By Todd Torsrud
Yes…it’s that time of year again, where everybody starts to watch the Atlantic tropics for named systems. 6 months of the unknown, but we do know it will be a very active season for sure. Who will be impacted? Unknown…right now, anybody from Texas to Maine needs to be ready, and be prepared to activate if a storm is headed their way. The tropics are a lot warmer this year then in the past few seasons. Some are referencing the 2004 and 2005 seasons which seems to be about right, but let me say this, we can’t say this season will be exactly like 2004 or 2005 to a “T”. It’s completely impossible to forecast that far out.
Over the next 5 days, I will cover what to do before, during, and after a storm, what to purchase to have on hand, and what to do to protect your number one investment…your home. Everyday from now until the end of the season, I’ll put out one to two posts per day about what’s out there in the tropics. Of course, this will increase if a system is threatening land. I’ll post a link below towards the end to the National Hurricane Center (NHC), so you can see what they are seeing and what new programs they are implementing this year.
One thing I need to say is that if you live near an ocean or gulf, and a mandatory evacuation is ordered for your area, just leave and evacuate to higher ground. Your life is more important then your house. I’ve heard it and seen it on television so many times where people are stuck in their homes and need help in the middle of a hurricane. Do not be one of these people! If you are in an evacuation zone, just evacuate with your personal belongings (not all of them…just the necessary items which I will cover over the next 5 days).
When my family and I moved down here to Florida for the first time (father was in the military in Kentucky), I never heard of or knew of what a hurricane is. My very first introduction to to a hurricane was Hurricane Hugo in 1989. Granted it curved and missed us, and hit the Carloina’s. But for me, that was a first, and hoped it was my last…of course, it wasn’t! Then came Hurricane Andrew…missed Central Florida, and slammed South Florida in the Miami-Dade area so hard to which it took decades for them to recover almost back to what it was before Andrew (they are back to normal, and I’m just referencing how the recovery to bring it back to pre-Andrew was a lengthy process). Then came my real first taste of a REAL hurricane, and her name was Hurricane Erin. Erin was a CAT 1 hurricane with max winds of 85mph. It crossed through South Central Florida in 1995, and made landfall a couple of miles north of Vero Beach with a 985mb pressure. This was the scariest experience I’ve ever been through. I’ll write a blog on the day of August 2 about Erin. Then we had a lot of misses to Florida minus some tropical storms here and there, and then 2004 came…oh boy! Charley, Frances, and Jeanne…OH MY!!! I’ll write a separate blog on these guys, and it’ll be a good story for sure.
One quick note…all of my blogs will be on here, and on my website, Weather Chaser Todd. So let the season and the blogs…begin!
To learn more about Todd and his extreme weather chasing stories, click here
