Friday Roundup: News You May Have Missed this Week from the Tropics
Tropical Atlantic expected to remain quiet into next week
On Fridays when the tropical Atlantic is quiet, as it will be into next week, I’ll review news you may have missed from across the tropics. Today’s edition begins with a changing of the guard at the National Hurricane Center.
National Hurricane Center Director Ken Graham tapped as new National Weather Service Director
Ken Graham, Director of the National Hurricane Center since April 2018, received a big promotion this week. The National Weather Service, the parent agency of the National Hurricane Center, announced Ken as its new Director Tuesday morning. Ken will follow his old boss Dr. Louis Uccellini, a 32-year veteran of the NWS and prominent atmospheric scientist, who retired at the end of last year. Jason Samenow at The Washington Post wrote an excellent piece profiling Ken’s four-year tenure as NHC Director. Ken is widely respected among his colleagues, and for many of us who have known him, we’re not surprised by the news.
Prior to his time as NHC Director, Ken oversaw the National Weather Service Office in New Orleans from 2008 to 2018. Before joining the National Weather Service in 1994, he was a broadcast meteorologist at a CBS affiliate in Mississippi. NHC Deputy Director Jamie Rhome will serve as acting NHC Director while the center searches for a permanent Director.
Robust La Niña plods on in the eastern Pacific and expected to hang around through summer
The ongoing La Niña in the eastern Pacific, which has been in place since last summer, has been one of the stronger episodes ever observed during the spring months. A La Niña occurs when waters across the eastern equatorial Pacific cool, impacting global wind patterns. This change in wind circulations reduces storminess in the eastern Pacific, which in turn dials down hostile wind shear over the Atlantic, making the Atlantic more conducive to hurricane activity. NOAA is forecasting a better than 50/50 odds La Nina hangs around through the peak months of the Atlantic hurricane season. It’s well documented by my graduate advisor and other colleagues that La Niña conditions also increase the odds of a hurricane landfall in the continental United States and Florida’s odds of a hurricane landfall increase significantly when La Niña or neutral conditions are in place vs El Nino conditions. All of this information supports forecasts of an active and potentially impactful 2022 hurricane season.
The Miami area surpasses 30 inches of rainfall for the year, nearly a foot above average so far for the year
Thanks to the ten-plus inches of rain left behind by Potential Tropical Cyclone One last weekend, year-to-date rainfall for the Miami metro is now among the top 15 wettest on record going back to the late 1800s. For Fort Lauderdale International, which only maintains a continuous rainfall record since 1999, it’s been a top 5 wettest start on record. High pressure moving in for early next week should give us at least a brief reprieve from the stormy pattern. While the 30-inch total is impressive, it pales in comparison to 1930 and 1942 in Miami, when over 40 inches of rain was recorded through June 9th.
NASA to launch the first pair of six small satellites to improve hurricane observations over water
Most of our high-fidelity data that examine hurricane structure come from either research airplanes with doppler radar like the NOAA Hurricane Hunters or existing low-Earth satellites that give us a snapshot when passing over storms a few times each day at most. That may change soon as NASA launches the first pair of six, small low-Earth orbit satellites in coming days that will provide a look inside tropical cyclones, similar to a medical MRI, nearly every hour rather than just a few times a day. This will help meteorologists better assess hurricane characteristics – such as strength, eyewall organization, and rainfall rates – important to hurricane forecasts.
These nanosatellites, weighing only about 10 pounds each and not much larger than a bread loaf, are significantly smaller than traditional low-Earth orbit satellites which can weigh thousands of pounds and extend over 12 feet across. They also cost substantially less – right around $30 million for all six satellites versus hundreds of millions of dollars to build and launch a traditional low-Earth orbit satellite. The only downside to the smaller satellites is they’re designed to last only a few years unlike their larger cousins designed to stay up for to a decade or longer. The two other pairs of satellites will join the first pair in subsequent launches slated for later this year.