Deborah Asks Me To Explain More About Tropical Storm Ernesto

Previously, I wrote:

Tropical Storm Ernesto is the most interesting Tropical Storm I’ve ever seen, and it might be sending some tropical juju your way.

Deborah replies:

whoa.

whoawhoawhoa

Keep on telling!

Right now, Tropical Storm Ernesto is pushing through the maze of death known as the highlands of Mexico.

I’ve dreamt about whether you could ever get a tropical storm that would last weeks and weeks, and travel right around the world. It could start off the west coast of Africa and travel right around the semi-tropics, crossing central America, negotiating the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia, and venture westward right across the Indian Ocean, before running into the east African coast. It would be like a really tempestuous ghost ship, or something! A semi-permanent Land of the Lost.

Reality, though, is a hard thing. It’s hard to keep tropical storms in the semi-tropics forever: wind patterns eventually push them into the mid-latitudes, where they die. And tropical storms have the darndest time pushing across significant land barriers. Over the years, I’ve watched hundreds of storms crash into the Americas, and despite many promising, powerful contenders, none of them make it.

Hurricane Dean almost made it across in 2007. It was one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes of all time – a “5”! What a ferocious storm! Some of the weather forecasts were encouraging for a safe passage, but magic did not happen.

I began to lose hope.

But here comes big, fast-moving, but terribly sloppy, Tropical Storm Ernesto! It’s not THAT well organized, or powerful, but it is a big system: just big enough to straddle Mexico across its narrowest point (the Isthmus of Tehuantepec). The waters on the Pacific side are warm. In fact, those particular Pacific waters are the best place on Earth to initiate new tropical storms. So, if the storm could just reach across the Isthmus, it might just catch fire there.

And the weather forecasts are showing that it will! It has a much better chance than Dean ever did! Paradoxically, its Ernesto’s sloppy organization that gives it that chance. The more tightly-wound and intense a tropical storm gets, the smaller it tends to be, and the less-likely to be able to straddle the Isthmus. So, powerful, Promethean storms like Dean can’t quite make magic happen. Only the ‘B’ and ‘C’ students can make it happen.

Once Ernesto makes it across, as it’s likely to do, then they will likely change its name. There is a formal system about who has the rights to name storms, and they aren’t prepared for storms to just willfully cross bureaucratic barriers like that. So, then the renamed storm will start reorganizing itself again.

Forecasts show the storm won’t be the ghost ship I yearn for – it will start getting pushed to the death-dealing mid-latitudes. Nevertheless, it is likely to strengthen and finally reach hurricane status. Then it will wander north, towards Cabo San Lucas at the tip of Baja California.

Then forecasts start diverging. The GFS model shows it falling apart and raining out over Sinaloa and Sonora. The NOGAPS model (which I trust more) shows it moving north almost to Punta Eugenia before raining out, over Sonora and Arizona.

It’s still early. The story may change in the days ahead. But, whatever happens, there’s no doubt in my mind: Tropical Storm Ernesto is the best tropical storm ever! It gives me hope!