Hurricane Felicia hits Category 3; may affect Hawaii next week
As is often the case in an El Niño year, there's nothing to talk about today in the Atlantic, but the Eastern Pacific is very active. It has been 17 years since we went this long without a tropical cyclone in the Atlantic--the hurricane season of 1992 didn't start until August 16--but in the Eastern Pacific, we've already had six named storms this year. Hurricane Felicia is the latest addition, and Felicia has put on an impressive burst of intensification this morning by powering up to Category 3 status with 115 mph winds. Recent satellite loops show that Felicia has continued to intensify, with the cloud tops surrounding the eye cooling as they push higher into the troposphere.
Figure 1. Current satellite image of Hurricane Felicia.
While Felicia is an impressive hurricane now, its days of glory will be short-lived. Felicia is currently passing over a region of warm sea surface temperatures (SSTs) of 28.5°C, a full 2.5°C above the 26°C threshold needed to sustain a hurricane. These warm waters also extend to great depth, as seen on the Ocean Heat Content image (Figure 2). Felicia's west-northwest track will take the storm into a region of cooler waters with lower Oceanic Heat Content beginning tonight, which should induce a steady weakening trend beginning Thursday night. By Friday morning, SSTs should fall to 26°C, and decline to 25°C by Saturday. While wind shear is expected to remain in the low to moderate range over the next five days, 5 - 15 knots, the cooler SSTs should be able to significantly weaken the hurricane. By Monday, when most of the computer models indicate that Felicia will be nearing the Hawaiian Islands, the storm will be at tropical depression strength with top winds of about 35 mph, according to the latest runs of the HWRF and GFDL models. Exactly how close Felicia will get to the Hawaiian Islands is a bit tricky to call right now, since the hurricane is interacting with nearby Tropical Storm Enrique. Whenever two storms get within 900 miles of each other, they tend to rotate around a common center in a dance called the Fujiwhara Effect. This sort of storm-storm interaction is a complicated affair not well-handled by the computer forecast models.
Figure 2. Total oceanic heat content (also called the Tropical Cyclone Heat Potential, TCHP) along the forecast path of Hurricane Felicia. The initial time of the forecast is 06 UTC (1 am EDT) on August 5, 2009. Oceanic heat content of 90 kJ per square cm is often associated with rapid intensification of hurricanes. Felicia is currently over waters with high heat content, but the heat content will steadily decrease over the next two days. Image credit: NOAA/RAMMB.
There are no areas of disturbed weather in the Atlantic worth mentioning today, and no computer models forecast tropical storm development over the next seven days.
I'll have an update on Thursday.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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thanks for answering in regards to the closed low, I wasn't sure , sometimes its clear cut, other times not.Thanks again.
Okay, I googled this before I asked on here but really can not find a good answer.....
what is the cause/why does the quickScat "miss" areas during a pass every so often? I know rain can contaminate the readings, but what I am talking about is when you will see the graphic and it is just devoid of any data for a large swath of area.
OK, here is the best I can give you. The satellite is in a polar orbit. As it orbits, the earth is spinning. With the limited scan width of the satellite, it cannot cover enough of the earth on each pass to give contiguous data, so it misses a swath on each pass. That is why there are blank areas between passes.
What??? Looks like there are some healthy waves lined up along the continent.
ADVANCED DVORAK TECHNIQUE
ADT-Version 7.2.3
Tropical Cyclone Intensity Algorithm
----- Current Analysis -----
Date : 05 AUG 2009 Time : 140000 UTC
Lat : 13:52:33 N Lon : 128:44:57 W
CI# /Pressure/ Vmax
5.1 / 970.9mb/ 92.4kt
Final T# Adj T# Raw T#
(3hr avg)
4.7 5.1 6.6
Latitude bias adjustment to MSLP : +2.9mb
Estimated radius of max. wind based on IR :N/A km
Center Temp : -36.0C Cloud Region Temp : -74.5C
Scene Type : EYE
Positioning Method : SPIRAL ANALYSIS
Ocean Basin : EAST PACIFIC
Dvorak CI > MSLP Conversion Used : ATLANTIC
Tno/CI Rules : Constraint Limits : 0.5T/hour
Weakening Flag : ON
Rapid Dissipation Flag : OFF
****************************************************
That is equivalent to 130 knts
First visible image from Major Felicia.
Impressive!!!!
Also NOAA comes out with their predictions tomorrow, will be interesting to see what they say.
Storm,
any chance for our AOI anymore?
It doesnt say depression, I see the NHC still has Feleicia as a 50 knots TS on Monday
the waters are cool east of Hawaii and many powerful hurricanes have not been able to make the trip without signifcant weakening occuring. Hawaiis' biggest threat is a storm coming from the south, like Iniki in 1992.
The Extreme Hurricanes Team is standing by, but will not travel to intercept a TD.
We'll keep an "eye" on the system for the next few days, and will most likely pull the "no-go" trigger before the weekend, if your forecast holds up.
Much appreciated! :)
Double "ppooff" alert?
Yesterday morning our AOI in the Atlantic looked impressive convection-wise but the vorticity and low level flow was not organized at all...
Today, the vorticity looks more promising - though it still appears to be a bit elongated from west to east - and of course there is a serious lack of convection.
Visible satellite seems to indicate increasing convergence near the eastern small area of convection (near 14N 29W) and I wouldn't be surprised at all to see a flare up sometime in the next 12 hours associated with this. Anything that would flare up would be more promising than yesterday due to low level flow/vorticity
Thank you for this update Dr. Masters
12z
06z
I still think the "experts" at CSU (Klotzbach) hedged their forecast higher to have more continuity with their previous forecasts.
Both their Analogue year forecast and Statistical forecast called for less named storms yet they went with the higher 10? Especially since we haven't seen anything form yet...
And the TSR forecast only looks at ATLANTIC SSTs and trade winds...and doesn't take into account the El Nino in the Pacific...even though the below normal years since 1995 (1998, 2002, and 2006) were all El Nino years!
Remember, this is the EPAC, not the Gulf or Atlantic. This kind of rapid weakening is par for the course in the EPAC.
Your right. We should not count this out until nothing is left of it. Would not surprise me if we got the yellow circle back later today.
What??? Looks like there are some healthy waves lined up along the continent.
Healthy waves? Really? I only see one wave that even looks remotely healthy.
I'm with you on that yellow maybe 12 update
However, Felicia looks like a monster...possible Cat. 4 at 2pm PDT...who agrees?
Not even the one on the right?
I disagree; grew up in South Florida (before all the development) and now live in Tallahassee area......I've fished all over the State and my best memories are on the Coast and fishing in the Everglades (or Bass fishing now in North Florida). Trust me, if you have a decent job (and a boat), it's a great place to live and am always happy to get home.
yep how the the hell did that 1 get there and I did not type that in hmmm??????
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