we'll end up seeing some bad weather in new england, but by itself it's probably going to be nothing they don't usually deal with in autumn storms. it's all context.. serious bad news on top of the heavy rain they've had this month. as far as that phasing hyper-bomb tip and i were concerned about.. well, like he's been saying all day, deep 500mb anomaly and negative NAO or not, the storm didn't phase.. it's just running ne along the periphery of the ridge. wilma was just too tropical. some of the intensification it's done today has been partially baroclinic in nature, but in spite of that the storm has remained clearly warm core. the nhc forecast transition looks right though.. when it goes it will go fast. alpha has zipped up ahead of it... and is a tropical storm if it still has a closed circulation in that little envelope it exists in, but has been operationally declassified, so no matter. the coastal storm should move slowly enough to drop decent rains across the northeast... stuff on the order of the rain events earlier this month. reasonable to assume that there will be widespread, moderate flooding across the region tomorrow and wednesday.
anyhow, final prog on my wilma track will be that i got the governing teleconnection patterns wrong... to a degree. the strongly positive SOI has favored zonal ridging in the tropics, and that is probably a large contributor to the non-phasing. as a result the track was more longitudinally jagged than i'd guessed.. was thinking a sweeping recurvature, rather than the jab at the yucatan and the ungraceful lurch northeast. really good news, though... had SOI flipped the storm would probably be bashing the outer banks right now, headed for long island or some place that is much better off with things the way they are.
didn't expect a legit landfall on the yucatan a day or two earlier than it happened, and had the port charlotte-fort myers area pegged from 4-5 days earlier.. hurricane went 50-80 miles south of there at marco. chose not to move it since i'm hardheaded. had the nhc beat on intensity, was the only plus. timing was a day or so off from earlier... function of the yucatan camping event on friday-saturday. overall about like i usually do... not as good as the nhc, but not too bad either.
anyhow there's a general sentement floating around that the hurricane season is over now that wilma has lifted out... that may be true but i'm a doubter. pattern and indications on the ensembles are that new trouble areas will emerge in the caribbean by the weekend. personally i don't see that the basin has acquired that look of oppressive shear... and the ssts are still warmer than normal in much of the deep tropics. globals fuzzy on the caribbean stuff still (west carib feature comes and goes... mixed support for the east carib feature), so nothing definite.. but i've got a hunch we'll see beta before october is out.
november could easily feature a system too. there are even odds in any given year, and this is no given year.
HF 0411z25october
later comment: looked at some of the 00z guidance. what i'm seeing is more consistent than earlier with low pressure forming north of panama later this week across the models.. i.e. gfs nogaps, earlier euro runs seeing basically the same thing. the disturbance would be in a weak current zone between upper ridges to the east and west, with the large trough in the eastern u.s. to the north. modeling keeps the low fairly weak and stable east of nicaragua through this week. note that if a legit system forms there it will be in a good synoptic environment. not much convection there right now, so it isn't something that will exist in the next day or two. -HF