Caribbean disturbance slow to develop; 5 EF-5 tornadoes this year confirmed
The tropical disturbance (Invest 93L) that crossed over Florida on Wednesday, bringing welcome rains of 1 - 3 inches, is now a naked swirl of low clouds over the central Gulf of Mexico. The disturbance is embedded in a large area of dry air associated with an upper level low pressure system, and this dry air is discouraging development. 93L is also moving into a region of moderate wind shear of 10 - 20 knots, and NHC is giving 93L a 0% chance of developing into a tropical depression before the storm makes landfall in Mexico south of Brownsville on Saturday. There are a few heavy thunderstorms trying to fire up near the center of 93L's fairly well-formed circulation, but I don't think this storm is going to bring more than 1 - 2 inches of rain to the coast on Saturday.
Figure 1. Morning satellite image of the Central Caribbean disturbance.
Central Caribbean disturbance 94L
Disorganized heavy thunderstorm activity continues in the region between Central America and Jamaica. Wind shear has fallen to the moderate range, 10 - 20 knots, and is predicted to continue to fall over the next two days. This should allow the disturbance, dubbed Invest 94L by NHC on Friday afternoon, to increase in organization, though it will take many days for it to approach tropical depression status, since it is so large and poorly organized. The last two runs of the NOGAPS model have developed the disturbance into a tropical depression or storm by early next week, with the system moving northwards into Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, and eastern Cuba. The other major models do not show the disturbance developing during the coming week. NHC is giving the disturbance a 10% of developing into a tropical depression by Sunday. A surge of moisture accompanying a tropical wave may aid development when the wave arrives in the Western Caribbean on Sunday. Water temperatures in the Central Caribbean are about 1°C above average, 29°C, which is plenty warm enough to support development of a tropical storm. Residents of Jamaica, eastern Cuba, the Cayman Islands, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic should anticipate the possibility that heavy rains of 2 - 4 inches may affect them today through Sunday.
Five EF-5 tornadoes confirmed in 2011
The National Weather Service in Oklahoma City announced Wednesday that the violent tornado that hit Binger, El Reno, Peidmont, and Guthrie, Oklahoma on May 24, killing nine people, was an EF-5 with winds greater than 210 mph. The rating was given based on measurements made by a University of Oklahoma portable "Doppler on wheels" radar. The long track, large wedge tornado caused extensive damage, with well built houses cleanly swept from their foundation and trees debarked. This tornado brings the total number of EF-5 tornadoes this year to five, tying 2011 with 1953 for 2nd place for greatest number of these top-end tornadoes in one year. Only 1974 (six) had more. The EF-5 tornadoes of 2011:
1) The April 27, 2011 Neshoba/Kemper/Winston/Noxubee Counties, Mississippi tornado (3 killed, 29 mile path length.)
2) The April 27, 2011 Smithville, Mississippi tornado (22 killed, 15 mile path length.)
3) The April 27, 2011 Hackleburg, Alabama tornado (71 killed, 25 mile path length.)
4) The May 22, 2011 Joplin Missouri tornado (138 killed, 14 mile path length.)
5) The May 24, 2011 Binger-El Reno-Peidmont-Guthrie, Oklahoma tornado. (9 killed, 75 mile path length.)
Figure 2. Aerial view of damage from the May 22, 2011 Joplin, Missouri tornado. Image credit: Wikipedia.
A few other remarkable statistics on the tornado season of 2011, compiled from NOAA's official press release and Wikipedia's excellent tornado pages:
- The April 25 - 28 tornado outbreak, with 330 tornadoes, was the largest tornado outbreak of three days or less duration on record. The previous record was 148 tornadoes, set during the April 3 - 4, 1974 Super Outbreak.
- For April 27, 186 tornadoes have been confirmed. This is the largest 1-day tornado total on record, beating the 148 recorded in 24 hours on April 3 - 4, 1974.
- The April 14 - 16 tornado outbreak, with 162 confirmed tornadoes, ranks as the fourth largest tornado outbreak of three days or less duration on record.
- The May 21 - 26 tornado outbreak, with 158 confirmed tornadoes, ranks as the 5th largest 6-day or shorter tornado outbreak on record. A May 2003 6-day outbreak had 289 tornadoes, and a May 2004 6-day outbreak had 229 tornadoes. The year 2011 now has three of the top five tornado outbreaks on record.
- April confirmed tornado total was 683, making it the busiest tornado month on record. The previous record was 542 tornadoes, set in May 2003. The previous April record was 267 tornadoes, which occurred in April 1974. The 30-year average for April tornadoes is 135.
