HURRICANE SEASON 2005

HERE COMES RITA!

This year's fast-forming hurricanes buck trend, puzzle meteorologists

By Robert Nolin
Staff Writer
Posted September 20 2005
This year, hurricanes just aren't acting like they used to. The major storms are bucking traditional patterns by forming in the western, rather than eastern, Atlantic Ocean. Instead of taunting worried residents for days, they materialize, it seems, overnight.

The trend has baffled scientists and ratcheted up panic levels for South Floridians. "It's crazy," said Robin Wagner, 45, of Hollywood. "They come so quick. With Katrina, before we knew it, it was on us." Hurricane Katrina swept through Broward and Miami-Dade counties last month as a Category 1 storm -- a scant two days after developing in the Caribbean. Storms typically come to life in the far eastern Atlantic Ocean, often near Cape Verde, then pinwheel westward for several days, their ultimate course studied with dread speculation by those in its path. This year's nine hurricanes have formed west of 55 degrees longitude, said meteorologist Jim Lushine of the National Weather Service in Miami-Dade County. Rita, for example, was but a soggy blob hardly worthy of notice on Saturday night. Sunday morning, it was a threat. A speedy arrival can bedevil nervous homeowners, but overall it's a good thing. "By forming farther west, they don't have quite the potential for strength as if they came all the way across" the ocean, Lushine said. "It hasn't had enough time to build up." Hurricanes feed on warm water, but West Atlantic storms don't stick around long enough to be energized by the Caribbean's tepid currents. Like Katrina -- and Rita's expected track -- they can brush by or through Florida as weaklings, then spin into the Gulf of Mexico and bulk up into highly destructive Category 4 or 5 storms. Why this season's storms are appearing so far west is a matter of speculation for forecasters. Chris Landsea, a meteorologist with the National Hurricane Center in Miami-Dade, said, "It's not something we predicted, and I'm not sure it's something we can anticipate way in advance."

It would appear that the Hurricane Season 2005 will be one to remember.