typhoon_tip
(Meteorologist)
Wed Oct 26 2005 10:50 PM
Re: Watching a Few Areas in The Tropics

i dunno... we've been surprised this season (what's new) with track guidance vs. verification.. all signals point to what you say for now, but i see the potenial for a couple of perturbational effects.
1) ...a deeper more powerful system would tend to fight off feeble steering flow - which in the llv's is currently ese to wnw at light speeds, in that area, and is what 90l is susceptible to right now.. however, should "beta" go ahead a deepen and gather a better vertical structure quicklly over the next 24 hours, we're liable to be stuck with a stationary system because the 700 through 500mb mean layer flow is like...5kts across most operational global models for the next few days. even though some of the guidance suggests a short lease on life do to interaction with land, those depictions are dubious to me until the extent of development, and how that intensity profile interacts with the surrounding environment can be cogently ascertained.
2) so...with deeper layer steering in that area currently almost none-existent...it is also unclear how much a couple of troughs subtending the height field in the northern gulf can have on inducing a pull toward the north, given that any beta is at such a deep latitude is so far down there. now through 72 hours a trough in eastern n/a is going to complete a final s/w sweep. the h582 contour is actually sagging all the way down to the norther yuc peninsula; the gradient is weak and so the winds are light along the heights in that area...after that, it seems hard to imagine this thing getting a n pull with any speed.. heights tend to rise then fall gently between 72 and 132 hours (average model concensus)... this would be the best opportunity to drive it w into/over land, but even this signal is not that impressive and really the models show very little affect on the wind field - in other words, almost too weak to push it w.. what the models also agree on is that by 144 hours there is a substantial vort max (for latitude) approaching the nw gulf, and this may be substantial enough to pick up beta if it is still around then.. a track thereafter would favor a lower latitude recurvature, unless that trough is more amplified... frankly, i don't see that happening because some of the indices i like to rely on are actually suggesting we'll lose some amplification in the flow - but even that is uncertain because these things can sometime appear and dissappear in the guidance almost as quickly, sending everyone spinning on a fool's errand.

so yes and no...may just end up too far underneath the westerlies - a.k.a. "mitch"?



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