Dr. Jeff Masters' WunderBlog

(CNN) -- Officials in Joplin, Missouri, trimmed the list of people still missing Monday, more than a week after the most-deadly U.S.tornado in more than 60 years tore through the city.

Twenty-nine people remain unaccounted for, down from 43 on Sunday, according to the Missouri Department of Public Safety. That figure includes three people whose families have reported them as dead.

SYNOPSIS FOR CARIBBEAN SEA AND TROPICAL N ATLC FROM 07N TO 22N
BETWEEN 55W AND 65W
530 AM EDT TUE MAY 31 2011

.SYNOPSIS...WINDS WILL INCREASE OVER THE CENTRAL AND EASTERN
CARIBBEAN THROUGH WED BETWEEN SLOWLY DEVELOPING LOW PRES OVER
THE SW CARIBBEAN AND HIGH PRES N OF THE AREA. THE STRONGEST
WINDS WILL LIE IN THE N CENTRAL CARIBBEAN. A TROPICAL WAVE WILL
MOVE INTO THE SE CARIBBEAN TODAY AND THEN NW ACROSS THE S
CENTRAL CARIBBEAN LATE TONIGHT THROUGH EARLY WED. BROAD LOW PRES
IS EXPECTED TO MEANDER ACROSS THE W CARIBBEAN THU THROUGH SAT.

You can see those thunderheads bellowing up in Vis.

It took Alex over a week to develop last year and it was in a better shear environment than our potential Arlene.



Meanwhile, looks interesting, but nothing will come from it...

I hope that moisture from the Caribbean makes it up into the northern GOM. We need some rain.

Quoting IKE:
I hope that moisture from the Caribbean makes it up into the northern GOM. We need some rain.

It appears that low pressure will be sticking around the Western Caribbean for quite some time time...GFS at 216 hours...

16 hours til Hurricane Season officially starts!

Quoting Jax82:
16 hours til Hurricane Season officially starts!

And of course the NOGAPS has a storm down there...

The MM5 model run has a north then west kind of track

blog page update completed for the season come check it out

Link

the low pressure might drag all the moisture north of the greater antillias into to it while also absorbing this low amplitude energy coming from its east. every system during the formation stage are different. just a guess big bend area 10days as a large tropical storm

Quoting Hurricanes101:


exactly when you mess with the strength of a storm you are also affecting what ends up steering it.

I wasn't aware cloud seeding was actually effective enough to push a tropical cyclone into a different steering level. That's really interesting.

Good Morning...I think it is going to be a long wait for something in the SW Caribbean. As far as something flourishing later on down the road towards the Gulf, lots of factors against it right now not the least being all of the dry air in that region and the orientation of the current Tutt cell over Cuba and the Yucatan Channel....It's definately a wait and see but I am not holding my breath on this one.

TROPICAL DISCUSSION - INTERNATIONAL DESKS
NWS HYDROMETEOROLOGICAL PREDICTION CENTER CAMP SPRINGS MD
659 AM EDT TUE MAY 31 2011

PRELIMINARY DISCUSSION FOR PUERTO RICO AND THE USVI. A CLOSED LOW OVER SOUTHERN FLORIDA EXTENDS A TROUGH TO THE SOUTHWEST TO GUATEMALA/BELIZE-NORTHWEST CARIBBEAN. THIS SUSTAINS THE NORTHWARD
AMPLIFICATION OF THE SUBEQUATORIAL RIDGE ACROSS THE
CENTRAL/EASTERN CARIBBEAN INTO THE ATLANTIC NORTH OF PUERTO RICO/HISPANIOLA. THE SATELLITE DERIVED PWAT ANALYSIS SHOWS MOISTURE POOLING BETWEEN JAMAICA/EASTERN CUBA AND 20N 50W...WITH
MOIST TONGUE ENVELOPING HISPANIOLA-PUERTO RICO AND THE USVI. A TROPICAL WAVE ENTERED THE WINDWARD ISLANDS. THIS SUSTAINS AN ITCZ MOIST SURGE INTO THE SOUTHEAST CARIBBEAN. ITCZ CONVERGENCE ACROSS
THE SOUTHERN CARIBBEAN IS UNCOMMON FOR THIS TIME OF THE YEAR...WITH AXIS APPEARING NORTH OF ITS CLIMATOLOGICAL POSITION.

It's an ITCZ thang............

actually the low pressure seems to be forming rather fast and soon it will be designated as an invest looking at the rate of thunder storm activity and the current structure of the system!! however i do think it is waiting on one final energy from that wave to its east normally wen thunder storms fire up like this it is an indication it is however fighting of some factors

Shear doesnt look super strong were the heavy convection is, I'll say 20kt to 25kt.

i study a bit of cloud structures and looking at the visible sat one can tell that something is trying to form probably the only thing holding it back and at the same time helping it to survive is the location..it is embedded within the itcz.

