James says:

Hello Levi! I have been watching you for some time now I think since 2011 always lurking never posting. you are the one that got me really interested in hurricane forecast. When I watched a video you did in 2011 i had no clue at all what it is that you was talking about. Mjo, gfs, cmc ,euro which i thought was money lol but you seemed to know what you was talking about and you seemed to break things down for simple poeple like myself lol. I am not a educated man but you made me wanna learn more about weather and how it works. Now to give you some back ground on me i own a company called Hensley Debris Removal. Just getting started on my own this year. I have done storm work since 2005 starting with Hurricane Rita. I operate eqipment that assist in debris removal after hurricanes tornadoes and ice storms. I have seen horriable things in my now 8 years of doing this kind of work Joplin MO maybe the worst i have seen. Poeple always ask me why do you get excited when a hurricane is going to hit America? isn’t it wrong? well i do get excited because of the money that i make i never wish for anyone to be hurt and i never wish for a hurricane anywhere but it happens and there is nothing i can do about it if it does happen. But I do aid the the recovery efforts after a storm and i have had lots of poeple on these jobs thank me offer me water cookies cake beer lol ect. But i wanted to understand more about my job. i wanted to know how all this happens in detail. thank god for google lol. i became a member of a weather forum.. I engaged with conversation with other weather nerds lol like myself. The pro mets in the fourm gave me the tools and pointed me in the right direction in weather basics. I then became addicted sometimes staying up for 2 days waiting for new model runs sat pics nhc updates ect. I learned how to look at weather maps and understand them or at least the basics of understanding them. This addiction to weather that i have has caused problems with me and the wife lol she gets so mad cause i will sit infront of the computer four hours and hours forgetting to eat,take out trash fix things that need to be fix and yes even the alone time with the wife lol. I would rather watch a weather system than have sex with my wife lmao. now when i watch you i know what you’re talking about and sometimes i am way ahead of you. i get angry with you sometimes like last year when you didn’t post much but i also understand that you have a life outside of this. i yell at you often when i think your wrong but then it turns out that your right. i want you to know levi that you have inspired me to learn. I am a low educated red neck from north east Texas and i had almost no computer skills but watching you made me thirst for knowledge. i wanted to know what in the hell you was talking about!! ok so anyways enough about all of that i wanna talk weather… I am a big follower of the gfs and the 00z GFS seeems to be supporting Caribbean action starting May 22ish. This MJO wave is being enhanced by westerlies that have recently been aided by the mountain torque events (+AAM). Two things usually happens as a result, first is the wave is stronger than what the models predicted a couple of weeks ago and second the MJO is very likely to continue its progression into the western hemisphere instead of weakening once it crosses the Pacific into the Americas as it usually does due to these enhanced westerlies as currently being forecasted by the globals. I am just not sure why, but something about the particularly strong 200mb wind flow just seem “off”. I think more than anything, I just don’t seem to recollect any recent past Spring seasons as having these winds so consistently spanning what seems like the entire Gulf region, across the Greater Antilles and Caribbean, and practically continuing almost all the way to Africa. Even during prior El Nino years we would see quite strong Westerlies, but strong as this upper shear seemed to be, those winds would moderate in intensity as that flow started exiting the Caribbean. I believe in those years with “El Nino” originating Westerlies, those winds would eventually interact with either an East Coast trough/TUTT condition, or maybe an oscillating mid-Atlantic trough that seemed persistently anchored in the W. Central Atlantic. Either way, even under those hostile upper air circumstances there would seem to be some downstream difluent conditions where those Westerlies eventually were shunted more pole-ward and an outflow channel would be created (if an active tropical wave were in the area to take advantage).I very well realize that this is early May, but it just seems odd to me that the present upper level winds seem almost trapped within the sub-tropics latitudes and at present have nowhere else to go but as “East as far as the eye can see”. More than likely this deviant flow will just give way to the eventual Easterly surge of ridging that would typically build Westward over the summer. Anyway you look at it though, I just cant see anything near term other than hostile wind shear conditions. These persistent upper air conditions do not look to change anytime in the foreseeable future. So if that were the case, it just wouldn’t seem to matter what “alphabet soup” might be projected to surge in “our side of the bowl”. These hostile conditions would seem to disrupt tropical genesis from occurring. While a late May or early June depression or even weak storm could well occur, I would bet against it at least until it was evident that some low latitude ridging was occurring somewhere. What are you thoughts on this? And what kind of true affect will the mjo have on these winds. Thanks Levi and I hope to hear from you.