| cjzydeco |
| (Weather Guru) |
| Sat Aug 30 2008 10:48 PM |
|
Re: Gustav Lounge
|
On a different weather board, I read the following comments about reduced intensity of gulf storms being steered by a trough at landfall. Could some of the well-respected mets here comment on this discussion?
Quote:
I have a feeling we aren't going to see significant weakening [of Gustav] like we do with most Gulf landfalls. My reasoning (and there's no real science behind it) is this....Typically we see these storms recurving and heading east right before or during landfall. The mechanism that causes this would be a trough picking it up and dragging it out. A trough usually associates shear, drier air, cooler air. Thus weakening the storm.
In this scenario the steering current are dictated from a ridge at landfall, not a trough. Just from logic I'd think the shear, drier air that is normally associated with the landfall will not be there. Thus I don't really feel significant weakening at landfall. The only saving grace might be its forward speed. If it does come to a crawl before landfall, it would weaken from land interaction. But it the stall doesn't occur until its 30-50 miles inland we could be looking at one of the most impressive landfalls we have seen in a long long time.
I would assume that this person was ignoring differences in SSTs or the luck of timing of ERCs, (both of which seem to have been culprits in reducing the strength of big storms in recent memory). But I wanted to ask for a more informed opinion.