no good news today.
frances is intensifying today.. eyewall contraction cycles and less subsidence/vertical shear to fend off.. giving it a nudge back to the way it was when recon found it. ought to be back to cat 4 tomorrow. moving forward a little faster.. expected.
i'm going to keep my landfall window between palm beach and beaufort.. with emphasis between daytona and brunswick.. as a 3/4 on late saturday/early sunday.. still not going to pinpoint.. not until tomorrow afternoon at earliest.
still seeing the dynamics for the stair-step and terminal leftward bend.
other stuff in the basin too.. nowhere near as scary, but there. gaston has maintained an excellent system aloft, and should reintensify to a tropical storm when it moves offshore tonight. the binary interaction i was expecting with what became hermine is in the end happening in a manner.. the lower pressure of hermine has probably helped guide gaston harder to the right than previously forecast. should trace NE as a weak tropical storm (waters too cool to reintensify much).. and pass a little south of nantucket tomorrow night.
hermine shot out ahead of its cdo today and is barreling northward to an AM landfall in eastern new england.. likely a nonconvective or convection-removed depression at the time.. small chance it's a weak tropical storm. my take is nhc didn't need the t.s. warnings after all.
97L (should be 99L.. 97L was gaston) in the eastern atlantic near the cape verde islands.. has a well defined low with some convection. it is probably a tropical depression.. and should be within a couple of days. it's circulation envelope extends westward quite a bit and has another maxima near 33w.
there is a surface disturbance developing in the itcz at 9n/38w.. models havent picked up on it yet.. but this may turn into something too.. hard to say based on it's low latitude the imminent closure of 97L.
globals still hinting at a low development south of the miss. delta over the next couple of days. surface convergence beneath a weak upper shortwave ridge is the setup here. would probably move little at first if it actually develops, then maybe turn nw if a more defined low were to form. still hypothetical and low probability.
the next wave slated to emerge also has globals trying to develop it. september should start out like august ended.
and that's the very long story of the tropics. hell of a lot going on. hope the site can handle all the traffic that's going to be on.
HF 2226z30august