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What We’re Tracking

This Caught My Eye

In baseball, it’s often said, “Nobody bats a thousand,” meaning no baseball player gets a hit every time. The same holds true in hurricane season. Over the past week, we had been tracking an area of low pressure between Africa and the Lesser Antilles, dubbed Invest 96L. Its persistence eventually prompted the National Hurricane Center to assign a high chance of development in its tropical weather outlook.

Its northward curl into the central Atlantic happened as expected, but this disturbance never developed. That was despite some computer models last week suggesting it would become at least Tropical Storm Emily.

Invest 96L was a classic illustration that ocean water temperatures, despite being the warmest in at least 40 years, aren’t the be-all and end-all for development. You also need a cooperative atmosphere. Dry air, then wind shear — nemeses of tropical cyclones common early in the hurricane season — refused to allow this disturbance to maintain concentrated, persistent thunderstorms needed to form a tropical depression.

This is something we’ll watch this season. El Niño hasn’t yet flexed its muscles on the tropical Atlantic weather pattern. But stronger El Niños usually produce stronger wind shear and sinking, dry air near the Caribbean Sea. So while we’re headed into the hurricane season’s busiest time of year, don’t be surprised if a few other systems like this swing and miss.

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Weather Words

Because the lightning happens within the clouds, the flash is softened and appears more as a glow rather than a harsh lightning bolt. The widespread glow is called “sheet lightning.” Though less recognizable, cloud flashes outnumber cloud-to-ground lightning flashes in most cases.

THURSDAY THINK

Your Home, Your Neighborhood And Your Heart

#OTD

Nautilus Cmd. W.R. Anderson addressed a handwritten letter to first lady Mamie Eisenhower, who had christened the sub at its launch in 1954, saying, “It is my hope that Nautilus will always serve as a tribute to our country and to you. I shall feel that you were very near to us when I sign this letter within seconds after passing under the North Pole.”

The highly secret military operation dubbed “Operation Sunshine” began Aug. 1 when Nautilus submerged in the Barrow Sea. The crew did not surface until Aug. 7 having transited the geographic North Pole beneath the polar ice pack, nearly reaching Greenland. A government fact sheet remarked that when the submarine was at the North Pole, more people were gathered there than ever before in history — 116 in total. Nautilus was the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine, which allowed for longer periods of submersion.