Date added: Saturday September 23, 2006: 1am EST

Helene Finished As Hurricane

New System Has Some Potential

Rita Remembered

Also:

"What a Difference a Year Makes"

By HurricaneNow.com
Chief Correspondent Jeff Flock

Another Storm Dodges Land

Helene is done as a hurricane and pretty much as a tropical system of any kind. The former Category 3 continues racing to the north and east and away from US and any other land. Exactly one year ago, the HurricaneNow team was in Beaumont, Texas bracing for what was also a Category 3 hurricane. What a difference a year makes. Read on below. Meanwhile...

Tropical Wave Could Gain

It's about a thousand miles from the Cape Verde Islands and the tropical wave Invest 99L has potential for some strengthening. There is limited wind shear and warm water in its path. Some of the models take it on a curve to sea fairly soon. Others see the potential for a more westward track that could take it near Bermuda or maybe even farther west. No model yet projects it as a hurricane at any time.

A Word From Correspondent Jeff Flock

"What A Difference A Year Makes"

As I write this it is precisely a year ago to the day that we were bracing in Beaumont for yet another catastrophic hurricane. When we awoke in Texas September 23rd, Rita was a Category 4 storm, with 165mph winds. The day before it had been an incredible Cat 5, the most intense hurricane ever in the Gulf of Mexico, breaking the record for low pressure set by Katrina just three short weeks earlier. Rita ended up coming ashore as a Cat 3 with 115mph winds, actually the worst winds we'd experienced all season given that we were in downtown New Orleans for Katrina.

Rita a Record Hurricane

When the record books were done being updated after last year Rita ended up the fourth most intense storm on record. Wilma broke Gilbert's all-time record low pressure of 888 milibars set in 1988, making it to 882 before it hit Florida. Rita's low point was 895 mb topped only by Wilma, Gilbert and the Labor Day hurricane of 1935 which recorded 892. But Rita had undergone a fierce intensification just a day earlier, recording the greatest one hour pressure drop in history. It looked like as horrible as the catastrophy of Katrina, we were in for what could be an even greater storm in Texas and western Louisiana.

Had the Rules Changed?

It was against this backdrop as well as that of the still growing crisis in New Orleans that we prepared to face Rita. And at t the time we wondered if the hurricane landscape had changed forever. We were dog tired and it was still peak hurricane season. We had already dealt with Cindy, Dennis (a Cat 4) and Katrina so far and didn't even know we'd have another monster in Wilma to come, plus more scares that would take us until the winter to be free of. Most years those of us who love to experience hurricanes are lucky to have a brush or two a season with a landfalling US storm. But as we sat in Beaumont, we wondered when this year would end. Was the intensity and number of Atlantic hurricanes ramping up? Coming off a 2004 with multiple hurricanes hitting Florida, would we ever again have a season where we'd go all year with hardly a landfalling US storm to speak of?

No, Rules Remain

We now have our answer. As incredible as 2005 was and despite all the dire predictions for this year, 2006 has been much more like a normal year than anything else. Thankfully, for those in harm's way, there hasn't been much of a threat to life or property in the US from the hurricane season of 2006. In truth, that's the way most hurricane seasons end up. It hasn't been an incredibly inactive year. Helene was a Cat 3 storm, just as Gordon before it. The main difference that a year has made is that storms with those intensities are not making it to the US coast. If the weather patterns that have been driving storms away from the US mainland had been different maybe we'd have seen a Cat 3 or even 4 Gordon or Helene on the coast of North Carolina or Florida. And maybe we'd be thinking that all the rules we'd learned in 25 years of covering hurricanes had indeed changed. That's not the way this year has shaken out. That's what makes the weather so interesting.

Jeff