- If the three deaths in Massachusetts from Wednesday's tornadoes are confirmed, this year's tornado death toll will be 522, beating 1953 as the deadliest tornado year since modern tornado records began. That year, 519 people died, and three heavily populated cities received direct hits by violent tornadoes. Waco, Texas (114 killed), Flint, Michigan (115 killed), and Worcester, Massachusetts (90 killed) all were hit by violent F-4 or F-5 tornadoes. A similar bad tornado year occurred in 1936, when violent tornadoes hit Tupelo Mississippi (216 killed), and Gainesville, Georgia (203 killed.) During that time period, the tornado death rate per million people was 60 - 70 times as great as in the year 2000 (Figure 4), implying that this year's tornadoes would have killed many thousands of people had we not had our modern tornado modern warning system.
- The May 22, 2011 Joplin, Missouri tornado killed 138 people and injured 1150, making it the deadliest U.S. tornado since 1947, and 8th deadliest in history. The $1 - $3 billion estimate of insured damage makes it the most expensive tornado in history.
- Damage from the April 25 - 28 super tornado outbreak was estimated at $3.5 - $6 billion, making it the most expensive tornado outbreak of all-time.
- The tornado that hit Springfield, Massachusetts on June 1 was at least an EF-3 with 136 - 165 mph winds. It was only the 9th EF-3 or stronger tornado to hit Massachusetts since 1950, and the third deadliest, with three deaths.
- The year 2011 now ranks in 3rd place behind 1974 and 1965 for highest number of strong to violent EF-3, EF-4, and EF-5 tornadoes (Figure 3.)
Figure 3. Number of strong to violent EF-3, EF-4 and EF-5 tornadoes from 1950 to 2011. The year 2011 now ranks in 3rd place behind 1974 and 1965. There is not a decades-long increasing trend in the numbers of these most dangerous of tornadoes. Image credit: NOAA/National Climatic Data Center (updated using stats for 2008 - 2011 from Wikipedia.)
Figure 4. Death rate per million people per year in U.S., 1875-2000. Thin line with dots is raw rate, curved thick line is death rate, filtered by 3-point median and 5-point running mean filter, and straight solid lines are least squares fit to filtered death rate for 1875-1925 and 1925-2000. Dashed lines are estimates of 10th and 90th percentile death rates from 1925-2000. The death rate fell from 8 per million to .12 per million between 1940 and 2000. Image credit: A Brief History of Deaths from Tornadoes in the United States, Harold Brooks and Charles Doswell III.
Joplin tornado the 7th U.S. billion-dollar weather disaster of 2011
The Joplin tornado is the 7th U.S. weather disaster of 2011 costing more than a billion dollars. With a major flooding disaster coming on the Missouri River, and hurricane season still to come, 2011 has an excellent chance of beating 2008's record of nine billion-dollar weather disasters. The billion dollar weather disasters of 2011 so far:
1) 2011 Groundhog Day's blizzard ($1- $4 billion)
2) April 3 -5 Southeast U.S. severe weather outbreak ($2 billion)
3) April 8 - 11 severe weather outbreak ($2.25 billion)
4) April 25 - 28 super tornado outbreak ($3.5 - $6 billion)
5) Mississippi River flood of 2011 ($9 billion)
6) Texas drought ($1.2 billion)
7) Joplin tornado ($1 - $3 billion)
Figure 5. River flood outlook for the U.S. Image credit: NOAA.
The next U.S. billion-dollar weather disaster: a Missouri River flood?
A great 100-year flood has arrived along the Missouri River and its tributaries from Montana to Nebraska. Record spring rains, combined with snow melt from record or near-record winter and spring snows, brought the Missouri River at Williston, North Dakota to 27.9' yesterday, just an inch short of the highest crest on record (28.0' on 4/01/1912.) Tributaries to the Missouri, such as the Souris River in North Dakota and the North Platte River in Nebraska, are already flooding at all-time record heights. With warm summer temperatures and additional rainfall expected over much of the area during the coming week, snow melt and rain runoff will swell area rivers even further, creating a damaging 100-year flood. Wunderground weather historian Christopher C. Burt has the details in his latest post, and I will be writing more on this latest epic flood next week.
I'll have a new post on Monday, or earlier if the Caribbean disturbance shows significant development.
Jeff Masters
Here it is turning into a monster.
Reader Comments
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He just said the NHC got every storm wrong and it was going to hit NOLA as a monster.
