Random Chaos
(Weather Analyst)
Sun Jul 20 2008 06:21 PM
Re: TS Dolly Heads Toward Cozumel, Cristobal Drifts NE, Bertha Now Extratropical

I think there are several confusing things about forecasting the track of the storm. The first is the water vapor and IR loops. If you take a look at the region WV loop, you can see that the burst of convection near the core has actually started rotating about the core, and has flipped from earlier today being aligned more toward the SW quadrant to moving almost to the E quadrant. Further, this rotation does not align with the surface fixes by recon, which were on the SW edge of this convection back when the convection was on the SW quadrant of its rotational axis. In addition to the latest convection burst, what appeared this morning to be the principle convective burst over Grand Cayman died down and has begun wrapping itself around the CoC under the more recent convective burst. This makes following any track on IR/Water Vapor almost impossible right now.

Second, the steering winds (via CMISS) are continually pointing westward, and even slightly WSW, not at all the direction the system is (or has been) moving. That this storm seems to be paying less attention to steering currents than normal makes forecasting potential tracks extremely unpredictable.

Therefore, I'd not focus too much on any particular track. Once Dolly gets her act together with a strong core and easily identifiable core, we should have a much better handle on where its headed.



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