Damn It Freda Make Up Your Mind--Cyclone Season

Is it going to be this:

 

Or this:

Or something else entirely…

Weather watching is something we do more casually now that we are way up the Brisbane River and tied to pile moorings. We do get the occasional wild summer squall and after the devastating floods of 2011 we pay more than typical attention rain fall warnings. But big picture weather watching is something that occurs by happenstance—mainly when we’re checking weather for far flung friends.

We’ve been watching Cyclone Freda for several days though. Initially it looked like she'd hit New Caledonia then continue straight on to Auckland. Bummer for our friends there, but NZ typically has such crap weather they might not even notice a little cyclone. But then the models changed and showed Freda heading for us.

Brisbane does not have much of a history of cyclones, but I was curious what happens if they do get close. Through a quick search I learned about these storms:

1950 - Tracked to Sydney;

1954 - Crossed at Coolangatta

1963 - Cyclone Annie - Sunshine Coast

1964 - Cyclone Audrey - Travels from the Gulf To Coffs Harbour

1967 - Cyclone Dinah - Damage from Rockhampton to Grafton

1967 - Cyclone Barbara - Coolangatta to Lismore

1967 - Cyclone Elaine - Flooding at Logan/Brisbane

1967 - Cyclone Glenda - Off Brisbane 16 M waves recorded near the Gold Coast

1971 - Cyclone Dorra - Hit at Redcliffe

1972 - Cyclone Diasy - Hits Fraser - with Flooding to the Gold Coast

1974 - Cyclone Wanda - Huge flood in Brisbane

1974 - Cyclone Pam - Crosses 500 km east of Brisbane - was an intense system and caused severe flooding

1974 - Cyclone Zoe – Coolangatta (thinking Coolangatta is a bad place to live)

1984 - Cyclone Lance - Wind damage to the Gold Coast

1990 - Cyclone Nancy - crosses near Byron Bay

1993 - Cyclone Roger - Passed near Fraser - back out to sea before heading towards Southern NSW Brisbane Station records 13.2 waves

1994 - Cyclone Rewa - Passed 100 km out to sea and causes flash flooding

1998 - Cyclone Vale - Passes Brisbane and hits near Grafton

That’s just a sampling—for a bigger picture these are the storms which came within 200km of Brisbane in the past 100 years:

Then I started looking up the impact of each storm. Yes, just one of the many ways I like to terrify myself: looking up storm devastation in Australia over the past hundred years. This place is deadly. Back to Brisbane though--the take away seems to be this: Sometimes storms hit Brisbane, not super often though, but when they do it can be a big freaking deal or not.

The good news is even if Freda stays organized enough to hit us she shouldn't be very big. But just to be safe everyone chant with me: Freda, Freda go away...

Hurricane Frank

So here's the deal. If you follow Frank's track north, you'll pretty much run into us, which means that if Frank sticks to his current projected path that he will also run into us.

If you've ever been run into by a hurricane, or a tropical storm for that matter, you'll know it's not a recommended activity. High wind, heavy rain and storm surge are all bad for boats. And bad for the people who are on the boats.

So this is where it gets interesting. If you look at Frank’s probable track, most of the models have him turning a bit more back to the west and then starting to dissipate. But the thing with hurricanes is they don't necessarily follow the models. Sometimes they do the unexpected and the unforecast. The models can only predict so much. After that it’s just an educated guessing game.

So our plan is to keep monitoring Frank and high tail it north as soon as he starts to worry us. You might wonder why we don’t just go north now, but we’ve arranged to have some of our travel vaccination boosters in Santa Rosalia next week, so our plan was to stick around for those. Also, Rich from Third Day is up in San Diego and is bringing us back a few things—so we’re waiting for him to get back. And because Maia is turning nine in two weeks and we don’t want to get separated from the kid boats before her birthday…

But if Frank continues to make for us, we’ll need to reevaluate. Chances are that even if he did show up, he would be no more that a tropical depression. But hurricanes have been known to do some unexpected things. So we wait and watch, and fit in a little snorkeling and a few boat chores around the edges.

