Hurricane Felix was not even a depression until it arrived a few hundred miles east of the Windward Antilles. Behind it is another cyclonic action that could become something 'tropical' once it arrives in the same warm water.

Storms that roll off Africa encounter water that is at New Jersey ocean temperatures. These storms attract no attention until warmer water is found. Warmer water of the Caribbean has created some hurricanes such as Dean - a category 5. But most storms have still continued across Central America to create eight tropical storms and eleven tropical depressions. One even threatened Hawaii.

Unlike 2005, Atlantic water has been cooler. Even the Caribbean and Gulf have been cooler. Current storm track does not even threaten anything north of Cuba. Felix will probably cross Mexico's Yucatan peninsula. Next mid-Atlantic storm is following and probably will be ignored until it also finds the same warm water that energized Felix.

Wow. Only two days ago it was not even a tropical despression. Now Felix is a category five hurricane.

Here's a picture of the hurricane Felix eyewall, at night, by moonlight. It was taken from a plane flown by the Hurricane Hunters at Keesler AFB, MS.
Wunderground has another picture of the eyewall and pictures of the radar. It mentions it was a rough flight and the NOAA plane also took a beating at the Northeast eyewall.

It has been as if God suddenly puts up a wall to protect Florida, or hates northen Georgia. Whereas tropical storms might be five in a season, we now have the fourteenth - tropical storm Noel. Western Atlantic tropical depression has experienced 20 tropical depressions. Eastern Pacific, where most of the potential tropical storms when to, had about as many. Most storms pass over or just north of South America, or veered off like a retired Englishman visiting his home country.

Noel did not get the National Hurricane Center's attention until yesterday when it was just east of the Dominican Republic and was not predicted to intensify. Latest prediction is that Noel will bounce off that invisible Florida wall and head for Bermuda.

http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/tropical/

Where is all the talk about Golbal Warming and the new age of super storms?

Oh, yeah, I'm extremely thankful a partial season worth of data was able to prove the entire theory of stronger storms being produced by warmer SSTs to be wrong. I was getting worried, what with it being the only year for two category fives to make landfall in recorded history.

Pardon me while I relax and move even closer to the coast.

I live 5 miles from open ocean. :D

Noooo... you have me beat me by one mile!

One mile makes a difference, right? :unsure:

http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/east/tatl/wv-l.jpg

http://hurricane.methaz.org/tracking/

Which is better? One mile closer or one mile farther inland?

The correct answer is: "Ohio"

lNoel is an overachiever. He became a hurricane tonight. He may even skirt closer to Cape Cod. A November hurricane in another season that has seen something we rarely ever saw category five hurricanes - and multiple.

This year, even Shanghai was threatened by a massive hurricane that fortunately verged off by something like 100 miles. That would have been equivalent to a category four striking NYC. There are no plans for hurricanes of that size striking the American mid east coast. Its just not suppose to happen.

Noel may be the end of this thread. Nobody expects hurricanes in November. It just never happened. And more than one category five in a decade? Almost unheard of.

God's hurricane wall around FL appears to have worked this year.

at least noel provided some late season and much needed rains. we're still on water restrictions here.

Apparently god loves to tease N and W Georgia, Tennessee, and central North Carolina. Put what they need a few hundred miles away. Hold Noel out there like a carrot on a stick. Bad Noel. Is there ever a good hurricane?