:
http://tropicalatlantic.com/wind/
In the past decade there are a lot more satellites available to sense surface winds. You don't have to wait as long for a satellite pass or for recon to go in. |
19
In this thread:
Post A Reply
This thread has been archived and can no longer receive replies.