We've had a fairly quiet hurricane season so far this year. A few low pressure systems went over Florida north of us, there have been a few storms that went north into the North Atlantic missing Bermuda by large distances, and basically nothing around on September 10th, the peak of the season.
It looks like we're going to have one get closer than anything this year in the next few days. Meet Potential Tropical Cyclone Nine. The winds as of this 8PM map were 35 mph; it shows tropical storm status in six hours at 2AM Sunday, when it will be given the name Imelda.
Thankfully, it looks like nothing but a rain event here south of the Cape. The center of the storm doesn't even look to be a Category I hurricane until it's north of us. Not that a very rainy, stormy day is idyllically wonderful, but it beats stronger storms.
One of the moderators (or founders or both) of the Central Florida Hurricane site I use regularly, who calls himself cieldumort (ciel du mort is French for sky of death), posted this graphic of expected IR brightness temperature on Monday at 1500 UTC (11:00 AM). It's the second to last post on that linked page.
You'll note he says, "parts of the east coast may get some gross weather." We're in the second highest reflectivity colors on the map. As of Friday evening, our detailed forecast from our local NOAA service shows our maximum winds to be 20 mph on Monday afternoon. I'd be less than surprised if that goes up, but it doesn't look like winds to take down the antennas and put up the shutters.
Something about the plot above it worth noting is how the last spot is 24 hours after the second to last, it has barely moved from the previous position and it drops from hurricane to tropical storm. Stalling offshore for practically 24 hours is a sign of perfectly balanced forces and at five days out I have a hard time believing the prediction can be that accurate.
When the storm makes landfall it will help with the drought that the south east is experiencing. https://www.weather.gov/arx/drought
ReplyDeleteWatching closely, as usual. I don't really need any heavy rain here (Mims) after 1.5" the last two afternoons and more expected today. We are supposed to drive to Helen, GA on Tuesday, that might not happen.
ReplyDeleteAfter posting this last night we were in the awkward time interval when only a few "spaghetti runs" done. That starts around the time it gets tagged as an Invest, which was last night. Spaghetti runs are where they take a single group of models and modify all the initial conditions to see how dependent the models are on them. Everything I saw concluded it was going to turn hard right out to sea. The models mostly varied in how far north the storm gets before it turns right. Since the hard right turn would be from a front coming south, that means it's a low pressure system for the counterclockwise winds and you can see it setting up on large scale radar images.
ReplyDeleteMike's Weather page is the place I usually go.
Mike's is also my go to. They hoisted the TS watch earlier today. I agree with the hard right. Our Helen trip is still on as we watch events unfold. It could be a wet trip up 95N.
DeleteThe forecasters have been way off for this season. Glad this one is taking a hard right turn. This time of year, we tend to see storms start up in the western Caribbean or Gulf, come up the east coast of Mexico and sometimes into South Texas. We have had one storm and a couple of "disturbances" this year that did that.
ReplyDeleteI've seen several people saying that they were more concerned about the gulf and especially the area around the Yucatan than the Atlantic's Main Development Region but I think since August, everything has come from the MDR.
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