Little change to Erika; Jimena makes landfall as a Category 2 hurricane
Tropical Storm Erika remains weak and disorganized, and the future track and intensity of the storm remain highly uncertain. The center has jumped several times over the past 12 hours, and now lies exposed to view, west of the main area of heavy thunderstorms. Radar animations out of Martinique show little organization of the echoes, and satellite imagery shows no low-level spiral bands or upper-level outflow. Wind shear analyses from the University of Wisconsin diagnose a moderate 10 - 15 knots of shear over Erika, a decrease from yesterday. SSTs are warm, 29°C. The Hurricane Hunters are in the storm now, and have found a slight increase in the surface winds, up to 45 mph. They noted that the surface center was displaced 12 miles north of the center they found at 1500 feet, which is the sign of a disorganized storm undergoing wind shear.
The forecast for Erika
Erika is embedded in a weak steering current pattern, and the storm's current state of disorganization is allowing the center to make random jumps as it reforms near the heaviest thunderstorm activity. This makes for a low-confidence forecast. The future track of the storm will depend upon how strong the storm gets over the next few days. A stronger Erika will extend higher into the atmosphere and be steered more to the northwest by upper-level winds. A weaker Erika will be steered more by the low-level winds, which will keep the storm on a more westerly track. The intensity forecast models did a poor job with Tropical Storm Danny last week, and appear to be repeating that poor performance with Erika. All of the major intensity forecast models predict substantial strengthening of Erika. This seems unlikely to occur, given the storm's current disorganization, and the predicted increase in wind shear along the path of Erika to 20 - 25 knots 3 - 5 days from now. The more southerly than expected track of the storm also brings the possibility that Erika will encounter the high mountains of Puerto Rico and Hispaniola. The GFS, GFDL, and Canadian models predict Erika will pass near Puerto Rico on Friday, then move over Hispaniola on Saturday. Erika in its current weak state would probably not survive an encounter with these islands. A wide range of scenarios is still possible for Erika, from outright dissipation (as forecast by the GFS, Canadian, and ECMWF models) to intensification to a Category 3 hurricane (as forecast by the HWRF model). Erika is a long-term threat to the Bahamas and U.S. East Coast if it is still around five days from now. Potential landfall locations range from Florida on Tuesday to North Carolina on Wednesday. The NOGAPS model has Erika potentially missing the U.S. entirely, scooting northwards between North Carolina and Bermuda. My current expectation is that Erika will dissipate on Saturday when it encounters Hispaniola.
Figure 1. Afternoon image of Tropical Storm Erika. The swirl of clouds just west of Guadeloupe island is the center. This center was what I had labeled a "false center" in this morning's post, and has taken over as the main center this afternoon.
Hurricane Jimena hits Baja
Hurricane Jimena made lanndfall on Mexico's Baja Peninsula late this morning near Cabo San Lazaro as a Category 2 hurricane with 100 mph winds. Jimena is the 2nd strongest hurricane to hit Baja's west coast since record keeping began in 1949. The only stronger storm was Hurricane Norbert, which made landfall in 2008 on the central Baja coast with sustained winds of 105 mph. Jimena has now weakened to a Category 1 storm, and will continue to weaken as it hits colder waters and interacts with land. No deaths or major damage have been reported from the storm.
Figure 2. Hurricane Jimena on Tuesday, Sep. 1, 2009, as seen by NASA's MODIS instrument. Image credit: NASA Earth Observatory.
California fire webcams
As I discussed in yesterday morning's post, you can use our wundermap for Los Angeles with the fire layer turned on to see where the fire and smoke are located, and track the temperatures and winds during today's air pollution event. We also have two webcams with views of the fire: Altadena and Tujunga.
I'll have an update Thursday morning.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 — Blog Index
Did said poster credit Wikipedia for that definition of an anticyclone? I typed "anticyclone" into wiki and got that exact def, verbatim.
[edited to remove irrelevant content]
alright, thanks!
Det
ummm... thats a straight cut and paste
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anticyclone
yet he does not know when D-MAX starts?
oooh Rah,Later Chicklit
That isn't a JFV/WS-like post. That one actually has info.
Can we consider this whole debate over, please? I would like to see logic and info in the blog again, not mindless drivel about the person who isn't even online right now.
*sigh*
Gonna wait for what HHC has to say at 8 now
WOW
It seems I have been tricked by WS once again.
The area north of the Bahamas and east of the Carolinas also looks pretty juicy for possible development with that stalled front.
Could be a Double-Barrel Solution,..time will tell. Beats watching that Erika thang..LOL
HHC?
trying to pop thunderstorms to cover the center... again...
I have an idea for visualizing the storm center. Take HH data and plot lines perpendicular to the normal flags. Make the length of the lines be proportional to the wind speed. The result will look something like this. The lines all point to the center of circulation.
Multiple centers and insignificant vortexes should be evident this way.
Trademarks and copyrights
Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the not-for-profit Wikimedia Foundation, which has created an entire family of free-content projects. On all of these projects, you are welcome to be bold and edit articles yourself, contributing knowledge as you see fit in a collaborative way.
Most of Wikipedia's text and many of its images are dual-licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA) and the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) (unversioned, with no invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts). Some text has been imported only under CC-BY-SA and CC-BY-SA-compatible license and cannot be reused under GFDL; such text will be identified either on the page footer, in the page history or the discussion page of the article that utilizes the text. Every image has a description page which indicates the license under which it is released or, if it is non-free, the rationale under which it is used.
Contributions remain the property of their creators, while the CC-BY-SA and GFDL licenses ensure the content is freely distributable and reproducible. (See the copyright notice and the content disclaimer for more information.)
I personally apologize for keeping the WS debate alive, however, regardless of who the this new poster is, it is a fact he copied and pasted wikipedia's definition of "anticyclone"...
Its zactly a Year ago..today.
2 Sept 2008
Lotsa Pain in this Image..
Best pray this year Holds back some.
Were all in the slot,5 by 5 for the Next 3 weeks.
NHC =P
And I guarantee I don't trust this one at all..
That looks like a very very confused system.
I live in Key west on Sigsby park
Which one? hehe
touche.
Just looking in for a moment or two. Seems like mostly good news re. Erika and Jimena today. If Erica insists on doing the SE-NW tour of the Bahamas, I'd much prefer she do it as a TD rather than as a cat 5..... lol
Of course, I'll wait to see this happen before I become certain it actually IS happening....
I'm not going to stick around much tonight. I already have a massive headache, and I don't need to add to it w/ Erica's antics.... LOL
Have a good one, kiddos... and here's hoping we don't get any serious flooding etc across the Caribbean or Bahamas over the next 5 days....
LMAO! Good one! the original LLC, also referred to earlier " as the false center".
When I get some time I'll use the technique on data from a more organized storm. My original idea was for the lines to be like cones, sort of like a flashlight beam. Where they overlap, they reinforce each other. I don't think I can do that, though, with the tools I'm using.
Viewing: 951 - 1001
Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 — Blog Index