Claudette Consolidates - Updated

Updated - 8pm
Well it looks like the on-again, off-again pattern will continue for another day at least. The southwesterly shear has again exposed the 'western' LLC while the 'eastern' one is attempting to regenerate. Perhaps it is this pulsing pattern that is actually holding Claudette together in spite of the strong shear. The cyclone remains in an unchanged state.
ED

I'm almost convinced that after I make this post, she'll fall apart again, but right now Claudette seems to reorganizing and perhaps consolidating into a primary center somewhere in the 30 miles between 25N 91W and 25N 90.5W. Winds appear to again be on the increase and pressure on the decline. The multiple vorticies associated with this TS sure have made it an interesting (and difficult) storm to track. The dual center dilemma is not uncommon - in the past two days just about everyone has been correct in their position analysis - just depends on which position you were tracking at the time. has done well with this while tracking the 'western' center and the persistence of the 'eastern' center (and there were others) provided an equally impressive position and forecast variation - and during all of this, the quality of the posts remained focused on Claudette.

If center consolidation occurs (still unknown at this time) it will require the convection to persist beyond what appears to be an 8 hour cycle with this storm. Every convective burst pulls the system a little further north while every decline nudges it further west.

Moderate southwesterly shear is forecast to remain in place for at least another 60 hours (which of course does not mean that it will, but it has maintained rather well so far). The 'pull and nudge' movement will eventually place Claudette west of the shear zone and into a more favorable upper level environment. Upper air 300mb progs take the ULL and move it to the extreme south Texas/north Mexico area which would imply that a direct hit near Brownsville might be difficult and that the Port O'Connor area might be an eventual strikepoint, but its way too early for that call. With a current slow drift to the northwest, there is still plenty of time before the warnings and impact points need to be narrowed down.
Cheers,
ED

Edited by Ed Dunham (Sat Jul 12 2003 07:56 PM)

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

NEWS

CURRENT STORMS

COMMUNICATION

STORM DATA

CONTENT

FOLLOW US

ADS