Tropical Storm Agatha, Pacaya volcano kill 15 in Guatemala; oil spill update
Tropical Storm Agatha, the first Eastern Pacific named storm of 2010, was short lived but deadly. Agatha was a tropical storm for just 12 hours, making landfall Saturday on the Pacific coast of Guatemala as a 45 mph tropical storm. However, the storm brought huge amounts of moisture inland that continue to be wrung out as heavy rains by the high mountains of Guatemala and the surrounding nations of Central America. So far, flooding and landslides have killed twelve people in Guatemala, and one person in neighboring El Salvador. According to the excellent Guatemala weather site, climaya.com, rainfall amounts of up to 152 mm (six inches) in 24 hours have occurred in some regions of Guatemala. The National Hurricane Center is warning that rainfall amounts of up to 30 inches may fall the next few days in some mountainous regions near where the storm has dissipated. Adding to the mayhem is fallout from the Pacaya volcano in Guatemala, which began erupting three days ago. At least three people have been killed by the volcano, located about 25 miles south of the capital, Guatemala City. The volcano has destroyed 800 homes with lava and brought moderate ash falls to the capital.
Figure 1. Visible satellite image of Tropical Storm Agatha at landfall. The storm was intensifying right up until landfall, and had an impressive "hot tower" of building cumulonimbus clouds near its center that brought heavy rains to Guatemala.
Figure 2. Flooding in Quetzaltenango, Zone 2, in Guatemala on May 29, 2010, after heavy rains from Tropical Storm Agatha. Image credit: Carlos Diaz, climaya.com
Oil spill update
Light onshore winds out of the south are expected to blow over the northern Gulf of Mexico today through Tuesday, resulting increased threats of oil to the Alabama and Mississippi barrier islands, according to the latest trajectory forecasts from NOAA. Winds are expected to shift to southwesterly on Wednesday and continue through Friday, increasing in force to 10 - 20 knots late in the week as a cold front approaches the Gulf. These persistent and strengthening southwesterly winds will likely bring oil very close to shore from Mississippi to the Florida Panhandle by next weekend.
Oil spill resources
My post, What a hurricane would do the Deepwater Horizon oil spill
My post Wednesday with answers to some of the common questions I get about the spill
My post on the Southwest Florida "Forbidden Zone" where surface oil will rarely go
My post on what oil might do to a hurricane
NOAA trajectory forecasts
Deepwater Horizon Unified Command web site
Oil Spill Academic Task Force
University of South Florida Ocean Circulation Group oil spill forecasts
ROFFS Deepwater Horizon page
Surface current forecasts from NOAA's HYCOM model
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery from the University of Miami
Join the "Hurricane Haven" with Dr. Jeff Masters: a new Internet radio show
Beginning next week, I'll be experimenting with a live 1-hour Internet radio show called "Hurricane Haven." The show will be aired at 4pm EDT on Tuesdays, with the first show June 1. Listeners will be able to call in and ask questions. Some topics I'll cover on the first show:
1) What's going on in the tropics right now
2) Preview of the coming hurricane season
3) How a hurricane might affect the oil spill
4) How the oil spill might affect a hurricane
5) New advancements in hurricane science presented at this month's AMS Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology
6) Haiti's vulnerability to a hurricane this season
I hope you can tune in to the broadcast, which will be at http://www.wunderground.com/wxradio/wubroadcast.h tml. If not, the show will be recorded and stored as a podcast.
I'll probably be back Monday with a quick update. Have a great holiday weekend!
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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Quoting WinterAnalystwx13:
No...I dont really feel like getting hit by a hurricane this year, considering I've been in several... :P
:o I never thought I would hear you say that. Wow! I've lived in NC all my life. I've survived Floyd, Isabel, and all the other small TS's and even Ophelia's rains. ;) I can't believe that you don't wanna be here. But I can understand that you do wanna get out of dodge.
I've lived in the Tampa area for 46 years and somehow I've only been through minimal hurricane force winds (nothing stronger than 75-80mph)a few times. We have had many threats over the years but somehow the storms turn east or west and spare us.
What about Charley?
We got one outer band from Charlie early on that Friday morning. Wind gust to 45mph. Then Charlie turned NE and the Tampa are got virtually nothing from the storm. Eastern Hillsboro County may have had some gusty winds. But the wind shield from Charlie was extremely small. Orlando got hit pretty hard.
the waves coming off Africa often lose much of their convection over the water, but maintain their wave characteristics.
Why do the waves not grow stronger (convection wise) over the sea?
That sounds like a bad one. Daughter just called from her work apparently I'm lucky to have power right now. Lol. Can still hear the distant rumbling as it's finally moving away. It rained heavily here too. Had a flash flood warning. Urban streams and creeks warning. Along with the severe warnings. And it just came out of NOWHERE! Oh well I still have an intact sunroof on my car. So it's all good. Lol. Its used to the dings and dents. :)
The BP CEO can say what he wants for now. The oil has been hitting remote barrier islands, sparsely inhabited areas and hard-to-access coastal marshlands. It WILL move North to the Mississippi and Alabama coasts, eventually reaching the Florida panhandle.
