Hurricane Season 2007 #1

Andrea Winds speeds up Wildfires in Georgia and Florida

Winds from the first named storm of the year fanned wildfires in Georgia and northern Florida on Wednesday, more than three weeks ahead of the official start of the Atlantic hurricane season.

Subtropical Storm Andrea, with maximum sustained winds of 45 mph (72 kph) and higher gusts, was centered about 135 miles southeast of Savannah, Georgia, and about 115 miles northeast of Daytona Beach, Florida, as of 11 p.m. ET on Wednesday, forecasters said.

Tropical storm-force winds extended outward up to 105 miles from its center, mainly to the east.
Forecasters had described Andrea as "meandering" throughout the day, but late Wednesday said it was nearly stationary and that no significant motion was expected in the next 24 hours.

A tropical storm watch was issued for the Southeastern U.S. coast from Georgia's Altamaha Sound south to Flagler Beach, Florida, the weather service said.

A tropical storm watch means that tropical storm conditions are possible within 36 hours.

A previous forecast warned of dangerous surf conditions along the coasts of North and South Carolina as well as Georgia and northeastern Florida.

The storm is expected to bring a total of 1-2 inches of rain along the coast, with isolated maximum amounts of about 3 inches in some rainbands, forecasters said.

Rain will be welcomed in southern Georgia and northern Florida, where drought conditions have contributed to wildfires. In fact, Andrea's winds were making things worse Wednesday.

"Our forestry firefighters think they have [one fire] contained, and then these winds blow an ember a mile away and start a fire over there," said Terence McElroy, a spokesman for the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, who declared a state of emergency in the state May 3 because of the drought and wildfire danger, deployed the National Guard to help contain the blazes.

Wednesday, he traveled to several areas where 220 wildfires are burning 80,000 acres (32,370 hectares), hoping for Andrea to bring much-needed rain.

"I just hope it's wet. I want it to be wet, and I want it to come in here. I want it to come in as soon as it can," he said.

Fires are burning in 54 of the drought-ravaged state's 67 counties. Florida officials issued recommendations on Wednesday advising residents to stay indoors whenever possible to avoid the smoke drifting across the state.

Since the beginning of the year, 2,139 fires have burned more than 195,000 acres (78,900 hectares) in Florida, according to the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services Web site.

In south Georgia, more than 156,000 acres (63,000 hectares) have burned in four counties.

The biggest fire, in Ware and Charlton counties, began April 16 when a power line went down. Schools were closed Wednesday in Charlton County.

Mandatory evacuations have been issued for about 300 homes in the town of Moniac and 20 homes in Davis.

Arson investigators were still looking for a black, extended-cab, late-90s Chevrolet pickup truck driven by an arson witness, officials said.

Subtropical storms differ from tropical storms in some technical characteristics relating to wind and temperature, according to the National Hurricane Center's Web site.

Hurricane season begins June 1. (CNN)

Subtropical Storm Andrea

The circling clouds of an intense low-pressure system sat off the southeast coast of the United States on May 8, 2007, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image. By the following morning, the storm developed enough to be classified as a subtropical storm, a storm that forms outside of the tropics, but has many of the characteristics—hurricane-force winds, driving rains, low pressure, and sometimes an eye—of a tropical storm.

Although it arrived several weeks shy of the official start of the hurricane season (June 1), Subtropical Storm Andrea became the first named storm of the 2007 Atlantic hurricane season. The storm has the circular shape of a tropical cyclone in this image, but lacks the tight organization seen in more powerful storms. By May 9, the storm’s winds reached 75 kilometers per hour (45 miles per hour), and the storm was not predicted to get any stronger, said the National Hurricane Center.

Though Subtropical Storm Andrea was expected to remain offshore, its strong winds and high waves pummeled coastal states, prompting a tropical storm watch. The winds fueled wild fires (marked with red boxes) in Georgia and Florida. The wind-driven flames generated thick plumes of smoke that concentrated in a gray-brown mass over Tampa Bay, Florida. Unfortunately for Georgia and Florida, which are experiencing moderate to severe drought, Subtropical Storm Andrea was not predicted to bring any significant rain to the region in upcoming days, according to reports on the Washington Post Website.

quote:

Op donderdag 10 mei 2007 23:09 schreef annatopia het volgende:
Ja jij bent gek weet je wel hoe koud dat, dat is. maar eerlijk is eerlijk het is al erg genoeg

hoezo 'koud' ?

quote:

Op vrijdag 11 mei 2007 11:17 schreef SpeedyGJ het volgende:

[..]

Westen winden zorgen altijd voor frissere licht
[..]

Kan zijn, maar zo'n orkaan wordt mede gevoed door warm zeewater...dus voordat dat hier gerealiseerd is, vraag ik me af hoe koud het dan nog is.. dan gaat immers alles op zijn gat toch?

Andrea still not reformed
May 13, 2007 - 2:25 AM UTC (subtract 4 hours for EDT - StormTrack)

As a quick update, the remnants of Andrea have still not reformed into a tropical depression. Flares of convection have been continuously firing up and subsiding all day long. Once again, if Andrea can sustain convection in one spot and organize a bit more at all, she will regain tropical depression status.

Vietnam krijgt er ook eentje voor de kiezen

quote:

Op maandag 14 mei 2007 15:41 schreef highway101 het volgende:
Vietnam?

Bangladesh/Myanmar(Burma) en India bedoel je

CNN meldde Vietnam, nam het klakkeloos over
maar je hebt gelijk