Hurricane Alex!

The first image I pulled up from my iPhone, just after I landed in Jackson, MS today... AWESOME!!!

What a day! I just got back from California about a hour ago, so I'm pretty darn tired... I'll have my full Alex grades tomorrow, but I will say that I'm really proud of my forecast! And I'm not trying to be arrogant at all... Trust me, I'm wrong a lot! I mainly take pride in knowing that I'll always forecast off my own experience, instead of leaning on the models... I follow the models to pick up on the biases/errors... That way I know how to use them! Whether they are right or wrong, I feel like I can at least interpret them in a useful way... Of course it doesn't always work the way you want it to, but most of the time these biases/errors hold a lot of weight! There has to be a human element in forecasting! Like anything in life, if you want to be great, you have to put a lot of time and effort into it! I'm no where even close to great, but I do try to work hard at it everyday!

I can't tell you how tough it was not to watch Alex as closely as I wanted today... I was flying across the country all day, but at least I have an iPhone! Hurricane Alex made landfall as the second strongest June Atlantic basin hurricane by pressure (recorded)! It made landfall in Mexico (Soto La Marina) as a 947mb hurricane... The only stronger June hurricane by pressure, was Hurricane Audrey in 1957... If I remember correctly, Audrey (Category-4) had an estimated pressure of 946mb... So Alex was very close in terms of pressure! It just goes to show that things are primed for a big year! I'll have a VERY thorough/detailed blog post tomorrow... I'm going to hit on why hurricanes making landfall at a perpendicular angle is important, why a strengthening hurricane at landfall is important, and why using experience will almost always beat the models in the long range... I'll also have my hurricane Alex forecast grades, and a few other cool facts/information on hurricanes...

Look at how impressive Alex still looked well over land... I'll talk about this as well tomorrow... By the way, I got these images from tropmet.com! It's a great tropical site that everyone should check out!