Special Story About An Old Friend

A very old friend.

A very, very, very old friend.

Older than all of the 33/40 weather crew added together.

Much older than even that.

Her initials are GOM.

As you have guessed by now, that stands for the Gulf of Mexico.

Friend, you say? Consider Andrew, Opal, Dennis, Katrina and Rita (just to name a few), so how can we call her a friend?

Simply because the Gulf of Mexico has an enormous economic impact on not only the state of Alabama, but much of the Eastern USA east of the Mississippi River. She is a critical source of moisture. Consider this: The Gulf covers about 615,000 square miles. The maximum depth is 17,070 feet in the SW part. The average depth is 5,299 feet. The maximum east-west length is 1,100 miles. The north-south width is about 800 miles.

If you were to consider the longest stretch of the Gulf, from the lower part of the Bay of Campeche to the NE corner near Cedar Key, Florida and transpose that on a U.S. map, if you got in your little boat in Birmingham on the east side of the big pond, you could travel west almost to Albuquerque and still be on Gulf waters. You could travel north from Birmingham on the north-south length to the very upper part of Lower Michigan.

Bottom line: there is a bunch of water in that little fish pond. It has been estimated that the Gulf holds 643 quadrillion gallons of water. It is the ninth largest body of water in the world. The Gulf of Mexico receives drainage from a large percentage of the USA. 41% of the USA land area is drained into the Gulf. Most of it through the Port of New Orleans but a lot also through Mobile Bay and down the Rio Grande. 1,255,000 square miles is drained into the Gulf through the Missouri-Mississippi River network.

SOME HIGHLY UNSCIENTIFIC RESEARCH
When I was still in the National Weather Service and when three of us guys were on the midnight to 8 shift, we used to solve a lot of the world’s problems during our few breaks. We often discussed our old friend, the Gulf of Mexico. We arrived at an estimate of how much of Alabama’s annual rainfall directly comes fromt the Gulf. The general agreement was about two-thirds. Some of our deep “research” was before the time of satellites and radar. I am not so sure it is that high now. For example, some of the rain that falls on Birmingham could even possibly originate as water vapor from a swimming pool in Lincoln, Nebraska (a tiny bit), some off-shore waters from the Carolinas, the Ohio River, a farm pond in Central Texas–you name it. More than you think comes from the Pacific Ocean. But I believe a big chunk of our moisture comes from our old friend.

WILD SPECULATION
I have an overactive, out-of-control, semi-irrational imagination. I have often wondered what would happen if we could load 400 zillion 72-wheeler trucks with rocks and soil and dump it all in the Gulf of Mexico to where there would be no more Gulf of Mexico, what would happen to our climate? I do not know the answer to these questions, but I am sure you do.

1. How much decline in rainfall for Birmimgham? (Our normal annual is now 54 inches.)
2. Would we ever have another hurricane?
3. How much colder would our winters be?
4. Any increase in snowfall?
5. How much would the world sea level rise if we squashed all the water out of the Gulf of Mexico?

THE BLIZZARD OF ’93
I am holding in my Folger’s-stained fingers, some weather maps of the Blizzard of ’93. I can absolutely assure you that a huge volume of water vapor came out of the Gulf of Mexico and condensed in the form of snow to paralyze much of the Eastern Seaboard, including all of Alabama.

(This is just one story in a series. My next one will be about the Blizzard of ’93 and I will list every single official snow depth in the state with that big storm. You may want to save a copy.) Hint: It was not the storm of the century for parts of NW Alabama.

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