National Hurricane Center doesn’t follow grieve steps, skips depression

While denying the anger they felt discussing traveling across the Atlantic alone, as the tropical wave they studied had done, National Hurricane Center meteorologist bargained about naming Tropical Storm Earl. during the grieving, they skipped depression, and moved on to acceptance. Today, The National Hurricane Center issued a special statement and forecast around noon eastern time alerting the public to the new Tropical Storm.

They finally accepted the storm as one.

Forced, and very corny, tongue-in-cheek jokes aside, while the NHC never tagged it as a Tropical Depression, this isn’t terribly uncommon. The NHC was struggling to find a closed center of lower-level circulation.  The convection – and, more importantly, wind speed – likely met the criteria for a tropical depression yesterday, but it didn’t have the centralized circulation, so it couldn’t be given a TD-xx insignia.

From the 8am NHC Statement:

... and a tropical storm will likely form later today. An
Air Force plane is enroute to investigate the wave and determine if
a closed circulation has formed. Regardless of tropical cyclone
formation, the wave is already producing winds of 40 to 45 mph...

But now that there is an area of circulation, and the wind speeds are more than 40mph, it is given a name.

Current stats:

Center Location – 16.3 N, 80.2 W
Movement – W at 22mph
Max Winds – 45mph

12pm Advisory from the NHC // Courtesy: NOAA

Notice that Tropical Storm Warnings are in effect for the coast of Honduras, Belize, and the south coast of Quintana Roo in Mexico. There is also a Hurricane Watch in effect for those same areas – from roughly Punta Allen, Quintana Roo, Mexico south across the entire coast of Belize to Punta Gorda.

It looks like the coast of Guatemala isn’t included. But people near Livingston and Puerto Barrios in Izabel, Guatemala. should also be prepared for deteriorating weather conditions.



Author of the article:


Nick Lilja

Nick is former television meteorologist with stints in Amarillo and Hattiesburg. During his time in Hattiesburg, he was also an adjunct professor at the University of Southern Mississippi. He is a graduate of both Oregon State and Syracuse University that now calls Houston home. Now that he is retired from TV, he maintains this blog in his spare time.