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Unfortunately, just in time for the Memorial Day holiday weekend, an area of low pressure off the coast of the Carolinas has developed into Subtropical Storm Beryl, already the season's second named storm.
Wait..."subtropical"? What's that?
Unlike a purely "tropical" cyclone, a "subtropical" depression or storm:
Tends to have more thunderstorm activity farther from its center.
Tends to have its strongest winds farther from the center.
"Subtropical" cyclones have cooler air at any given level in the atmosphere than "tropical" cyclones. They can transition to purely tropical cyclones or hurricanes, but to do so, they'd have to suddenly generate enough thunderstorms wrapping around closer to their low-level center to warm the core of the circulation.
Like Alberto, Beryl won't simply shift east into open waters, but rather meander around the Southeast coast, bringing occasional bands of rain, gusty winds, elevated surf, and a risk of rip currents for parts of the coast at times this weekend.
Tropical storm warnings have been hoisted for parts of the Southeast coast. As we mentioned above, given this is a "subtropical" storm, the strongest winds may arrive in the warned areas well in advance of the landfall of Beryl.
Let's break it down day by day this holiday weekend...
- Saturday: Bands of rain, at times, along the coasts of N.C. and S.C. Strongest winds from Outer Banks spreading southward along S.C. coast. Breezy along Florida's First and Space coasts.
- Sunday: Beryl should come ashore in northeast Fla. or Ga. coast. Bands of rain, thunderstorms possible eastern Carolinas to north, central Florida (apart from typical sea-breeze PM t-storms elsewhere in Florida). Breezy/windy extreme northeast Fla. to eastern Carolinas.
- Memorial Day: Beryl weakens inland over far north Fla. or extreme south Ga. Lighter south-southeast lingering breezes from northeast/east-central Fla. coast to S.C., & N.C. coasts. Lingering showers and thunderstorms, particularly in northern Florida.
(MORE: Your local forecast)
On the bright side...a large swath of the Southeast is suffering from extreme or exceptional drought. Beryl will eventually help deliver some rainfall, but it will take much more rainfall to quench a drought of this severity.
Wait..."subtropical"? What's that?
Unlike a purely "tropical" cyclone, a "subtropical" depression or storm:
Tends to have more thunderstorm activity farther from its center.
Tends to have its strongest winds farther from the center.
"Subtropical" cyclones have cooler air at any given level in the atmosphere than "tropical" cyclones. They can transition to purely tropical cyclones or hurricanes, but to do so, they'd have to suddenly generate enough thunderstorms wrapping around closer to their low-level center to warm the core of the circulation.
Like Alberto, Beryl won't simply shift east into open waters, but rather meander around the Southeast coast, bringing occasional bands of rain, gusty winds, elevated surf, and a risk of rip currents for parts of the coast at times this weekend.
Tropical storm warnings have been hoisted for parts of the Southeast coast. As we mentioned above, given this is a "subtropical" storm, the strongest winds may arrive in the warned areas well in advance of the landfall of Beryl.
Let's break it down day by day this holiday weekend...
- Saturday: Bands of rain, at times, along the coasts of N.C. and S.C. Strongest winds from Outer Banks spreading southward along S.C. coast. Breezy along Florida's First and Space coasts.
- Sunday: Beryl should come ashore in northeast Fla. or Ga. coast. Bands of rain, thunderstorms possible eastern Carolinas to north, central Florida (apart from typical sea-breeze PM t-storms elsewhere in Florida). Breezy/windy extreme northeast Fla. to eastern Carolinas.
- Memorial Day: Beryl weakens inland over far north Fla. or extreme south Ga. Lighter south-southeast lingering breezes from northeast/east-central Fla. coast to S.C., & N.C. coasts. Lingering showers and thunderstorms, particularly in northern Florida.
(MORE: Your local forecast)
On the bright side...a large swath of the Southeast is suffering from extreme or exceptional drought. Beryl will eventually help deliver some rainfall, but it will take much more rainfall to quench a drought of this severity.
Well, looks like my Memorial Day weekend is about to be pretty shitty. Oh well, we need the rain anyways.
I live in Southeast GA so Tropical Storms and Hurricanes aren't a rare thing here. I have been living here in 1996 so we have had some scary brushes with these things before.
First big one came in 1999. Hurricane Floyd was a fucking monster of a storm with 155 MPH/~250 KPH sustained winds off the coast, pretty much all of the east coast got some of it, even reaching into Canada at a point. To this day, it remains the only time where we were under a mandatory evacuation order from the government, they even completely shut down the Naval base here and just left basically. We went to stay with some family friends in a suburb of Atlanta and the rain bands even got close to reaching them. Luckily though, all the worst weather was on it's east side so we dodged a huge bullet. When we drove back I couldn't even believe we had a hurricane pass through as there was no obvious damage and my neighborhood was pretty much untouched.
North Carolina wasn't as lucky. Floyd weakened luckily but it was still a Category 2 Hurricane when it made landfall in Cape Fear. Extensive flooding led to overflowing rivers; nearly every river basin in eastern North Carolina reached 500 year or greater flood levels.
![[image loading]](http://www4.ncsu.edu/~nwsfo/storage/cases/19990915/floyd.vis.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://amdar.noaa.gov/docs/floyd/floyd-15-Sep-1345.jpg)
Oh, hi Canada. Whats that? you don't get hurricanes? Think again motherfucker.
In 2004, We had Hurricane Jeanne get pretty close to us, just got mostly rain though along with a good number of tornado warnings close to us.
2005 was the record breaking season and most Americans would know, but luckily we didn't get much other than a shitload of stress at all this hurricanes coming our way, it was ridiculous.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/h0IYX.png)
Path of Hurricane Jeanne.
Guess I didn't need to make such a long post but I felt like typing I guess, hope some people found it interesting anyways.
Now we have this Subtropical Storm Beryl coming at us and looking at the path of it, we will be getting hit head-on by it, just hope it doesn't strengthen all of a sudden. Looks like the weather is going downhill towards the end of the weekend. If any other TLers are in the area, stay safe guys.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/QHljF.jpg)
