ran across the board today, saw lots of flip-flopping with transient trends (charley is dying, bonnie is strengthening rapidly, etc). wish i could be more concrete here.. but unfortunately, still going to give possibilities and not a specific prediction i'm confident in of on bonnie.. feel just as good or better about charley; bonnie we'll be seeing from first, so here goes.
bonnie is essentially the same storm we had last night. it's small and only throwing spotty deep convection despite a good shear profile.. subsidence abounds in the gulf. i see the possibility that it remains nearly steady or only slowly strengthens, but am entertaining the idea that it will be rapidly intensifying at landfall... for this reason:
bonnie will be traveling ahead of an upper shortwave a'la alex.. over a much higher ocean heat content. the environment will be baroclinic as well.. i'd expect it to stay fairly potent well after landfall as it moves up the east coast. with the very small inner structure the potential for this system to deepen rapidly is a real and present danger. if it can't keep the convection going, though.. it may come ashore as a sickly system like one i remember from 2000.. helene.. or maybe something akin to barry 2001.
charley.. God forbid it forms an eye overnight. i've been erring on the side of strengthening, thus erring on the side of a rightward of the early globals track.. looks like my dice throw will be coming up strong. charley is getting stronger earlier.. and thus the official numbers are likely below what we'll be seeing. there is still great uncertainty, but charley has 'major hurricane event' written all over it. if i was on the gulf side of florida i'd be planning ways to deal with either.
frontal low moving ene between bermuda and jax slowly improving in presentation.. several globals occlude it and weaken the westerlies as a high amplitude ridge develops in response to the approaching eastern shortwave.. may pancake against it and develop tropical characteristics later this week.
as the mean trough position is forecast to shift out of the east next week, pay close heed to wave action in the mdr east of the islands. there is a lazy, dead look to the easterly flow and low shear.. trouble if a wave of any amplitude comes through. even a weak wave can perk up in these conditions.. the upper low near 45-50w should start tailing back and creating a diffluence/ridging zone to its east.. so watch for a response 5-10 deg to it's east over the next few.
possibility for two florida hurricane landfalls exists for the next few days. the ingredients are there, but ingredients have a way of not panning out. regardless, stay aware.
HF 0011z11august