Right now there’s a potential tropical cyclone that’s getting ready to tear along the Texas and Louisiana gulf coasts. You may say that it’s hurricane season so it’s to be expected. However, THIS ONE IS DIFFERENT, very different.
How so? Because the tropical depression itself formed down in MExico, almost 200 miles inland and at an altitude of about 5,000 feet, which is something that’s unprecendented in 175 years of hurricane record-keeping.
Check it out:
Source: Zoom Earth
For context, tropical depressions and cyclones almost never form over land.
These systems derive their energy and organization from warm ocean waters, high humidity, and specific atmospheric conditions that are rarely replicated over terrestrial surfaces. In the entire historical record of Atlantic tropical cyclones, true land-based formation remains an extreme meteorological rarity, with fewer than 2% of all documented systems originating over land.
Further, the two notable examples which are frequently cited: Tropical Storm Julia in 2016 and Tropical Storm Beryl in 1988, both formed over coastal areas rather than deep inland: Julia developed near or just as it made landfall along Florida’s East Coast, while Beryl formed over southeastern Louisiana’s coastal zone.
These exceptional cases relied on proximity to oceanic moisture and warmth, rather than purely continental environments.
Call Me a Tinfoil Hatter, But…
Both the timing and formation of this system strike me as exceedingly strange. Given its origin and the current political climate in the United States, a well-guided storm or hurricane hitting the gulf coast (and perhaps disrupting the FIFA World Cup matches in Houston) would serve as a hell of a distraction from international agreements being signed or Trump taking massive flak from both the Democrats and Israel.
As I said, call me a tinfoil hatter, but something doesn’t smell right about this and I’ll be keeping a close eye on what happens next with this thing…
