bye bonnie. got some good rain here today (more than all july actually) but that looks to be over. really blew the intensity, but that landfall point wasn't bad 48 hrs out.
charley i'm not going to go into great detail on. lots of hype here, lots of half-truths floating around. i'll try to cut to the chase. charley has moved into the outflow-enhancing quadrant of the upper low to the west.. with the polar-oriented exit region for it's own outflow along the deep trough in the eastern u.s. equates to near optimal intensification conditions for the system on it's track (the nhc mention of less conducive condtions near landfall as a last minute check). tight structure of the inner core leaves the possibility for an eyewall replacement cycle to take place if it rapidly intensifies.. as another potential last minute weakening regime.. maybe even flat western cuba will somehow put the kibosh on charley's strengthening run.. but on the whole charley should landfall in a stronger, maybe signficantly stronger state.
as usual there is some wishcasting.. most of it from south florida.. calling for a right bend and an irene scenario. not very plausible, but i'm not ready to completely junk their ideas.. but almost ready to start pointing and laughing.
i put my crosshairs on sanibel island the other night. gonna stay with it even though the official is to the left of a lee/collier/charlotte co. landfall.
i'm going to hedge my bet that charley is a category four tomorrow. not necessarily at landfall, but i do think it will top out around 120/125kt. the pressure may only be down to around 950mb or so, but the tight inner core should compensate for that. with a hit/graze around pinellas county the surge and hydraulic forcing of the winds into tampa bay would make those planned evacuations look like a very good idea.. 20/25ft above msl flood with breakers and hurricane force winds on top of it all would not be a good thing for tampa st. pete. this is the worst possible scenario.. chances of it are maybe not even very high... but the emergency management isn't going to take a chance like that.
should come ashore 3-4pm or so if it chooses tampa. sarasota and the fort myers area are also in trouble.. directly or indirectly. chances up the coast are fair for major impact as well, but past tampa land interaction or shear should take some of the edge off.. a landfall up near levy or dixie county probably wouldn't be that of a major hurricane.
then northeast FL/coastal ga/south carolina get whatever is left over. possibly still a hurricane, probably a more tame t.s.
recap. you already know the drill. very likely a major hurricane will impact the west coast of florida on friday.. highest strike probability is the tampa metro area.
elsewhere in the basin. disturbance i've been agitating for is trying to coalesce near 10/40. fairly pissant now, but some global support for a weak low to form there. chances mediocre to average that we have an invest further west in a couple days.
immediate invest and dvorak-rated wave/low just coming off africa.. 94L. it's holding a 1.0 but fairly to the north.. probably going to lose convection and then struggle back up as it gets further west. chance it will deepen from the outset.. but at 14-15N latitude it isn't going to have the greatest conditions for the first couple days in the atlantic. i'd say fair chances it will be a depression by sunday or so.
won't be hearing complaints about a slow season anymore, i supppose. this is not going to be pretty.
HF 2121z12august