Where’s Dolly? Does It Mean that Al Gore is Right? July 25, 2008

Here’s the juice. Bertha formed farther east than any storm recorded so soon in the hurricane season. Bertha was also the longest lasting named storm in July at 17.25 days. Dolly was only the 6th storm to hit Texas in July. The four named storms for June and July are the 4th most ever recorded in a single season.

Get Ready….here they come! The stories are already beginning about the possibility of these little facts showing that Global Warming is causing more tropical cyclones. One of the first comes to us from the Christian Science Monitor. Before you read it, consider a few things.

Hurricane season goes from June until November; this is when hurricanes are most likely to form in the North Atlantic. Also, the North Atlantic is just a part of the world. Tropical Cyclones occur most frequently in the Western Pacific. There are also more storms in the Indian Ocean. Focusing on the North Atlantic and then drawing a conclusion from just that information would be foolish and perhaps misleading.

The first hurricane tracked on satellite was Camille in 1969. So, prior to that time, there were most likely a number of storms in the ocean that formed, lived and died and no one knew about it. They depended solely on ship reports. If they didn’t have enough reports to draw a conclusion, then it wasn’t known. Ships tend to avoid rough weather. The potential for past unreported storms in other parts of the world is especially true in other parts of the world.

Also note that there have been 3 other years in North Atlantic recorded history that have had more storms this early. So, it’s not unprecedented and it’s possible that there have been more storms in other seasons that were unknown. This CSM reporter does make a fleeting reference to this far down in the story by quoting a researcher that says that it is possible that the “results pull in a number of weak storms whose presence on the list could be an artifact of improvements in observing hurricanes from the air and from space.” This and another reference that the author of the report cautions that his work has not gone through the peer review process and has not been published. This is contrary to what the IPCC did in some of it’s report which is they did not follow accepted procedures and used unpublished material that had not been reviewed by peers in academia. So, I can conclude that this reporter did a fair job of writing this article. While he buried the consideration that this is perhaps a natural situation, he also didn’t mention Global Warming until late in the article either. Unlike the AP writer that I mentioned in the past, he was pretty straight-forward with the facts.

Here is the article from the Christian Science Monitor:

Hurricane Season: Big Start

See below for the latest, and perhaps the last data for what is now the tropical depression Dolly track. Most models I have seen have the remnant going into Arizona and New Mexico before looping back around into Oklahoma.

Here is the satellite photo of a tropical disturbance that came off of Africa a few days ago. So far, most of the models have not really picked up on this developing. However, I saw one that makes it perhaps a tropical storm but keeps it of maritime concern. An important note is that the NHC is no longer issuing reports on this system, which is interesting.

Hurricane Dolly and Black Bart July 23, 2008

HERE IS A LINK TO A NATIONAL RADAR THAT ALLOWS YOU TO LOOP AND ZOOM IN TO STREET LEVEL FOR THE DOLLY LANDFALL AT STREET LEVEL OR FOR ANY  OTHER PLACE IN THE COUNTRY.  ITS KIND INTERESTING.  CLICK HERE AND CLICK THEN ON THE INTERACTIVE RADAR.

Dolly is behaving pretty much like I thought it would which is it in intensifying as it is making landfall
about 10 miles north of Port Isabel.  Over the past few days it was coming together and all it needed was for the upper low that was messing up a little bit of it’s upper support to move out of the way and then it would really explode.  The models were exactly right in moving the upper low out just prior to landfall and the result was that Dolly bumped up to 100 mph.  The possibility it would be slightly stronger than the official forecast was always there.  I had also speculated that the upper ridge would not build back in fast enough to take Dolly more westward as soon as the official track and that a landfall north of

models

Brownsville was possible.  The boys at the NHC I think recognized both the potential for a little stronger intensity and a farther north track by putting the hurricane warning all the way to Corpus Christi.  Anyway, it’s going into perhaps the best place in the country for a landfalling hurricane as outlined in the previous post.  The roughest conditions will not affect a huge amount of people.

There is a guy that has come off the African Coast that holds some promise.  Here is the NHC Dolly Discussion:

 NHC Dolly Discussion

On This Date In History: Do you remember the movie A Christmas Story  in which Ralphie wants a BB gun and has visions of shooting Black Bart?  It leads one to believe that Bart was some desperado.  Well, in the 1870′s there was a dime novel that was loosely based on a true story.  The writer called his main character Bartholomew Graham who took the name of “Black Bart” because he wore black close, had black long curly hair and a dense black beard.  In real life, there was a man named Charles Bowles was born in England in 1829 and immigrated to New York in the United States a few years later with his family. 

As a young man, he changed his name to Boles and in 1849, he and his cousin went to California to seek their fortune in gold.  They failed and a few years later, came back.  Charley Boles tried again with his cousin and his brother.  Not only did they fail again, but the brother and cousin both died from an illness. Charley eventually returned and got married. After spending time in the Union Army and serving with distinction, Charley again went out west, this time to Montana where he set up a mining site that depended on water.  Some men from Wells Fargo offered to buy his claim and he refused. The men reacted by cutting off his water and Charley had to abandon his mine but said in a letter to his wife,”I am going to take steps.”  No one knew what he meant. The last letter his wife received from him was in 1871.

On This Date in 1878, a Wells Fargo stagecoach was robbed of $400.  It wasn’t the first time that a stagecoach from Wells Fargo had been robbed. And each time, a poem that intimated the perpetrator was going to strike again. It was signed “Black Bart”.  Bart robbed Wells Fargo stage coaches numerous times.  He wore a flour sack on his head and never fired a shot, though on a few occasions, shots were fired at him.  There was never any mayhem or extreme violence.  In 1883, Bart made a mistake when he left behind a handkerchief.  The Pinkerton detectives were able to track the hanky from a laundry mark to an elderly man in San Francisco named Charles Bolton.  Bolton admitted that he indeed was Black Bart, but he disputed his reputation as being an outlaw by telling the Pinkertons. “I am a gentleman.”  It was also learned that Bolton was really Charles Boles, who years before vowed to “take steps” against the company who forced him to abandon his mining claim. His wife, who had thought he was long since dead, found out that Boles was alive when she learned of his arrest.  But, I guess his absence must have been the show stopper because  Boles went to prison for a short time and spent the rest of his days quietly in Nevada.