Aleria's Adventures

Our driveway this morning shows just how high the water came up last night. Alex has been busy collecting seaweed from the road for the vineyard. Wind speed has dropped as pressure slowly builds from a low of about 984 hPa. Heavy downpours are alternating with brilliant sunshine.  We didn't suffer much, but many homes in the South were without power. Kerry seems particularly hard hit. Our highest wind gust measured 64.8 knots (120 km/h, 75mi/h) and was recorded at 2013h on a sustained base of 35.6 knots. That's also when the barometer hit rock bottom.   

  We are experiencing our first gale in the new season, which is strange indeed. There have been no Atlantic Hurricanes yet, just a couple of tropical storms. But the Pacific has had its share of hurricanes. One, Hurricane Polo, went from Tropical Storm to Cat 5 Hurricane in less than 24 hours. It has now made landfall in Baja California and is expected to wreak havoc throughout the US a week after a nor'easter flooded most of the East Coast.  Hurricane Polo is one of the most incredible tropical cyclones in modern history:   - Went from a tropical storm to Category 5 in ~21 hours - Reached Category 5 intensity three separate times   - Second-most intense eastern Pacific hurricane on record (892 mb)   - Forecast to make the first documented major-hurricane landfall on the west coast of Baja California    - Spent more than 60 hours at Category 5 intensity, an all-time record for the Northeast Pacific - Remnant moisture will bring widespre...

  The daily global average sea surface temperature (SST) has reached a record high, surpassing the previous record set in March 2024. The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) confirmed the record, with a temperature of 21.1°C on 22 August, exceeding the previous record of 21.09°C. The C3S ERA5 dataset extends back to 1979. Although not confirmed yet, the anomaly has gotten even worse, and that's not supposed to happen in September.  It usually happens in Spring.  We haven't had any hurricanes in the Atlantic yet. This is so weird. But it's not unprecedented. In the historical record of the Atlantic Ocean, only two years—1907 and 1914—have featured zero recorded hurricanes. Both 1907 and 1914 occurred long before modern satellite monitoring began in 1966. Meteorologists note that back then, storms spinning out in the open ocean that never hit land or crossed paths with a ship could easily have gone completely unnoticed. Since the dawn of the satellite era, no Atlantic ...

  Russia has routinely been jamming GPS signals already. Today, OCC members shared the Nautical Almanac free to download so that sailors could have access to navigation should the GPS fail. Here it is:  https://thenauticalalmanac.com/   Download it while you can.