“Meteorologists warned that the end of the rainy season isn’t the end of the hurricane season, which isn’t until Nov. 30. South Florida has been struck many times over the years by October storms, many of them “back door” storms that form in the Gulf of Mexico or Caribbean…,” according to the The Palm Beach Post, October 7. The National Hurricane Center in Miami is carefully tracking these developing storm systems:
‐Arnold: A hard-working but unremarkable tropical thunderstorm that sees itself as a world-altering meteorological event. On several continents, however, millions of raindrops, hail stones, and wind shears look up to Arnold as the storm of the century.
‐Britney: An immature storm system that keeps trying to merge with a sympathetic weather pattern but now seems to be growing weaker and more diffuse.
‐Bruuuce!: A real storm, homegrown in rough Atlantic waters and nurtured by the gritty atmospheric elements of the Eastern seaboard; not some fake, sissified, CNN/People magazine hurricane with tons of free publicity and glitzy 3-D maps. A hurricane for regular weather everywhere.
‐Donald: Advance warnings pegged this system as the size of Brazil, packing 450 MPH winds, dropping 28 inches or rain per hour and pushing storm surges of 22-30 feet, but fishermen east of the Cayman Islands described the storm as essentially one massive, empty cloud of boiling hot air.
‐50 Cent: One of the most successful of the newer, faster-adapting storm systems, it breaks from hurricane tradition with horizontal winds and rain that falls from the ground up. Sports an angry, blustery eye that is anything but calm.
‐Kerry: A highly confused tropical depression that wanders from ocean to land and back to ocean, changing strength dramatically without any quantifiable categorization. Rains change to hail, tornadoes give way to shiny rainbows and thunderheads become fluffy clouds without warning. Recently gained the support of a large, saucy storm system and may lack the heart to turn into a full-blown hurricane.
‐Martha: Extremely organized and efficient Type A hurricane that wastes no energy switching between ocean and landfall. Storm track is highly predictable, yet unstoppably effective. Weather patterns around the globe jealously study Martha’s dynamics even as they wish for her to break up and disappear.
‐Pamela: A hot, yet oddly degraded storm system that generates intense interest from engorged low-pressure areas but provokes jealousy and scorn from mature and developed eye walls.
‐Rupert: Began life in the outer oceans as a small, scattershot storm system and spent considerable time traveling from ocean to ocean, acquiring troubled weather systems and merging into one difficult, persistent storm that shows no signs of weakening or changing course.
–Bruce Stockler is a media-relations consultant and humorist. He is author of I Sleep At Red Lights: A True Story of Life After Triplets.