more stupid weather tripe

[hey, ben... start saving for that raft...]

ivan resurrects. really. even seasoned forecasters are baffled: says one, "it is certainly a strange time."

Ivan is a tropical depression as Jeanne circles back

By MARTIN MERZER

Miami Herald

MIAMI - Ivan is back - call it Ivan2 - and Hurricane Jeanne is circling back, just two of the three new bursts of weirdness in a freakish, deadly, destructive hurricane season.

A resilient piece of Hurricane Ivan, the storm that viciously assaulted the Gulf Coast last week, looped over the Atlantic, passed over Florida, returned to the Gulf of Mexico, redeveloped into a tropical depression and appeared poised Wednesday for another attack on the Gulf Coast as a system called ...

Well, the next tropical storm or hurricane should be called Matthew, but it took hours of debate to decide if this one was the next one or one of the last ones.

They finally decided Wednesday night that it re-strengthened sufficiently to require a name, and that they must call it Tropical Depression Ivan. Again. The return of Ivan. Its likely destination: Louisiana or Texas.

``I don't think there is any question that if you could examine the DNA of this system, Ivan's DNA would be in there,'' said forecaster James Franklin of the National Hurricane Center in West Miami-Dade County.

And there's more:

_Hurricane Jeanne, already responsible for hundreds of deaths in Haiti and others in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, is completing a full, 360-degree pirouette nearly 700 miles east of Florida. It is likely to head, again, toward the Bahamas and the mainland.

Forecasters began issuing low-level alerts for the Bahamas and the entire Southeast coast. They said the most likely target seemed to be the Carolinas, though much of Florida fell within the cone of probability. High surf and riptides already swept South Florida's coast.

``People need to keep up with the latest advisories,'' said Max Mayfield, the hurricane center's director.

_Far out to sea, Tropical Storm Lisa and a developing system that is not yet named are competing for dominance over the same sprawling patch of the Atlantic. One might win, essentially digesting the other. Or they could two-step around each other for awhile.

In fact, tropical systems are dancing all around the ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, but it is the once and now once-again Ivan that is attracting much of the interest and amazement.

Even forecasters are shaking their heads. This sort of thing rarely happens, especially involving a storm as ferocious as Ivan - and this long after everyone thought it was dead.

Here is what happened: The lower portion of the spinning air at the center of Ivan broke away from the higher portion late last week and went its own way - east and then south - as the rest of the storm went north.

That piece of ``vorticity'' twisted itself over Florida, delivering some rain Tuesday, and then moved back over the Gulf of Mexico, where it began redeveloping in earnest Wednesday, producing thunderstorms and tropical-storm force gusts.

As for what it would be called, forecasters spent much of the day examining the rule book.

``Our operating instructions say, `Within a basin, if the remnant of a tropical cyclone redevelops into a tropical cyclone, it is assigned its original number or name,' '' Mayfield said. ``One could debate whether this is `the' remnant or `a' remnant.''

They settled on ``the'' remnant.

``We finally decided that most of the ingredients are there for us to rename it Ivan,'' said hurricane forecaster Lixion Avila.

Added Franklin: ``It certainly is a strange time.''

weird shit, man.

well it could be worse. emily1, imagine providence 68 years ago. under 20 feet of water?! that ain't right...