Kevin Myatt is The Roanoke Times' weather columnist.

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TROPICAL STORM IVAN

HURRICANE JEANNE

Didn't we kill off Ivan in the last scene? Didn't we send Jeanne off the set somewhere?

Yes, and yes. But they're both back, and threatening to make landfall in the U.S. in what is becoming by the day an even more ridiculous and devious tropical season.

First, let's clear up this Ivan mess. Or, let's muddy the waters a bit more.

On Tuesday, I wrote that Ivan had been split in two. One piece went northeast, blending in with a cold front; the other piece went south, a non-descript mass of clouds and showers.

The southbound piece drifted across the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida, then turned west again. Once in the Gulf of Mexico, it began to circulate again, and by Wednesday, it had regained true tropical depression characteristics.

So, what to call it? Was it enough of Ivan to give it back its old name? Or was it a new entity that would be called Matthew if it became a tropical storm?

Hurricane forecasters argued among themselves, then issued this statement Wednesday evening:

"After considerable and sometimes animated in-house discussion of the demise of Ivan . . . the National Hurricane Center has decided to call the tropical cyclone now over the Gulf of Mexico Tropical Depression Ivan. While debate will surely continue here and elsewhere . . . this decision was based primarily on the reasonable continuity observed in the analysis of the surface and low-level circulation."

Just to clear up one point of possible confusion, tropical depressions — with winds of 39 mph or less — don't get names unless they've already been tropical storms or hurricanes. A newly formed tropical depression will just get a number after it, but if a named Tropical Storm X weakens, it becomes Tropical Depression X. So once forecasters determined that the Gulf storm was a depression, the next step was to decide if it would in fact be named Ivan. If not, it would have garnered a number and been considered an entirely new system.

Later Wednesday evening, the system's winds hit 40 mph, and Tropical Storm Ivan was reborn 6 days after it had last been a tropical storm, more than 4 days after it had been noted as any kind of meaningful entity.

Controversy abounds in weather circles about the decision to re-apply the Ivan moniker to the Gulf system.

Hurricanes have gone inland, weakened, and re-emerged and re-strengthened before. In 1998, Hurricane Danny came ashore very near where Ivan did, though much, much weaker. Danny moved northeast over the southern U.S., weakening beyond tropical recognition. Then, it started regaining strength over the Carolinas. Before Danny was offshore in southeast Virginia, it was a tropical storm again, and gained its name again.

Even this season, Tropical Storm Gaston of Richmond flooding fame squatted to an apparent demise inland, then got recharged as it headed out to sea and regained its tropical characteristics and its good name.

But it's a stretch to say that what is now called Ivan is the same Ivan that devastated the Alabama-Florida border last week. There has been no continuous surface circulation in the intervening days between when Ivan was declared dead late Saturday and its alleged rebirth on Wednesday. True, today's Tropical Storm Ivan is formed from a piece of last week's Hurricane Ivan, but it's not really the same swirl, and it's the swirl that makes the hurricane, not just the clouds and rain.

So perhaps this is more Ivan Jr. than the original Hurricane Ivan that terrorized us last week. Facing shear aloft and imminent landfall, Ivan Jr. will only be a chip off the old block and barely stir the trees when it comes ashore in Louisiana or Texas Friday or Saturday.

Meanwhile, Hurricane Jeanne has done its own loop and, after being written off as a U.S. threat early this week, is now again a possibility to strike the Southeast coast this weekend, maybe even Florida. Jeanne almost died over Hispaniola, the island that includes Haiti, where thousands died in the floods it caused.

So Jeanne is the real comeback story, though Ivan will be the one that's debated for years to come.