Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico DUers

[malaise]

The experts are saying 'get ready for this hurricane season'.

And then there's the blob
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/cold-blob-atlantic-start-hurricane-season-early-article-1.2590456

Brace yourselves: The cold blob is looming.

A “cold blob” hovering in the northern Atlantic Ocean could bring an early start and a harsher run for the hurricane season, according to the forecasting service Accuweather.

The cold blob — a large area of unusually chilly sea-surface temperatures — has been brewing for several years east of Newfoundland and south of Greenland, Accuweather said. Forecasters at the service said ocean currents could carry cold water from the cold blob to the tropical regions of the Atlantic, where 85% of tropical storm systems develop.

If that happens, the cold blob could raise this year’s total of Atlantic hurricanes to 14 — two more than average. The cold blob could also lead to earlier-than-expected hurricanes, although a timeline for those anomalies is unclear.

[Solly Mack]

1. We're in the process of moving and I need to update my hurricane emergency bag.

I'm a good piece inland but the rains cause flooding here. We usually get tornadoes when there's a hurricane near Texas/LA from the Gulf. Even if not a tornado, we still get damaging high winds. Gotta be prepared. I also like to keep added stuff in case we need to take in someone fleeing a hurricane.

[malaise]

2. I'm working on our first aid kit

By the way there were several tornadoes in Alabama, Florida and Georgia in the wee hours this morning.

[Solly Mack]

3. I keep a suture kit in mine. You never know and sometimes it's not easy to get to the hospital.

[Agnosticsherbet]

4. Is the cold blob related in any way to the Pacific warm blob.

[malaise]

7. Don't know but I'm searching for an answer

[malaise]

8. Here's Jeff Masters on the Blob and your Pacific Blob

https://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=3279
<snip>

When you look at a map of global surface temperatures for 2015, the first impression you might get is a planet with a bad sunburn. Almost every part of the globe saw above-average temperatures during Earth’s warmest year on record, and there was unprecedented warmth across many parts of the tropical and subtropical oceans (Figure 1). The next thing you’d probably notice is a blue blob in the North Atlantic, sticking out like a frostbitten thumb. No one knows exactly why, but this blob of unusually chilly water, roughly half the size of the United States, has taken up what seems like semi-permanent residence in the North Atlantic Ocean.

It’s normal for ocean temperatures to wax and wane on all kinds of time scales. What’s more uncommon is for a cold anomaly this large and strong to persist for so long, especially when the rest of the planet is trending ever warmer.


Heat waves and cold waves at sea
The North Atlantic’s cold blob once had a hot-headed cousin. Thousands of miles away, on the other side of North America, a zone of above-average sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the northeast Pacific gained fame as “The Blob.” While it was in place, from about 2013 through most of 2015, The Blob was closely linked with intense upper-level ridging over and near it. The Pacific jet stream arced northward, away from California, which helped strengthen the fierce multiyear drought still plaguing much of the state. Once it became clear last autumn that a strong El Niño was on its way, experts predicted that a juiced-up storm track in the Northeast Pacific would churn up the waters enough to dilute and vanquish The Blob. Sure enough, The Blob eroded to near-nothingness in just a few weeks during late 2015, and the West Coast from San Francisco northward got drenched by wet Pacific storms throughout the subsequent winter.

One way to think of The Blob is as a “marine heat wave,” according to Hillary Scannell. Now a graduate student at the University of Washington, Scannell analyzed the full spectrum of these oceanic warm spots in a Geophysical Research Letters paper, written with colleagues at the University of Maine, NOAA, and the Gulf of Maine Research Institute and published in March. Scannell is also coauthor on a new Progress in Oceanography paper, led by Alistair Hobday (CSIRO), that lays out suggested metrics for defining marine heatwaves. Such events can have big impacts on ocean ecology: marine heatwaves have been implicated in hundreds of years of coral-reef damage, and record-warm ocean temperatures have caused extensive damage this year to the Great Barrier Reef.

[FLPanhandle]

5. It's been a long spell since our last hurricane

Boarding the windows and preparing the house is probably the most dangerous thing for me. Climbing on ladders with big sheets of plywood. I always figure I'll die getting ready for a hurricane instead of in one.

The parties are fun though!

[malaise]

6. I like the BBQ after the hurricane

Cook everything before it spoils


Taking down the mosquito mesh is what we hate most - ladders, ladders -this year we'll pay a youngster.
Talk to the bigger teens and 20something kids in the neighborhood. We're too old for some of these things and if we fall our bones don't heal well.

[csziggy]

11. Just wait until the teens and 20somethings get too old

For odd jobs and they have full time jobs! All the kids I know now are getting into their mid-20s and have full time jobs. My main go-to guy not only works as a farrier (trimming and shoeing horses) on the weekends, he is now training as a master mechanic, working about 50 hours a week at that. Then he comes out to the farm and helps take care of the horses.

I'm going to have to find a real licensed contractor to do many of our odd jobs and mowing this year, I fear.

[malaise]

12. Good point

[geomon666]

9. I thought hurricanes were fed by warm/hot water.

At least that's what they've been telling me for 30 odd years.

[malaise]

10. They do - this Masters' piece explains the scenarios

https://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=3279