Well, Hurricane Katrina [1] was certainly anti-climatic. I first heard about it ealier this week, but unlike the past few hurricanes, it was still a tropical storm and would only become a hurricane just prior to landfall. I was expecting some bad weather very late Thursday and throughout Friday, but the timing was a bit off.
The worst came throughout late Thursday, and given that Hurricane Katrina hit land just south of Ft. Lauderdale [2], a good fourty miles to the south, we just got some stiff breezes and some light rain here at Casa New Jersey. That's the good news.
The bad news—I was hoping to get Friday off from work, but seeing how Hurricane Katrina was already offshore by the time I got up, workbound I was.
Fortunately, the office is very quiet today and it appears that most people have today off anyway. Now it's just a regular muggy Auguest afternoon in South Florida.
* * * * *
In looking over the satellite loops of Hurricane Katrina, I'm struck by the fact that as a hurricane, it was a rather poorly defined one (at least, as it went over South Florida)—no real eye developed and except for possibly some hurricane force winds (sustained 74 mph (Miles Per Hour)) between Ft. Lauderdale and Miami [3], it was nothing more than a really bad storm. I do wonder if conditions in the mid-Atlantic are less favorable to hurricane formation now. We're almost half-way through the season and Katrina is the 11^th storm so far. Is there still enough energy in the mid-Atlantic to sustain more hurricanes this season? (for comparrison, back in 1992, the first storm of the season, Hurricane Andrew [4], formed in mid-August).
It takes quite a bit of energy to feed a hurricane, and while there's another storm that might get named [5] in the mid-Atlantic, it's been that way for a few days now (with the National Hurricane Center [6] labelling it a “possibility in 36 hours” for the past three days) and I have to wonder if there's anything left in the mid-Atlantic to give, energy wise.
Then again, I'm not a meterologist …
[1] http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_at2+shtml/150802.shtml?3day
[3] http://www.ci.miami.fl.us/pages/
[4] ftp://ftp.nhc.noaa.gov/pub/storm_archives/atlantic/prelimat/atl1992/andrew/prelim01.gif
[5] http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_at2+shtml/150802.shtml?basin?large
![[4] ftp://ftp.nhc.noaa.gov/pub/storm_archives/atlantic/prelimat/atl1992/andrew/prelim01.gif](ftp://ftp.nhc.noaa.gov/pub/storm_archives/atlantic/prelimat/atl1992/andrew/prelim01.gif){kind=link}