In the current NBA standings the bottom 6 teams in the west are 0-20 against the top 6 teams. The season is only 15% complete, the top 6 is fluid, but someone will have to go lose the 9-10 game.

bwahahaha. Calculated geostrophic wind speed of 275kts. Real wind was closer to 165kts.

Such a pretty Rossby wave picking up Hurricane Melissa.

Melissa was a Category 5 hurricane for 36 consecutive hours. Only 4 other hurricanes in the satellite record – Irma (2017), Ivan (2004), Mitch (1998), and David 1979 – lasted as long as a Category 5 hurricane. Typically Cat 5s last about 18 hours before weakening.

Just my routine plea not to compare a hurricane to the EF scale. Please.

The hurricane's more impactful right side is hitting the most well-constructed part of the country. This may keep the fatality rate, which will surely be high, lower than otherwise. But it will also mean recovery will require international help.

NHC official position update, with an updated central pressure as well.

Stationary.

If your students launch a weather balloon on Saturday, you are free to use the data for a homework assignment on Monday. Those are the rules. 🤣

The AMS Gator Chapter launched their 4th weather balloon last night from Gainesville. Balloon made it to 11.8hPa and 30,001ft. Maybe next time we’ll top the club 3.76hPa record. Proud faculty advisor.

Gonna be a long season if every OKC game is 2 overtimes.

The circle forecast.

Time for 2025 updates to my annual “opinions about solar” thread. If you like these, you might like the second edition of my book, Solar Power Finance Without The Jargon. A 30% discount code WSQ0437 is valid on publisher website until end of November 2025. www.worldscientific.com/worldscibook...

Just an 85kt subgeostrophic wind off the California coast.

JOB - The Department of Geography at the University of Florida invites applications for a full-time, 12-month, non-tenure track Lecturer/Assistant Instructional Professor position in GIScience and Geographic Artificial Intelligence (GeoAI) explore.jobs.ufl.edu/en-us/job/53...

Is the Atlantic season ACE ahead of average, about average, or behind average? A study in choosing what historical period to compare to, also known as lying with statistics to support what you want.

Would like a history book with a good section on the expansion of surface observations in the 1800s in North America and Europe. Anyone know of one?

Why don’t we have a horror movie that takes place in a Spirit Halloween? 🎃🦇

So, if AI models are good at track, but physics models are good at intensity, are we going to see a meld at some point?

At least as far as effective landfalls go, Imelda is only the third landfalling storm this year following Barry and Chantel. And it will turn out that not all I-storms are big baddies.

The jet stream and 93L interaction in two days will lead to a lot of upper-level divergence on the north side of the storm. These are calculations from GFS data. 🧵

In our current 30-year climatological period (1991-2020), the Atlantic is tied for the record low number of hurricanes to date. Neat, but nothing to scream about. If you look at just the last 30 years (1995-2024), this is the longest the Atlantic has gone without 2 hurricanes. smoothedweather.com

Gabrielle is giving it another go tonight.

Teaching hand map analysis with upper air is just sadder than it was last year. It's harder to draw the ridge in the northwest if the data doesn't exist.

No more universal experience than paying for paper towels and later realizing it’s toilet paper.

Clearest graph I’ve seen about social media influence. This was cited by @gelliottmorris.com in his Strength in Numbers blog about political violence. open.substack.com/pub/gelliott...

Epitome of false advertising! (They are quite good though.)

The Atlantic tropical season has gone from ahead of to behind pace for progress in number of TCs and ACE. In the heart of the season, climatology has the most slope and any lull seems dramatic. Then again, climatology has that slope for a reason, right? We'll take the pause; season ain't over.

Chelsea Women began their season on Friday. My season expectations: How can the expectation be anything other than at least making the Champions League final with a justifiable hope at winning it? We'll see if we can beat Barcelona.

Student: “I was just shy of two weeks old when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans.” Reminds me I need to share another edition of “college students’ age during big events.”

Oh good, the NYT confirmed he’s alive. Glad that conspiracy got sorted. Can we not do that level of conspiracy theory again?

Happy Fall to all who celebrate!! 🍂🍁

Chelsea FC micro-takes: The home Chelsea radio commentators couldn't believe the team was up 2-0 as they had played so poorly. But the stats were all in Chelsea's favor. We may never know the truth. smoothedweather.com/consideratio...

I don’t think grabbing onto “I bet he’s secretly dead” is a good version of fighting fire with fire.

Made a map of TC “shorties,” since I’d never seen one before. Mostly, the TCs either quickly make landfall or travel over cooler water. The tracks ending in the eastern Caribbean “graveyard” are notable, too. Red are this year’s 3 shorties so far. smoothedweather.com/tropical/

I've loved my two years at @carbonplan.org, but my position has been eliminated and I'm looking for work again. I think my ideal situation would be writing or editing science/climate feature articles. Throwing out the net wider, but that's the dream. Please holler if you know of anything.

Another way to visualize sondes rotating to other quadrants in smaller eyes is on a map. You can see the normal flight path into #Erin in the "X" path while the sondes they drop along the way rotate cyclonically around the <5km pinhole eye.

I've finally updated my website to start to include plots that always deserved a home on the web. smoothedweather.com I'm most motivated to create the operational plots I wish existed, especially if they support the course material I teach. So hopefully it helps other professors as well.

We're basically on pace for number of Atlantic tropical storms over the past 30 years.

14 hours with no solar wind data. DSCOVR has been MIA for months, and ACE just decided to glitch out (it sometimes does)… We’re flying blind now and have no real-time solar wind data source. SWFO-L1 is launching in October at least and will likely be operational by March ‘26.

Here's the most rapid intensification that's happened in the prior 12 hours on a 5 degree grid over the Atlantic using 6-hr HURDAT data. Can see how far east Erin's 4th-ranked 55mb/12h was although ultra-rapid rates do have some level of precedence this far east (Lee, 2023).

Sure do remember this one. Challenging drive to work in the dark not understanding the magnitude of the beast. Brown ocean effect I presume. #okwx

Pro tip: If you don’t want the obnoxious, often inaccurate “AI Overview” that nobody asked for with every Google search, add the tag -AR to the end of your search. E.g. “Hurricane Erin -AR”

These would have made nice planters

Another obvious sign #Erin is rapidly intensifying this morning is the temperature obs on board the NOAA-P3 aircraft. The rapidly rising temps in the #eye create a dewpoint depression (i.e, clearing). Aided by increased eye subsidence as the #major #hurricane mixes dry stratosphere above.

Calm on the left, hurricane winds on the right!

#Hurricane #Erin has just become a Category 5 hurricane (140 kt / 917 mb). Earliest known occurrence of Cat 5 in open Atlantic (outside Caribbean & Gulf). Rapid Intensification (+75 kt in 24h!) To illustrate how remarkable this period of #RI has been check out this WV 18 hour animation below ⤵️

Intensifying 34mb in a single 4 hour reconnaissance flight is, uh, well that qualifies as Rapid Deepening. A 64mb drop in 24 hours (prior to the 18z update about to come out) is impressive. #Erin

This looks to be the third Erin to become a hurricane but stay out to sea. For a certain group of meteorologists, the most dramatic of these was the 2007 tropical storm and "low." The synoptic history in the TC report is worth a read. www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/tcr/AL0...

Hurricane hunter aircraft from the Air Force and NOAA are on their way to Barbados in preparation for missions into TS Erin.