The Lloyd's Risk Blog » Tropical Storm http://blogs.lloyds.com A blog for Lloyd's Wed, 17 Mar 2010 10:30:33 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=abc en hourly 1 Goodness Grace-ious me! http://blogs.lloyds.com/2009/10/06/goodness-grace-ious-me/ http://blogs.lloyds.com/2009/10/06/goodness-grace-ious-me/#comments Tue, 06 Oct 2009 09:54:38 +0000 Vinay Mistry http://blogs.lloyds.com/?p=924 Monday morning, Tropical Storm Grace appeared as a surprising addition to this year’s named storms. Grace formed at 41.2degN near the Azores Islands. According to some reports this is notable in that Grace could well be the farthest northeast that a tropical storm has formed since the inception of satellite monitoring in the 1960s.

(Tropical Storm Alberto in 1988 formed slightly further north at 41.5degN). Grace is also unusual in that the storm formed over sea surface temperatures of only c23degC. Normally, tropical storms require temperatures in the region of 26-27degC to form and be self sustaining.

Grace looks as though she will bow out today, and transition into an extra tropical storm.

 

]]> http://blogs.lloyds.com/2009/10/06/goodness-grace-ious-me/feed/ 0 Edouard tracks RDS – but is no Allison http://blogs.lloyds.com/2008/08/06/edouard-tracks-rds-but-is-no-allison/ http://blogs.lloyds.com/2008/08/06/edouard-tracks-rds-but-is-no-allison/#comments Wed, 06 Aug 2008 10:56:59 +0000 Paul Nunn http://blogs.lloyds.com/?p=44 Edouard, the fifth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, has just made landfall near Galveston in Texas as a tropical storm. While unremarkable in itself, from Lloyd’s perspective it is interesting to note that the trajectory of Edouard’s track as it approached land is almost identical to the Lloyd’s Realistic Disaster Scenario  (RDS) for the Gulf of Mexico. When we first published the scenario some people commented that the trajectory was unrealistically ‘flat’, so thanks go to Edouard for going some way to validating our choice.

Another storm worth mentioning in connection with Edouard is Tropical Storm Allison. ‘Allison’, also made landfall near Galveston in June 2001, and is notable for being the only storm to have it’s name retired from service without reaching hurricane status. While doing minimal direct damage due to wind speed, Allison stalled, dumped inches of rain, and caused flash floods which resulted in 41 deaths and around $3-5 billion in flood damage. Thankfully Edouard moved on quite quickly and early estimates suggests minimal (under $100mn) losses. 

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