Hurricane Frances Still on Track TD#9 forms in Eastern Atlantic

Jim Williams and his Hurricane City Broadcast from 8PM till 11PM -- Link to Real Audio -- updated!

(Click here to read personal reports from the Bahama Islands),

Tropical Depression #9 forms in the East Atlantic has a good chance to become Ivan .... ,moving west toward the Caribbean... Time to watch later.

Next..

The 5PM position of Hurricane Frances remains on track, slightly adjusted right (closer to Melbourne)... however... it bends it back more left to raise the chances of a Gulf of Mexico event as well..

The windspeed is also slightly down and pressure a little up, but i'm thinking it will fluctuate around this intensity for a while.

Here's an important notice from the Melbourne NWS office and Tony Christaldi:

1) Because of the oblique angle at which Frances is expected to approach the coast... emphasis *still* should not be placed on the point of the projected landfall of the cetner. Frances' wind field is very large: Tropical storm force or greater winds ecompass more than 50 thousand square miles. Preperations should be made throughout the watch/warning area assuming a *direct* hit from a major Hurricane.

2) Attempting to extrapolate short term (1 to 3 hour) trochiodal wobbles into a longer term motion is prone to be erroneous... especially given the current forward speed. Which is about 10 MPH less than what Hurricane Charley was moving at landfall.

3) For those looking for Comparisons to Hurricane Floyd. The synoptic patterns between Floyd and Frances are completely different. There is no short wave trough of significant amplitude over or approaching the southeast United States or western Atlantic ocean.

Hurricane Local Statements for Weather Offices in:

Melbourne (East Central Florida)
Miami (South Florida)
Key West (Florida Keys)
Tampa Bay (West Central Florida)

Local county by county information will no longer be updated unles there is breaking news here -- it's just impossible to keep up because of the size of the area under Hurricane Watch. Use the links in the last article to view county emergency management webpages. Florida Disaster.org is the state em page, with links to locals as well.

Definitely more to come later...

** SITE NOTE ** This website is receiving way beyond record traffic today, it will be slow, it will go down ocasionally, but should be back up shortly when that happens. We've done everything we can to help this along short of dumping zillions into bandwidth and hardware to keep it going. Apologies in advance.

Jim Williams over at Hurricane City will be doing live broadcasts about Hurricane Frances startiing tonight at 8PM EST.

Event RelatedLinks
Frances Models -- This image animated over time
TD#9 Models -- This image animated over time
All model "Spaghetti" for Frances from hurricanealley
The Caribbean Hurricane Page - updates from the islands
Caribbean Island Weather Reports
Nice color satellite image of Frances approach (Animated Version)
High Speed Satellite Loops of Frances (Click floater)

General Links
Current Aircraft Recon Info

NRL Monterey Marine Meteorology Division Forecast Track of Active Systems (Good Forecast Track Graphic and Satellite Photos)

Check the Storm Forum from time to time for comments on any new developing system.

Follow worldwide SST evolution here:

Global SST Animation

NASA GHCC Interactive Satellite images at:

North Atlantic Visible (Daytime Only), Infrared, Water Vapor
LSU Sat images

Some forecast models:
NGM, AVN, MRF, ETA ECMWF
AVN, CMC, GFDL, JMA, NOGAPS, UKMET

DoD Weather Models (NOGAPS, AVN, MRF)

Multi-model plots from WREL
Other commentary at Independentwx.com, Robert Lightbown/Crown Weather Tropical Update Accuweather's Joe Bastardi (now subcriber only unfortunately), Hurricane Alley North Atlantic Page, Cyclomax (Rich B.), Hurricane City , mpittweather , WXRisk, Gary Gray's Millennium Weather, storm2k, Barometer Bob's Hurricane Hollow, Snonut,

Even more on the links page.

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