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There may also be some correlation between when a storm goes through many eye cycles, resulting in a large eye, that it is at its peak intensity and will not get stronger, but I'm not sure how strong that is (if at all); it is more my observations than anything else. Large eyes also tend to happen with larger overall storms, but again that is more my observation than anything else.
Clark, I remember learning the same thing - the large eye suggests Ivan is at a "mature" stage (it's getting pretty old for most of us anyways). That would fit in with the expansion of the wind field. Not going to go away anytime soon, but it's not going anywhere fast right now. I still can't see Ivan moving north of Cuba's latitude (22.5) until 24 hrs from now, and that would be thru the channel, very near 22 N 86 W. I suspect some of the latest model initializations may have Ivan too far east, due to lack of met data. Gradual acceleration northward is critical to future landfall - I expect there will be much better model consensus developing by Tues. AM with Ivan still at least 36 hrs away from any U.S. landfall at that point in time.
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