01/16/2011 Florida Winter Tour – Final Orlando, FL From his front row spot Sebastian Ordonez charged to the lead early, leading the event and taking the win and getting a little redemption from Saturday.

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By Alex Sosnowski, Senior Expert Meteorologist for AccuWeather.com
AccuWeather.com reports Nassau, Miami, Key West, Orlando, Melbourne and Tampa will be affected by a tropical system in the coming days.

A weak tropical system cruising through waters between the Greater Antilles and the Bahamas this week will soon spread squalls, beneficial rain and stormy conditions to Florida.

The system, currently a tropical wave, was fighting wind shear to the north and the large land mass of Hispaniola at midweek. Continuing wind shear, Cuba and eventually the Florida Peninsula will work to keep the system weak through Friday. However, this is not to say there cannot be locally damaging thunderstorms and torrential rain in some of these same areas.

The system has the potential to bring squalls, or bands and clusters of thunderstorms, sweeping through the Florida Peninsula, the Keys and Bahamas in the coming days. While the storms will bring beneficial rain to many of these places, there can be flooding and damaging wind gusts at the local level.

Where the squalls hit, there can be several inches of rain in an hour’s time, along with 50-mph wind g[image: Tropical System]usts (tropical storm force).

The leading edge of the squalls will roll northwestward through the Bahamas tonight, reaching Nassau Thursday, Miami and West Palm Beach Thursday evening, Melbourne and Key West Thursday night, then Orlando, Ft. Myers and Tampa Friday.

The squalls can disrupt outdoor plans, ground and air travel, and will pose dangers to small ocean-going vessels. Waves may become rough and dangerous for bathers at area beaches.

The system is likely to remain relatively weak through its life cycle. However, it will have a couple of windows, barring too much interaction with land, to become a depression or tropical storm.

While there is the risk of a sudden pulse with this system the next few days, it will have to be watched as to how it negotiates the warm waters before and after reaching the Florida Peninsula.

Computer models take the system on a general northwest path over the Florida Peninsula and then the warm western Gulf of Mexico over the next 3 to 5 days.

A broad area of disturbed weather will trail this feature, potentially causing downpours, squalls and stormy conditions from Puerto Rico to Cuba, Florida and the eastern Gulf of Mexico through next week.

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In Defense of Animals (IDA) says the death of Taima, a 20-year-old orca who died Sunday while giving birth to her stillborn calf at SeaWorld in Orlando, Florida reinforces IDA’s argument that orcas are unsuitable for life in captivity. The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) must create regulations to prohibit captive breeding and phase out the public display of orcas. Tilikum, a six-ton orca also held captive at SeaWorld, is the father of Taima’s stillborn calf. Tilikum killed his trainer in February.

Orcas do not thrive in captivity and die decades before their average life expectancy in the wild, which is 80-90 years for females and 50-60 years for males. Most captive orcas die before they reach 20. Over the past 24 years, 23 orcas have died at SeaWorld facilities with 22 of them less than 25 years old. Over the past 44 years, 24 orcas have injured or killed their trainers. Four people have been killed as a result of their public display – zero people have been killed by orcas in the wild.

“Public display of orcas only serves SeaWorld’s corporate need to profit from dangerous and unnatural stunts. It provides no meaningful education about protecting orcas in the wild and their natural habitats,” said IDA President Scotlund Haisley. “As NMFS deliberates changes to the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), new regulations must stop all captive breeding and public display of this species.”

As the largest species in the dolphin family, orcas can reach 28-32 feet in length. At marine parks like SeaWorld, the Miami Seaquarium and Six Flags Discovery Kingdom, they live in tiny, concrete, chlorinated tanks where they barely have enough room to swim a few strokes in any one direction. They use echolocation (sonar) to hunt, communicate and navigate through the ocean. In captivity their sound waves bounce off the walls of their tanks, which must be psychological torture to them.

In permit applications, to comply with federal law, marine parks must emphasize “education,” claiming the display of captive marine mammals will enhance those efforts. “It is time the U.S. elevate its marine conservation ethic and stop exploiting orcas and other marine mammals in captivity for profit,” added Haisley. “SeaWorld should focus their resources on rescuing and rehabilitating sick and injured animals rather than forcing orcas and other marine mammals to perform dangerous and unnatural circus-style tricks for food.”

June 10 is the deadline for public comments to the NMFS regarding revisions of the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) regulations. IDA has urged the public to contact NMFS to phase out marine parks and, until then, create stricter regulations and oversight for facilities with public display permits, and prohibit any further captive breeding or captures of marine mammals from the wild.

For more information and a link to submit public comments, please visit www.idausa.org.

In Defense of Animals is an international animal protection organization located in San Rafael, Calif. dedicated to protecting animals’ rights, welfare, and habitat through education, outreach, and our hands-on rescue facilities in Mumbai, India, Cameroon, Africa, and rural Mississippi.

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