Hurricane? Maybe. 10/03/2016

General weather systems are fairly easy to track.

For the most part, all we have to remember is that warm, humid air masses move from the Gulf of Mexico to the northeast.  Cool, dry air masses move from northern Canada to the southeast.

Then it is a matter of when and where they will collide.  There are complicated computer programs that track the speed of the air masses, as well as high pressure systems (denser, colder and/or drier air) that can block the movement of the air masses, and low pressure systems (less dense, warmer and/or moister air) that can pull the air masses in.

Usually the computers have the generalities figured out a week ahead, and the specifics a few days before the weather reaches us.

Then there are hurricanes.  Hot, dry, dusty air is swept up from the Sahara Desert by the Easterly Trade Winds and blown out westward over the hot waters of the tropical Atlantic where huge amounts of water are evaporated.  As the water condenses at the top of the clouds, it releases tremendous amounts of energy that fuel more evaporation.

OK, moving west.  But then the storm usually drifts northward through the islands and gets caught by the prevailing westerlies which might blow it back out into the Atlantic.  Or not.  It bounces off high pressure systems and gets pulled by low pressure systems.  It becomes very difficult to predict the path.

From Weather Underground

There are about 2 dozen computer programs that try to predict the movement of hurricanes based on hundreds of variables.   

Here are the predictions for Hurricane Matthew one week out: There is anything from a direct hit over Connecticut to a total miss.  The average of all predictions is that it will brush the coast and give us only rain.  But...