i'm not even sure specifically.. but it means weakening. in the context of the eyewall replacement cycles that makes sense. i was moving all my stuff to a new apartment today and bellsouth cut my phone/dsl early (incompetents) and didn't hook it up at my new place yet (three days advance... incompetents)... so i was high and dry until getting back to my folks place this evening. last i saw the other night emily was a 4, got back to see it this evening it had been down to 2 and was a 3.. after going to grab the new harry potter for my kid sister (ok i admit it i'll read it too) it's a 4... small core hurricanes like this spin up and down as their eyewalls die out and return... like a short-charged phoenix. cat 4s with pressures in the 950s are tightly wound and small by definition... a storm of comparable compactness and a pressure in the 920s would be a camille-esque 5. it's possible it'll bottom out at 5 in one of its cycles later, but not terribly likely. one thing emily has done consistently is lunge to the left and not ever turn as hard right as forecast, so i'm really skeptical about texas. granted it looks to be getting into an area where the deep layer flow will push it more wnw, but all the westward lunges have put emily well south of the earlier projected tracks. this is more than likely all the way a mexico problem. crossing the yucatan should really knock the wind out of emily, also, due to it's compactness and lower resiliency. still a 90% mexico 10% texas worry. probably do it's worst on the yucatan coast between chetumal and cozumel (hit around felipe carrillo puerto), spin down to a ts/cat 1, then spin back up to 3-ish by its second landfall somewhere around la pesca or soto la marina. due to size and likely impact to rural parts of mexico, even if it's a 4 it probably won't be a major killer or destroyer of property. if it gets up to texas and hits anywhere aside from the king ranch/kenedy county it's a different story, in terms of monetary impact. early to make this call with a whole lot of confidence, but emily's most likely path shouldn't make it very sensational or infamous.
still eyeballing 99L as it is undergoing the strongest sw shear we've seen a system take so far this season. the vortmax/near closed low that's accompanied this system and arguably been a closed low at times is looking very open and diffuse... the system should get into the lull of the trough axis and into a weaker/northerly shear environment tomorrow and the following day.. if enough of the disturbance stays coherent and doesnt shear off n/ne then the conditions late in the weekend going into early next week will finally give this a shot at developing. the vorticity with this system at the low to mid levels has been moving stubbornly westward, and hasn't shown proclivity to curve up between the ridges as the globals were suggesting. i'd say 30-70 it survives to get going.. not the most likely event, but definitely trouble if it does. there's enough ridging near the east coast to send this one hurtling westward in a steadily intensifying mode... better hope this thing doesn't become franklin.
subsequent wave petered out, though it has a good signature aloft. it will bumble along westward, perhaps acting up as it gets closer to the islands. the next wave should come off tomorrow. it is notable that neither is garnering model support. as a matter of fact nothing shown in the models looks very threatening outside of emily, with meager support for 99L. emily may avoid being a u.s. problem.. a system called franklin developing out of 99L most likely would be a problem.
HF 0706z16july