Those are areas with high coastal populations, accessible beaches and a much more visible coastline. That's when the sauce will hit the pasta. He can say they will focus on Louisiana all he wants. The public outcry and local governments will help BP find their way to every oil covered shore. I still don't think they've come to grips with the potential outcome. So far, BP has faced concerned and frustrated locals and a government that is trying to work with them. Outright hostility hasn't yet entered the mix. If Mobile Bay or Pensacola beaches get oiled over, or if oil moves into Lake Pontchartrain, you will see open hostility toward BP. People won't be in a mood to see reason.
The CEO should really stop making public statements and hire an image consultant to help him.
Connie, 1955
Good points. Also, if it is model output, then ...
Or there could be luck involved like with me, as my parents were in a lot of these older mentioned storms (Diane, Hazel, etc.)
All I keep hearing about is how damaging it is, and how it's a trade off since it gets rid of the oil but wrecks the ecosystem.
What's the benefit of using the dispersant if it's just as bad as the oil, if not worse? I assume there's a benefit, otherwise they wouldn't be using it."
Welcome to the club. Nobody in the public knows much of anything about the dispersant. Amazing how any corporation can declare any mix of chemicals to be proprietary information, then dump them in public waterways without telling the public what they're dumping.
Ignoring the dispersant's toxicology cuz there ain't no info...
30%to40% of sweet light crude is composed of volatiles that evaporate readily&rapidly -- I think every fraction lighter than diesel -- when the crude reaches the surface.
Many of those volatiles are teratogenic, mutagenic, carcinogenic, and/or toxic in relatively low concentrations if ingested over a sufficiently long period of time. Can't see how it helps matters to keep them from evaporating by mixing them into the water column.
The only benefit I can see is "out of sight, out of mind."
It's gonna be fairly easy to assign responsibility for damage on land. Each oil deposit has unique ratios of chemical isomers and atomic isotopes that stamp an unmistakable signature on the crude oil that comes from that particular deposit. That's how oil embargos are enforced against "rogue nations", even though oil is otherwise extremely fungible.
Much harder to prove whether and how much death and damage in the ocean is caused by crude oil. And mixing crude oil with LOTS of sea water also mixes the crude's signature with the LOTS of stuff that's dissolved in the ocean.
So it'll be that much more difficult to prove that BPs crude is the oil which contained the particular oil fraction that's responsible for harming any particular portion of sea life. ie "It could have separated out of the bunker oil from a rogue freighter which illegally dumped fuel-tank cleaning solution." will become harder to disprove.
NAME THE TOP FIVE WETTEST TROPICAL CYCLONES, AND THEIR REMNANTS, IN MASSACHUSETTS.
1. Diane (1955)
2. Long Island Express (1938)
3. Carrie (1972)
4. Eloise (1975)
5. Connie (1955)
6. Bob (1991)
I have wondered about that LOL!!!
CIMSS GOES East-mid/upper level Winds 21Z
It's not that surprising. I can name storms from that era off hand too, but that doesn't mean I was there to actually experience them.
Thanks to Levi and 456 for the information earlier in the weekend, shame that I did not listen.
They sometimes do, sometimes don't. The airmass that tropical waves are traveling through over Africa is much drier than that over the Atlantic. However, convection is easy to produce over Africa because the land gets very hot during the daytime, and the African Easterly Jet provides good dynamics. Mid-level dry air can even aid the convective process over land.
When tropical waves move out over the water, they often carry a chunk of African air with them, and this will not immediately support convection as readily over the water, because the sea-surface temperature is much cooler than the land temperature over Africa. Because of that, a lot of waves will experience a sudden loss of convection upon emerging into the Atlantic, because the floor is almost literally taken out from under them, and they temporarily lose a lot of surface-based instability.
However, provided SAL isn't completely dominating the eastern Atlantic, the environment around the wave will eventually moisten up from traveling over the ocean, and once the air becomes saturated, it will rise much easier, and the wave will then become supported by the warm water beneath it, forming new convection. You could say that tropical waves sometimes need time to "adjust" to a new environment, from land to water.
Then you're just plain amazing, that's all there is to it. :)
... Not like my parents actually know what causes storms like that... lol
The 1938 New England Hurricane
Donna 1960
Agnes 1972
Carol 1954
Floyd 1999
Dust and shear.
I am in Trinidad, a good ways East of ABC islands.
And no, we have not had any oilsmells around here recently. Occasional tarballs on the east coast. Occasional "minor" sheen in the waters between here and Tobago visible from the air. Mostly from indiscriminate bilging I believe.
So far, so good. Lots of offshore oil and gas installations around here including BP. A constant stream of tankers, LNG carriers, and Chemical ships (Methanol, Urea, Iron, Alumina etc) in and out of the Gulf of Paria all the time....
NOAA: Hurricanes and the Oil Spill
Link
Understood! thank you. Actually makes sense to me LOL
...my friends in Abaco BAHAMAS will be surprised to hear this
(the A in ABC is Aruba)
Not Abaco. Aruba.
heheheheh
Bob was #6 not #5
Not a problem.
The one furthest to the east is Aruba.
Sorry about the hail damage :o(! I saw bad hail on 4-28-1993, at 11:30pm CDT softball and grapefruit sized hail beat a 1974 Surburban and a 1984 Old Cutlass nearly to death! A miracle not 1 broken car window. A dead roof and my trees were beat senseless.
They hit so hard that they left white marks on the blacktop of the street and bounced about 15 feet off the ground. About $500 million in damage occurred in 30 minutes!!
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