Pine Island Weather Blog

Tonight at midnight will mark the “official” end of hurricane season. What does this mean in reality? Nothing much really. Mother nature could care less about our arbitrary need to put start and stop dates on her activities. Take a look at the 2005 season for a prime example.

So why do we have and “end” to the hurricane season? A study of the historical record shows that its very rare to see storms develop once we get past November. The same holds true for the “start” of the hurricane season.

The good news is that Hurricane Season 2006 certainly appears to be over and done with and a repeat of the late storms of 2005 is not likely to occur. The bad news, well there really isn’t any for bad news for those of us in SWFL. After the beating we took in 2004 and 2005 it was nice to see a pretty normal, despite the dire predictions, hurricane season.

Over the weekend, if time allows, I hope to summarize the 2006 season and voice some opinions on the media, forecasters, and markets. Until then, it’s time to open the shutters again!

Ernesto has come and gone with very little impact on us here on Pine Island. While other areas of SWFL like Naples saw some significant rainfall, we’ve only seen just slightly less than an inch of rain at our station that can be directly attributed to the system. There are still some bands of rain being pulled off the gulf that should increase those amounts but I don’t think we’ll see anything major.

Our highest sustained winds of 28mph occurred at 3:00pm yesterday. All in all we came through Ernesto with nothing more than a dreary day.

Ernesto managed to maintain its structure very well during its trek across Florida even though it was downgraded to a tropical depression. This is making it a bit easier for the storm to reorganize itself before its next landfall in the Carolinas either late tonight or early Thursday morning. The current intensity forecast does not call for it to regain Hurricane strength, but as history shows, and the NHC admits, intensity forecasting is extremely difficult.

Still at this point, those in the Carolinas should be getting ready. Rainfall amounts are expected to be huge. This may be another case like Floyd where the storm’s intensity doesn’t truly represent its destructive potential.

Ernesto is over land now and heading right up the center of Florida. Current forecasts call for it to continue to turn northward and leave the east coast of Florida somewhere in the vicinity of Daytona Beach/Cape Canaveral.

So far there isn’t much to say about Ernesto’s impact on us here on Pine Island. We’ve had one little rain squall yesterday around 5:40pm that brought us about .10 inch of rain and winds of 20 mph and another little rain event about 11:00pm that gave us another .05 inches of rain.

The radar picture would indicate that some significant rain is on the way but I harken back to 2004 and hurricanes Frances and Jeanne which looked like they were going to give us some pretty heavy rains but produced very little. It wouldn’t surprise me at this point if the same thing happened with Ernesto. Personally, I’m hoping we see some good rains from this event. While much of the island and the mainland have seen significant rains throughout August, the St. James City Rain Shield seems to have been turned back on for us on the south end.

As those of you with children are probably already aware, Lee County Schools are closed today.

On a side note, yesterday was a a busy day for our site. We saw over twice the amount of visitors and page loads that we see on a normal day. I hope that folks are finding the data we’re providing on our main weather site and this blog useful, and that they’re spreading the word to all their friends and neighbors. And don’t be shy about commenting on these articles or providing feedback on the site. I welcome your ideas and input.

The first rain bands from Ernesto are on our doorstep at this hour but we have pretty much good news all around at the 5:00pm updates. Ernesto has not regained very much of it’s strength to this point and it doesn’t have much time to do so before it will be over land again. The central pressure hasn’t really dropped at all and the current maximum sustained winds are 45 mph. The forecast track continues to look favorable for us as well:

While it appears at this point that we’re going to see minimal impact here in SWFL, we are under a Tropical Storm Warning and we should expect some pretty strong winds and heavy rains from time to time for at least the next 24 hours.

So much for my $4-5/gallon gas prediction! Oil prices are down significantly both yesterday and today as the storm track for Ernesto has shifted to take the Gulf oil complexes out of harms way.

In my defense, I was basing my prediction on the forecast track at the time. Proof again that you can’t put much stake in long term forecasting.

Oh well, sometimes the bear eats you.