Tropical Storm Gert forms in the Bay of Campeche, Franklin Moves Out

I agree with HF's analysis on Franklin. He split apart, but it's so far east it would be hard for him to come back. Just the same, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the energy sticks around for the next 3-5 days.

On another forum, I put together a mini-analysis of the landfall forecasts I read leading into the season and how they are playing out. It was in conjunction with the Joe B. 7/15 update that was already posted here. Since it's kind of a slow day, I'll go ahead and post the discussion portion if anyone's interested. If not, skip down

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...Considering the obvious potential for close in stuff, I would think there will be some additional tropical storm hits here and there as well. If that verifies along with what we've already seen and what he thinks is to come, 2005 could end up way worse than 2004. I wouldn't have suspected that.

FWIW, I don't have an opinion on his updated forecast one way or the other. It seems almost sensationalist. But 2004's was too and lived up to the hype as far as landfall intensity. I'm just interested in who's honing in on the right ideas between some of the seasonal forecasts I look at. Primarily, I read Independentwx, Bastardi, Hurricane Alley, Dr. Gray's %ages and Gary Gray (more for criticism than anything else).

So far Joe is doing pretty well based on his June forecast. But he's got a long way to go (and admittedly so does the 2005 Atlantic Storm Season) if he's going to turn out to have been on with his '95/'54/'33 ideas. There has been some symmetry (sp?) so far.
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Indepdent (my boys Rob, Jason and sometimes Kevin Budd) utilized '52, 58', '60, '89, '96, '01 and '03. As for what they've hit and missed on so far, you have to start with the Eastern Caribbean. They noted the higher SST's, but downplayed activity there. We actually saw a July storm run through the whole Caribbean which is probably a surprise to everyone. But they also noted weaker than normal TUTT this year. They should get an A for that because TUTT's are actually splitting off pretty frequently in front of waves in what I can only describe as a combination El Nino (where you often see more TUTT activity stretching down from the W Atlantic into the tropics) and La Nina (where trofs nearly always split). It's a variation on the neutral pattern I suppose.

Now they bombed already on the Gulf. If TD #7 becomes Gert, that would be 6 storms so far in the Gulf this season. They didn't foresee any Majors in the Gulf, but we've had 2 I think so far. They saw a hit or two on TX and NE Mexico, but only expected a minimal hurricane at worst out of whatever hit the W Gulf. They didn't expect Louisiana getting hit at all. We got Cindy as TxWxWx can probably tell you if it was as fun over in St. Charles as it was here in town. They also only saw one tropical storm for MS/AL/FL Panhandle. They've had a strong tropical storm and a Major make landfall so far (with IMHO, more to come in the late summer and possibly again in October). They see 1 tropical storm impact to the W FL Peninsula which we'll have to wait and see for.

They don't see any landfalls to the Atlantic side of Florida, though expect a close call. The caution was if the progged pattern shifted a hair westward, caution for that area would be in order. They don't forecast for GA because of the lack of supporting climatology (can't say I blame them).

They do expect the Carolinas to be impacted twice - once from a major. I think they outlined the setup for that pretty well. They don't see anything up the east coast unless it's from a storm that already landfalled in NC. Finally, they expect named storm impact in the Canadian maritimes. (They also do the islands, but I'm only looking at North America for this post).
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Hurricane Alley (excluding their 2 el nino analog seasons) utilized '59, '63, '79, '01, '03. They do a formation zone which showed 14 storms forming in the Atlantic (3 in the Gulf, 1 off FL, 1, WC, 1 EC, 4 CV, 2 CA, 2 Horse lattidues of the Atlantic. Their highest risk areas are NE Texas, central LA to Panama City, N GA/S SC, Maine and Nova Scotia - all with over a 70% probability of landfall. The Yucatan was only 40-70%as was NC which averaged from 10-40% south of the Outer Banks to 40-70% there. They've underplayed NE Mexico (10-40%) and should TD #7 become Gert before landfall, would likely miss EC/SE Mexico which they have progged at < 10%.
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Dr. William Gray and the Colorado forecast team foresaw 15 named storms this season. Their analogs as of 5/31 were '58, '66, '95, '03 and '04.

That's particularly high for them as they have tended toward under-forecasting the better part of the last several years. If they did again, it promises to be the most exciting storm season ever IMO. CSU puts out a percent chance for a major storm hit. They have the entire US East Coast at 59%, Brownsville to S FL @ 44% and the entire US Coastline at 77%. The score as of today is 1 for the Gulf. Both percentages (US EC and G.C.) are higher than average (52/31% respectively). They are set to update their forecast in 2 weeks on August 5th. They aren't as detailed about landfall because they are in year #4 of a project with Bridgewater State College that has its own website. The URL is too long, but if you do a search for "United States Landfalling Hurricane Webpage Application" you can see what they're doing and what they're looking at. Warning: it's a fairly technical piece of work.
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Millenium Weather hedged their bet and updated their forecast in late June. Their analogs (though their chart was hard to read in what they added or took out) were '04, '62, '53, '03, '60, '70, and '61. It looked like they removed '02 and '64 and replaced them with '69, '58 and '52.

For purposes of their landfall impacts, they had the Yucatan at low risk (miss), the Bay of Campeche low risk (miss), NE Mexico low-moderate (miss), TX moderate-high (remains to be seen), LA/MS/AL moderate-high (Cindy), NW Florida moderate (miss since 2 storms including a Cat 3 already hit), S FL & Bahamas moderate-high (Franklin), NEFL/GA moderate minus, SC-NC high risk (their only zone of high risk), VA/MD/DE moderate minus, NJ/NY low-moderate, New England moderate, Canadian Maritimes moderate-high.
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So that's where we stand with everyone's seasonal landfall forecasts that I read. I hope you enjoyed the post. If anyone knows of any others out there, feel free to post a critique and/or comment on this one. Sorry in advance for any misspellings or grammatical errors because it's just too long of a post to go back and edit. Peace.

Steve

Flhurricane.com - Central Florida Hurricane Center - Tracking Storms since 1995Hurricanes Without the Hype! Since 1995

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