News - Blogs - Hurricane season picks up as third Atlantic storm is named

Hurricane season picks up as third Atlantic storm is named
Published: 7/20/2011 6:31 PM
Last Modified: 7/20/2011 6:55 PM

Tropical Storm Bret spins off the Florida coast Monday. NOAA/NASA

Hurricane season 2011 is starting to pick up.

Not at 11th Street and Harvard. In the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, where there are currently three named storms spinning and churning out at sea.

None of the three threaten much land, and will likely just spin out to sea and die. But, they still provide amazing satellite images of immense storms with incredible power.

Let’s meet our current named storms:

Bret: This little storm came into the world on July 17. It started off the coast of Florida and has stayed below hurricane strength since then. As of 4 p.m. Wednesday, sustained winds were 45 mph and it was about 270 miles south-southeast of Cape Hatteras, N.C. By Friday, it is forecast to fade into a post-tropical depression directly north of Bermuda and east of Delaware.

Cindy: Tropical Storm Cindy was earned its name about 4 p.m. Wednesday with the first advisory. Its current sustained winds are 40 mph and it is drifting northeast at 24 mph. Cindy is 665 miles east-northeast of Bermuda. It is forecast to stay below hurricane levels as well and will likely not threaten land. It is forecast to weaken to a depression by Saturday as it enters cooler water.

Dora: This little explorer is currently a Category 3 storm off the southern Pacific coast of Mexico. The first advisory was issued Monday. Maximum sustained winds are 115 mph as of 4 p.m. Wednesday. It is moving west-northwest into open ocean at 16 mph. Dora is expected to strengthen to a Category 4 storm tonight or Thursday before starting to weaken Friday. By Monday, it is expected to have weakened significantly to a post-tropical depression.
Impacts to land are expected to be minimal. A tropical storm watch extends along the coast from Lazaro Cardenas to near Puerto Vallarta, but the eye will stay several hundred miles away from the shore.

There are still several months remaining in the 2011 season, so we can expect to see more pop up soon. The peak usually comes in August and September.

So far, the Gulf of Mexico has been pretty quiet (aside from Arlene, which slammed into the eastern Mexico coast in late June). As the season continues, let’s hope for a more active Gulf; it could be our best chance at any significant rainfall for some time.

--Jerry Wofford

Update 6:50 p.m.
Well that didn't take long. Hurricane Dora is now a Category 4 storm with 135 mph winds. Still expected to start to weaken as it takes a more westerly turn Friday and Saturday.

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myopinion (last year)

I heard a weatherman on Fox News last April tells us that we would have cooler than normal May. A hotter than normal summer and a more active hurricane season. So far he's been dead on, oh did I say he also said global warming is junk science. He said the weather pattern was going to be like the 1930s.

JDH (last year)

James Aydelott agrees with that assessment. I don't care if he is just a meteorologist, he knows more about the atmosphere than anyone else babbling on here copying and pasting their "proof."

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Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun
Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec

	Temperature		Precipitation
Date	High Temp	Low Temp	Total	Month to date	Historical average
1	44°	16°	0	0.00	0.05
2	59°	24°	0	0.00	0.11
3	57°	33°	0	0.00	0.16
4	68°	37°	Trace	0.00	0.21
5	69°	29°	0	0.00	0.26
6	66°	33°	0	0.00	0.32
7	59°	38°	0.05	0.05	0.38
8	51°	34°	0	0.05	0.44
9	44°	36°	0.01	0.06	0.51
10	62°	37°	0.07	0.13	0.57
11	54°	28°	0	0.13	0.64
12	44°	30°	0.25	0.38	0.70
13	55°	40°	0.01	0.39	0.76
14	°	°			0.83
15	°	°			0.89
16	°	°			0.95
17	°	°			1.02
18	°	°			1.09
19	°	°			1.16
20	°	°			1.23
21	°	°			1.31
22	°	°			1.38
23	°	°			1.46
24	°	°			1.53
25	°	°			1.61
26	°	°			1.69
27	°	°			1.77
28	°	°			1.85

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RAINFALL

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Tulsa weather milestones of 2013 (as of Feb. 12)

Highest temperature: 70 on Jan. 11 (Record: 115 on Aug. 15, 1936)
Lowest temperature: 15 on Jan. 16 (Record: Minus-16 on Jan. 22, 1930)
Hottest month (average): 40.5 degrees in January (Record: 91.7 degrees on July 1980)
Coldest month (average): 40. 5 degrees in January (Record: 21.7 in January 1918)
Most snowfall (day): 0.1 of an inch on Feb. 12(Record: 13.2 inches on Feb. 1, 2011)
Most snowfall (month): 0.1 of an inch in February(Record: 22.5 inches in February 2011)
Most rainfall (day): 0.91 of an inch on Jan. 29 (Record: 9.27 inches on May 26-27, 1984)
Most rainfall (month): 1.54 of an inch in January (Record: 18.18 inches on September 1971)
Highest wind speed: 30 mph on Jan. 30
Previous day with any rain: Feb. 12
Previous day with 1 inch or more of rain: Oct. 17, 2012
Previous day with any snow: Feb. 12
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Contributors
Staff Writer Althea Peterson started writing for the Tulsa World in March 2007 after previous stops at the Norman Transcript in 2006 and the Oklahoma Gazette in 2005. She followed her older brother from rural Wisconsin (with a public school that never seemed to call snow days) to the University of Oklahoma, but did not follow his pursuit to study meteorology. However, she tries to find as many opportunities to report on the weather as possible.

Staff Writer Jerry Wofford came to the Tulsa World in 2010 from The Manhattan Mercury in Manhattan, Kan. Originally from western Arkansas and a graduate of the University of Oklahoma, Jerry has lived in Tornado Alley his entire life and is one of those people who goes outside when the sirens go off.

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