Ophelia Crawls Toward the Carolinas

basin should start going active again soon, maybe later this week, maybe the weekend.
ophelia may technically miss the north carolina coast. the models as a group have shifted very close to cape lookout/carteret and hyde counties. with the broad wind field and large eye structure, the hurricane doesn't have to score a direct hit to do its damage... albeit that shouldn't be too dramatic. with how dry the storm looked yesterday nobody was saying/thinking much about flooding, but now that the convection has returned the immediate coastal counties from georgetown to kill devil hills stand to take quite a drenching. those are strong rainbands and they're training like crazy. ophelia should keep pummeling the coast with that sort of jazz all tomorrow and into thursday.
i'm surprised invest 95L was instated.. that's not a terribly impressive wave. usually when a wave has a defined low on it or a strong, sustained convective burst with some sort of cyclonic turning, an invest will be instated.. 95L hasn't reached that point. nevertheless the whole slough of models sees it... a couple keep it as a wave, some take days for a low to develop on it, some develop it over the next day or two. basic movement is, as noted, toward the lesser antilles. usual principle of later development = lower latitude should apply. there's a weakness that should drag on it as it approaches the islands, probably draw it up far enough for a later recurvature, but it could well approach the islands in spite of that. the easterlies are nowhere near as strong as they could be, and there's actually some westerly shear that far down in the basin, which may affect it in coming days... it's not going to move very fast.. maybe approaching the islands in 5-7 days. most of the ensembles are showing a weakness in the ridge north of hispaniola around then, that's why i'd inevitably call for a recurvature of whatever may develop.
different story with the monkey in the middle. the trough in the central atlantic right now is lifting out some, and the energy it's leaving behind is shown by numerous models to induce a surface trough in ophelia's wake. almost all of the globals see it.. and it's precursor is apparent ne of puerto rico right now on satellite. mid level ridging should push it toward the bahamas/cuba over the next few days... it may interact with ophelia's wake trough, may stall, may continue westward... not a great deal of agreement from the models on this. based on the placement, oncoming wave, and pulsing positive index... i'd say it will need to be watched around the weekend.
the eastpac is going active.. numerous models are showing systems forming south of mexico over the next few days.. there is also an active depression and a good looking invest at the present time. the atlantic usually responds a few days after the pacific, so by next week we'll probably have another system or two running around our basin. the long range prog is for the ridging in the east to slowly flatten, and for a more zonal profile to develop across the basin. the mean ridge position is still shown around 85-90w... so anything pushed under it will either go into mexico or ride up towards texas or western louisiana if it can catch a passing trough. the weakness off the east coast should be filling and perhaps breaking down as the ridge in the east flattens. it'll still probably be enough to fling anything in the atlantic out, unless it comes in low through the caribbean.
HF 0137z14september

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