Is the NHC Awake First off they should have marked Tammy as a depression before turning into a tropical storm Now the miss Vince as a depression almost a tropical storm but luckily they have it for a hurricane So the questions is Anyone awake at the NHC No Tammy should not have been marked as a depression When it acquired tropical characteristics its winds were already at tropical storm force so it wasn t a depression when the NHC issued its first advisory No they are not sleeping Vince is a remarkable entity that is not something anybody expected to monitor Also keep in mind that like you and me the NHC is not perfect but they do a darned good job Well even if Tammy didn t have tropical characteristics it could have been labeled a suptropical storm As for Vince maybe it s the fact that it s not close to the Western Hemisphere and so no body tends to pay attention Again it s all ethnocentrism at work and you can not question that OK First Tammy didn t have a circulation before it was upgraded but on the morning of whatever day it was visible satellite showed a circulation Since winds were high it could bypass the depression stage Second what if Vince didn t develop any more What if it had well organized convection and it dissipated They said in the outlooks that it would be monitored for more organization and when they upgraded it was better organized They are not sleeping they don t want to upgrade something that might just dissipate What if they upgraded Tammy as a Subtropical Storm but it never got a well organized circulation They would raise hype for nothing Any other storms you have a problem with I think they already admitted they missed Vince I m guessing because it was out in the middle of nowhere they didn t even think to investigate it until the satellite images showed it had clearly taken tropical attributes Okay first I have no problems with storms The NHC has monitored depression even if they don t develop but it s the fact that they could is why they monitor them Unless of course you didn t catch that in their job description I am not shooting down the NHC I am giving them construtivce critism They are after all in charge of informing us about potential dangerous storms So Hurricanehink maybe you should read between the lines To be a tropical cyclone a system must have A closed surface circulation Organized thunderstorm activity and A warm core If the first two conditions are met but the storm lacks a warm core it may be classified as a subtropical storm Tammy was a strong low pressure system but lacked a closed surface circulation until the morning of Oct 5 The NHC had been mentioning it in their Topiclal Weather Outlook bullitens but until it gained a closed circulation they could not classify it as a tropical cyclone You should look at the histories of tropical storms Most tropical cyclones start out as tropical cylones with 25 or 30 kt winds So only minimal strengthenning to 35 kt is needed to have them qualify as a tropical storm As was the case with Tammy it is possible for a system to become tropical when it already has 35 kt or greater winds in which case it immediately is a tropical storm This is not usual but it does happen So I assure you that the NHC was on top of Tammy If there are areas of concern they are the way Vince sneaked up on them and perhaps more so the hurricane that struck Brazil in March 2004 It seems that noone is responsible for the South Atlantic which is unfortuate given that hurricanes while rare there do on occasion happen Then why not mention it as a subtropical cyclone That s the point I m getting to I will assume that you are refering to Tammy Until the morning of 10 5 Tammy lacked a closed circulation and therefore was not a cyclone of either the tropical or subtropical variety Period Whether you approve of it or not the NHC got Tammy right By the way has anyone seen the NHC lately Their graphics seem to end close to Europe and Africa you can see it for wind prob and tracking for Vince This argument is crazy Whoever acused the NHC with being asleep should be ashamed of themselves The guys at the NHC work around the clock to keep us safe Without them hundreds of thousands instead of a thousand would be dead in New Orleans ri