I think he used this map:
Troll Hurricane Forecast Map
Keeping one eye on the Caribbean... though not as well as DestinJeff I suspect.
yeah, Grandpa Munster....
;)
Weather Underground
Listen to the podcast of Dr. Masters and Angela Fritz discuss the 2011 hurricane season. Don't miss it!
Daily Downpour
Anyone, have any good links to ecwmf models for atlantic tropical or other good links.
...not including wunderground of course...already a paid member :)
Aqueducts is one thing. Moving tens of thousands of cubic feet of water per second across a thousand miles is another. To put it in perspective, moving 50,000 cfs of water is the equivalent of moving half of Niagara Falls... every second. That is a HUGE amount of water. And if just moving it is rough, think of the distribution network that would be needed. To add to the logistical nightmare... what about when the river is low? And what about the economic and ecological impact of shunting that much water?
(as reference, the California Aqueduct system has a capacity of approx 13,000 cfs)
sounds like a job for Tunnel Man!!!!!
:)
Thanks, Lily.
Does it matter who was here first?
the chicken or the egg....
or, the weather weenie or the troll?
;)
The tunnels! They work! Let me show you my PVC-scale model that shows that I am capable of moving a bit of dye a foot or two with my tunnels! That proves my tunnels will work without fail, and everyone else is stupid and insane for not agreeing with me! *rolls eyes*
I had almost forgotten about that. Thanks Amy.
Yes, young fella, it does...LOL
;)
;)
de nada....
One of these days, Grothar is going to snap. Half of us will be stunned senseless, and the other half will be his targets.
(that said, Grothar, I am VERY thankful you have a good sense of humor)
Why Paw Paw? :-)
Boy, I wake up from my nap and this is what I get. Insults and fighting as to who was here first. Does it really matter? All I know is Dr. Masters was the cutest baby I ever saw.
he's from the time before the rocks were hard...
LOL. No worry jeffs.
I agree, it would be a huge undertaking, but I'm just curious, would the cost of creating a pipeline be offset by the millions (billions?) spent on flood control, flood damages, dredging the silt so the rivers can still be navigated, lost crops, insurance, etc. Plus the benefits of having the water available to help prevent the crop losses from drought? and all the losses from the wildfires?
But on the other hand, man has interfered with Ma Nature to much already!
It isn't a good solution, IMO, since it is highly situational, and not only is the construction cost excessively high, its maintenance cost would be prohibitively high, too.
Much cheaper to learn to live with whatever Ma Nature gives us, rather than trying to bend her to our will.
I've been around since about may of '05, became a member then, but usually don't post too much... even now.
WE PASSED A LAW IN 2006 IN NOLA. NO TROPICAL WEATHER SYSTEMS WITH WINDS OF OVER 39MPH ALLOWED IN ORLEANS PARISH .... :) :)
LYNN IN NOLA
Mid-Shear starting to clear.
Don't feel badly. Perhaps you may just have too much competition in that area.
lurker since 2004, but couldnt remember when i ponyed up the bucks...lol
Uh huh!
Also, if you did build a huge pipe that laid empty most of the time, you'd have other issues...
We learned in the Los Angeles Area last year what happens when you change the pressures in the pipes.
They made watering restrictions, and they did them all on the same day of the week! So the constant pressure changes in the pipe basically ruptured a water main in a different part of the system every week.
Thankfully, they realized that now and split the water restrictions up by days to stop changing the pressure so drastically.
yup maybe so.
................................................. ..................................
SYNOPSIS FOR CARIBBEAN SEA AND TROPICAL N ATLC FROM 07N TO 22N
BETWEEN 55W AND 65W
1130 AM EDT FRI JUN 03 2011
.SYNOPSIS...A 1009 MB LOW NEAR 15N80W IS ASSOCIATED WITH BROAD
LOW PRES IN THE SW CARIBBEAN. THIS SYSTEM WILL PERSIST THROUGH
SUN BEFORE IT BEGINS TO DRIFT N. A TROPICAL WAVE EXTENDING FROM
NEAR 15N55W TO GUYANA WILL MOVE INTO THE E CARIBBEAN SAT INTO
EARLY SUN BEFORE LIFTING N AS A TROUGH AXIS SUN NIGHT AND MON.
forgot the pasword to my old account so I had to create a new one in 09
low level steering
I said starting to, lol.
Spin I see is near 17N and 77.5W.
Agreed.
It is impressive, but very unusual for anything to form that far out this early in the season. It has happened, but very, very rarely. They are always good to watch, though.
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