Chris Mooney is a freelance writer and the author of two books, The Republican War on Science and Storm World.
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Sheril Kirshenbaum is a marine biologist at Duke University. Sometimes she's a classicist, radio jock, or congressional staffer. Never sure what's next, she continues to enjoy the journey...
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Category: Hurricanes
Posted on: July 3, 2008 12:44 PM, by Sheril R. Kirshenbaum
Meet Tropical Storm Bertha:
Chris may be driving across the desert, but he's always got an eye to developing storms and has asked me to post the latest while he's offline.
Bertha has formed in the far eastern Atlantic and according to Jeff Masters, this is the first time we're observing a tropical depression east of 34° longitude in the first half of July. Coincidentally, sea surface temperatures in the area are 2-3°C above average...
More at WunderBlog and from the National Hurricane Center.
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Physical Science
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Comments
There's somewhere on Earth that's still offline??!!
Posted by: Ian | July 3, 2008 12:57 PM
Chris probably felt it would be bad form to drive and post at the same time.
Posted by: Algerine | July 3, 2008 2:20 PM
I'm surprised that "Bertha" was not retired as a name.
Posted by: Greg Laden | July 3, 2008 3:27 PM
Greg, try reading up on Hurricane Gordon of 1994 . Killed 1,122 people, but it hasn't had its name retired yet. Apparently, Haiti (where most of the victims died) never requested the name be retired. (In fact, I can't think of a single storm whose effects were limited primarily to Haiti, which had its name retired.) The US and Mexico of course set the bar lower - but neither has had more than one person die due to cyclone named Bertha.
Posted by: llewelly | July 3, 2008 4:27 PM
Yeah I saw Bertha, and I thought BIG. But the 5day forecast track seems to show this baby turning North soon enough to totally miss land -and never has it becoming a hurricane.
Posted by: bigTom | July 3, 2008 6:16 PM
that storm is quite scary though.
Posted by: bodydetox | July 5, 2008 5:18 AM