Hurricanes

I have lived on this blue planet for 69 years now, and I've never seen a hurricane make landfall in California. You'd have to be 84 years old to have seen a Cali landfall - the last time it happened was in 1939. But this year of extreme, record-setting heat has already seen more than its fair share of oddities, including a hurricane off the coast of Maui that fanned wildfires there and tragically led to the death of over 100 people.  

Hurricane Hilary will dump up to six inches of rain, with isolated amounts up to 10 inches, across portions of Baja California, SoCal, and Southern Nevada, which could lead to “significant and rare impacts,” according to forecasters. A flood watch has been issued for Los Angeles and Ventura Counties, including Catalina Island. In Nevada, it's going to rain in Winnemucca. It never rains in Winnemucca. Lake Winnemucca dried up in 1939, coincidentally the same year a hurricane last made landfall in California.

Meanwhile, southern New England was under flash flood and tornado warnings as severe storms swept through the region today.

The trend of increasing large, unusual, and dangerous weather events is a direct result of human-induced climate change, and if you still don't understand that at this point, you're fucking stupid and there's nothing I can do to help you. 

Over in the Atlantic, though, this year's Hurricane Season has been surprisingly calm, especially considering the record-setting sea and air temperatures measured this summer. This is a good thing - I don't want or need more hurricanes blowing over my Atlanta home. But things are heating up, so to speak, and suddenly the National Hurricane Center is tracking no less than four tropical disturbances at various stages of progress in their journey across the ocean.  

The storm closest to the North American shore, that one just north of Haiti, is expected to move westward and approach the western Gulf of Mexico coastline by the middle of next week, but the storm is expected to have a low chance of becoming a hurricane. 

It's still unlikely, but the next storm further east has a slightly better chance of forming into a tropical storm or a hurricane.  That system is forecast to move generally west-northwestward into the northeastern Caribbean.

It's the two storms in the middle/eastern Atlantic that have me the most concerned.  The one furthest east, a few hundred miles west of the Cabo Verde Islands, has the best chance for additional development.  It's likely to turn into a tropical depression over the weekend while it continues to move toward the northwest across the eastern Atlantic. By early next week, upper-level winds over the system are forecast to increase.

No single one of these storms currently pose a significant threat, but the sheer number of them suggests that something's brewing - the high temperatures Earth is experiencing this year is likely to produce something nasty in the Atlantic before the 2023 Hurricane Season is over.