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Tropical system stirs Web bluster

A low pressure area may or may not become a storm, but breathless bloggers are happy to guess.

By CRAIG PITTMAN
Published June 9, 2006

The first tropical storm of the 2006 hurricane season may be forming in the Caribbean Sea, but a storm of a different sort already has developed on the Internet.

While meteorologists closely watch a low-pressure system near the Yucatan Peninsula, a growing legion of weather bloggers has posted theories about whether this could become the first hurricane to hit the United States this year.

“They’re all very abuzz about this — maybe out of all proportion to what’s going on,’’ said Jack Beven, a meteorologist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

The low pressure system could become a tropical depression today and bring rainy weather to the Tampa Bay area by Sunday.

Hurricane season started June 1. Anyone familiar with what Hurricane Katrina did to Louisiana and Mississippi last year, or what damage was done by the four hurricanes that hit Florida in 2004, knows to keep an eye on weather conditions in the Gulf of Mexico.

Now, besides the usual TV and radio updates, weather blogs such as www.thestormtrack.com and flhurricane.com are blaring out warnings on the Web.

Some of the blogs are put together by qualified meteorologists, while others, such as irishtrojan.com, are the work of amateurs with no formal training. The irishtrojan.com blog is run by a 24-year-old University of Notre Dame law student and self-professed “weather nerd’’ named Brendan Loy.

On Wednesday, Loy looked through the various official computer models and on his blog asked, “Will there be a tropical storm in the Gulf of Mexico this weekend?’’

By Friday the answer was: Not yet. The low-pressure system was still poorly organized, although the National Hurricane Center reported that “a tropical depression could form at any time.’’

U.S. Air Force reconnaissance aircraft will fly out to investigate today, Beven said, and that will help forecasters predict what could happen next.

“I’m pretty confident it will be our first depression,’’ said Ben Nelson, Florida’s state meteorologist.

A depression is a tropical cyclone with maximum sustained winds near the surface of less than 39 mph. Only if the winds exceed 39 mph does it become a named tropical storm. Winds must reach 75 mph before it is classified as a hurricane.

Both Beven and Nelson said the system reminds them of Tropical Storm Arlene, which formed under similar circumstances this time last year. Arlene was “sloppy and disorganized,’’ Beven said, and as it headed north through the gulf it dumped a lot of rain on Florida, — something the state could use right now after months of drought.

Late Friday Mike Cornelius, on the flhurricane.com Web site, was already predicting that the depression could turn into a weak tropical system that “could bring a good soaking to parts of Florida.’’

But Cornelius, the administrator of the Web site, is no meteorologist. He’s a computer programmer in Maitland. His Web site serves as a forum for other weather enthusiasts, and as of Friday evening the topic of “Western Caribbean Disturbance’’ had already attracted more than 100 responses.

Weather-watching became a popular pastime after the movie Twister made storm-chasing seem like a glamorous pursuit, and blogs about the weather began to proliferate after Hurricane Katrina turned into a nationally televised tragedy last year, said Jesse Ferrell, who runs a blog on the AccuWeather Web site.

“Katrina really invigorated the weather enthusiasts out there,’’ he said.

Ferrell said he has been blogging on weather topics “since before anyone called it blogging.’’ In 1997 he set up an online weather-watchers organization that grew to include 10,000 amateurs and professionals and was ultimately taken over by AccuWeather. He’s one of 17 AccuWeather meteorologists who have a blog, he said.

Some weather blogs seem to be cut-and-paste jobs that merely pass along the latest official advisories, he said. But the ones run by trained meteorologists can be interesting to read, he said, because they may be more willing to offer opinions and theories when they’re online.

Still, most bloggers themselves caution readers not to rely on their predictions but instead stick to the official sources.

The official sources agree. After all, noted Nelson, the state meteorologist, a couple of years ago a blogger “accused me of having my job because of nepotism.’’

Actually Nelson the state meteorologist is not related to Bill Nelson, Florida’s senior U.S. senator.

Staff researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this story.

[Last modified June 9, 2006, 22:15:31]