Londovir
(Weather Guru)
Thu Jul 07 2005 07:55 PM
Re: Hurricane Watches up For Keys, Tropical Storm Watch For Southern Florida Dennis

I went and pulled up the 0Z and 12Z runs of the FSU MM5 (what's done of the 12Z run, at least), and compared the two, and the track did indeed shift just slightly west while it was offshore.

Since they only provide exact coordinates and other data in their archives (I can't find it for the current in-progress run), I pulled both maps into photoshop and approximated the positions based on the blue plot lines and the long/lat per pixel ratios for each plot (since they are at different scales right now).

Admitted it was a rough comparison, but from the 0Z to 12Z runs, two rough points offshore of Florida went as follows:

Off Ft. Myers: 26N 83.55W --> 26N 83.71W
Off Tampa: 28N 84.42W --> 28N 84.79W

Once they finish the current run and get the numbers into the archives, I can tell for sure. Oh, and speaking of the numbers in the archives, does anyone know what the last number on each data line represents? I see the format is latitude/longitude/pressure/???, and I can't tell what the last one is. I was thinking wind speed, but the numbers seem too low for that. They do, though, show charts for "Maximum lowest model level wind in knots", which is vaguely confusing; is that supposed to represent a max wind level, or a minimum wind level? I imagine it means "Maximum low level wind", and is just phrased clumsily.



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