nate and maria have finally left us this morning (nate is being classified as a remnant low even though it's still got gale force winds... looks to be in an unrecoverable state, though). that leaves ophelia.
ophelia took a northeastward track yesterday that pretty much busted the jacksonville to beaufort solutions. i never pegged a spot, but georgia was on my mind... well, it's the like the song says. anyhow, now the track has run all the way up the coast to georgetown.. but its progress seems to have ended. the track right now seems reasonable, and puts the greatest threat on the georgetown/grand strand area... georgetown and horry counties. the models are by no means clustered, with the gfdl down at the bottom near beaufort.. consistently stronger and further west than the consensus, and the rest strung out between charleston and wilmington. intensity with this one is going to be real nutty, as ophelia has consistently had winds below what the pressure would normally dictate (976 mb is usually paired with 90-100mph winds). it is possible that ophelia's winds will play catch-up like katrina's did, or that the inner core will remain broad and the wind field more expansive and less intense. i'm going to hedge my bets that they will by monday. with the official bringing it in at implied 75-80kt, the nhc is taking the conservative line yet again. whether the gulf stream will allow this remains to be seen, but there is definitely plenty of subsidence and a somewhat sheared outflow pattern to make it so. a lot of the global models are suggesting slight strengthening, which usually translates to some in the real world.. usually more than models project. for that reason, i'm going to peg it as a 2 at landfall, and bias the track a little left... closer to mcclellanville in upper charleston county. anything from a cat 1 to a cat 3 is possible, depending on how ophelia handles subsidence and whether the outflow pattern can ever become dominant over the shear.
don't have any classes, just a T.A. responsibility that maybe i can hand off for tuesday. might go to the coast if i can find some others who want to catch ophelia.
rest of the basin has the mjo-supressed signature, without a whole lot of convection to go around. whether an mjo wave will move across or pulse and die like the one in august remains to be seen. if it does move, it ought to get here late in the month... and linger to the secondary peak in early/mid october. stuff in the meanwhile should be struggling in the deep tropics, or perhaps an odd system or two will flare in the subtropics out of cut off systems... maybe a pattern pulse system if soi oscillations and strong highs diving into the east can force lower pressures in the western atlantic or caribbean. the pattern right now is one that would be very scary if multiple storms were roaming, as height anomalies in the eastern u.s. are progged to remain above normal... a gulf system right now would also be very likely to hit texas. the flareup we were tracking up from the BOC is too close to land right to do anything... but were anything to fester right now it would spell trouble.
HF 1629z10september