Tis the Season

Hurricane season that is.
From about mid-August through mid-October conditions in the eastern Pacific are conducive for tropical cyclone (aka hurricane) formation. Tropical cyclones are often described as engines that are driven by warm, moist air. For a hurricane to form, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says several factors need to be in place:

1. 80 degree, or warmer, water temperature, which is at least 150 feet deep.
2. A low pressure area with wind disturbance.
3. A lack of stability in the air, which allows clouds to develop.
4. A centrifugal force, known as a Coriolis Force, stemming from the earth's rotation.
5. Moist air, i.e., a thunderstorm, in the lower portion of the atmosphere.
6. Low values (less than about 10 m/s [20 kts 23 mph]) of vertical wind shear between the surface and the upper troposphere. 

Once all these conditions are in place you get a weather report that looks like this:

today's weather report...

 The chance of this particular disturbance becoming more organized is 60%. And if that happens we switch from monitoring it twice a day, to watching it a bit more obsessively, waiting to see if it becomes a hurricane.

If it does become a hurricane we begin to watch its track. Hurricanes move at 10-20 miles an hour; which is quite a bit faster than our 6 knot motoring speed. So our objective is to predict its path and then get the heck out of the way.

Unfortunately hurricanes aren’t that predictable. So if we have any doubt at all about where a storm is going our plan is to move closer to one of the ‘hurricane holes’ in the northern Sea of Cortez. These are natural harbours that are small (to limit wave fetch) and have very small openings. The most popular tends to be Puerto Don Juan--the place where we sat out hurricane Fausto in 1996. But the very fact that it’s popular (despite its isolation) also means it can get really crowded. And being in a crowded harbour during a storm offers its own dangers…

Puerto Don Juan with a handful of boats--during a hurricane, it's packed

For now we are in wait and see mode. I'm trying to make a quick trip back to Vancouver between storm formations--but we never know which formation might have our name on it, so we watch and wait.

Leaving La Paz

 We left La Paz today. After stocking up with everything we thought we might need and finishing as many projects as we could before the heat makes them too difficult, we spent a final couple of days just enjoying the town and getting to know a few more people. Then we hauled up an anchor rode that was growing mussels, filled our fuel tanks and set out.

  The Dockwise boat, loaded up with vessels not making the 'bash' back up to Washington and BC. These boats are going home after months or years of cruising.

We’ve hit the point in the cruising season where those who are going elsewhere have gone, those who are heading home are on there way and those who are leaving their boats and heading to cooler climes are packing up. The heat is rising, hurricane season is beginning to seem more real, and our numbers are dwindling.

 The goo on our anchor chain tells us it's time to go

The good part is we’re almost done with goodbyes for the summer. Pretty much from here on out, the boats we hang out with will be the ones who are summering up in Camp Cortez.

I remember the last time we summered in the Sea as one of the most relaxing and magical periods in my adult life. So tonight as we watch the light change on the red desert rocks, and let the red wine seep in, it’s hard not to feel just a little excited.

The fact that a manta ray just came by to greet us only adds to the pleasure.

 

Trying To Reason With Hurricane Season

The Eastern Pacific Hurricane season starts tomorrow (May 15) and pretty much on schedule the weather report shows a tropical wave has formed. For those who asked, we are indeed spending the summer in a hurricane zone, and as the water heats up (and the season heats up) we'll be making our way north to more protected harbours.

 Historical hurricane tracks-August

This time of year hurricanes don't tend to make it up this way. There have only been two unnamed tropical storms through the area in June. The Baja's earliest Tropical Cyclone was TS Calvine on July 8th, 1993. And the earliest hurricane to make landfall was Hurricane Doreen on August 15, 1977.

 It's September and October we need to watch out for. This is when the water in the Sea has really warmed up and the the jet stream has dropped well down into Baja Sur. By mid-September storm watching will become an important part of our schedule.
The good news (for us) is most hurricane activity happens around Baja Sur. But last year's Hurricane Jimena
reminded us not to take the whole hurricane thing too lightly.