Dean is done, man...

With last night offering the last advisory for Tropical Depression Dean, I guess I should briefly update everyone with what happened, or did I already write about that??? Well, Hurricane Dean was an extremely impressive hurricane. He made landfall in the Yucatan Peninsula as an intensifying category 5 hurricane, the 1st Atlantic Basin Hurricane to make landfall since Hurricane Andrew devastated southern Florida. As predicted, Hurricane Dean's movement through the Yucatan Peninsula took a lot out of him, and by the time he was ready to emerge on the other side into the Bay of Campeche, he was reduced to a category 1 hurricane with 85mph winds. Though the environment there wasn't conducive for rapid development, as it had been in the western Caribbean Sea, he was able to reorganize enough to become a category 2 hurricane by the time he made his second landfall in Mexico near the town of Tecolutla. The mountanous terrain that Mexico has to offer quickly made mush of Dean. Quite a monster of a storm though.

As for the area formerly known as Invest 92L... it is no more. The showers associated with that wave have now... DIMINISHED. There is one wave which is described as:

TROPICAL WAVE IS FROM 29N76W ACROSS THE N BAHAMAS AND CUBA NEAR 22N79W TO JUST OFF PANAMA NEAR 10N80W MOVING W 15-20 KT. VERY BROAD HIGH AMPLITUDE WAVE WITH A WELL DEFINED INVERTED-V CURVATURE AND A SMALL LOW LEVEL ROTATION NEAR THE BAHAMA ISLANDS IN THE W ATLC.

They haven't even given that one a number.

After I was in bad last night, I saw some flashes of light, but I am sure it was after midnight, and I was snug like a bug in a rug, so I did nothing about it but enjoy the flashes of light through my mini-blinds and sheers. Then, this morning, as I stepped outside, I noticed that there were some dark clouds to my northwest. Mini-Dew asked, "Is there a thunderstorm coming?" I hadn't known ( I wasn't the only one caught off guard by this one).

THIS WAS ONE OF THOSE NIGHTS THAT NO ONE SAW COMING. AN MCSDEVELOPED LATE WEDNESDAY EVENING AND PROPAGATED SOUTHWARD ACROSS SOUTH CENTRAL AND SOUTHWEST GEORGIA...PRODUCING A TREMENDOUS AMOUNT OF LIGHTNING...VERY HEAVY RAIN...AND SEVERAL STRONG WIND GUSTS. NONE OF THE MODELS INITIALIZED THIS SYSTEM AND WE ARE STILL NOT SURE HOW IT WAS TRIGGERED AND WHY IT HAS MAINTAINED ITSELF FOR
SO LONG DURING THE NIGHTTIME HOURS.

When I had the opportunity to check the radar, I noticed that, in fact, there was a significant MCS drifting by to my west... pretty interesting little feature... out of nowhere. More to come today, as the guys are saying that scattered showers and thunderstorms WILL develop today... especially this afternoon. Then, in the days ahead, the weather should be returning to more climatologically expected weather... with scattered afternoon and evening thunderstorms each day. I've been missing thunderstorms (as has my well, as evidenced by the trickle of water)... so this will be a nice change. If they are timed right, I might be able to chase a couple. I can try, once again, to capture my elusive lightning shot... a really awesome one, I mean. I got this joke from a church friend...

It's so dry in the South that the Baptists are starting to baptize by sprinkling, the Methodists are giving out wet-wipes, the Presbyterians are giving out rain checks, and the Catholics are praying for the wine to turn back into water!

Now that is DRY!!

Toodles,
~Dewdrop