Carbon emissions from energy use hit record level, agency says

CNN) -- Carbon emissions from energy use reached a record level last year, up 5% from the previous record in 2008, the International Energy Agency said.

The Paris-based agency called the findings a "serious setback" to limit global temperature increase to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F), which was set at the U.N. climate change talks in Cancun, Mexico, last year.

"Our latest estimates are another wake-up call," said Fatih Birol, chief economist at the IEA. "The world has edged incredibly close to the level of emissions that should not be reached until 2020 ... it will be extremely challenging to succeed in achieving this global goal agreed in Cancun."

Carbon emissions climbed to a record 30.6 gigatonnes in 2010. For the 2-degree goal to remain attainable, emissions in 2020 can't be greater than 32 gigatonnes.

Residents of southern Michigan were cleaning up on Monday after a violent storm ripped through the region, leaving at least 30,000 people without power, authorities said. The Sunday storm hit northern Illinois with heavy rains and lightning, canceling at least 400 flights at Chicago airports, before raking a stretch of southern Michigan from Kalamazoo to Detroit. No deaths or injuries were reported, officials said. The storm's 60-mile-per-hour winds drove heavy rain, uprooted hundreds of trees, ripped the roofs off buildings, and twisted billboards in and around Battle Creek, a city of 50,000 about 120 miles west of Detroit. "As of right now we are going around taking trees off of houses, clearing out roadways, and pushing all of the debris aside so emergency vehicles can get to people who need it," said Tyler Upston, 24, who owns a landscaping business in Battle Creek. "Tomorrow we will start the full clean up." About 34,000 people were still without power in Battle Creek's Calhoun County on Monday and "a significant number of Michigan residents are without power throughout the area hit by the storm," said Bob Dukesherer, a senior forecaster with the National Weather Service in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

!

so when will this most likely be declared an Invest?

Lets jack oil up since hurricane season starts tomm

WTI Crude Oil
$102.37 ▲1.78

I wonder when will the NHC will mention the distrubuance in SW carib not even a yellow circle

Quoting RitaEvac:
Lets jack oil up since hurricane season starts tomm

WTI Crude Oil
$102.37 ▲1.78

I thought it was "Lets jack up oil prices since it is a day that ends in Y, and my kid just got their tuition bill".

The water vapor is tantalizing close -- but doesn't look like it will get here any time soon.

Haven't really begun the rainy season here in Miami, and the pattern setting up doesn't look like there will be much for the next 8-10 days.

Quoting HurricaneSwirl:


Do you guys have sirens? Here in Macon, GA it's awfully hard to continue and go about what you're doing with deafening air raid sirens blaring.

No, we don't have sirens that go off for weather warnings. We have them but they are used for the volunteer fire department. The community is so used to hearing them to alert the volunteer fire fighters that they would ignore them if they were set off for weather reasons. I just don't have a clue about how to alarm these folks. People just seem to not care.

Before all you people get to excited about florida being hit by a depression or storm it isn't going to happen the westerlies that are in the GOM are much to strong..If anything tries to move into the GOM it will be ripped to shreds...The conditions are much to hostile for this thing to develop...So for now the the tropics are quiet.

I got a login just so I can respond to Jeff's posting regarding tornado warnings. Earlier warnings won't save many lives. Here's why:

I have a sister who lives in Joplin. I was on the phone with her just minutes before the tornado struck. She said "Oh, we're having another tornado warning. I'm going to turn the TV off, we get so many of those. This graphically illustrates a problem of crying wolf - too many warnings that are not geographically relevant. Warnings are issued on a potential tornado miles away and moving away or parallel. That's one problem - people get jaded.

Second problem - there's no place to hide from a storm of that magnitude. Hardly any houses have basements anymore. I heard that the Joplin twister was warned 24 minutes before it struck. That's plenty of time to hunker down in the middle of your house, but a lot of people weren't saved by that, because the entire house was destroyed right down to the foundation.

To save lives: 1. make warnings meaningful; 2. encourage, somehow, the construction of shelters, hardened rooms, some place people can be safe.

Thanks,
RandyWeather

TROPICAL WEATHER OUTLOOK
NWS NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL
800 PM EDT FRI JUL 15 2011

FOR THE NORTH ATLANTIC...CARIBBEAN SEA AND THE GULF OF MEXICO...

TROPICAL CYCLONE FORMATION IS NOT EXPECTED DURING THE NEXT 48 HOURS.

$$
FORECASTER BEVEN