Steve
Senior Storm Chaser
Reged: Wed
Posts: 1063
Loc: Metairie, LA
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Re: Shell game...choose one
Tue Sep 30 2003 10:11 AM
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Odd setup for sure. I had the opportunity to read Joe Bastardi this morning before I left for work. He's put together this insane possibility of how it ends up in his hurricane landfall zone #3 - the Central Gulf Coast. Now 'his' central gulf coast isn't the Louisiana zone, it's Boothville (mouth of MS River) to Apalachacola, FL. That and South Florida are his only two landfall zones with hits remaining. It's pretty bizarre how he arrives at a hit on (I think he said) Sunday or Monday there as a hurricane. I'll post some excerpts from his column because this is obviously of interest to everyone east of me. He's got tons on caveats including the low pressure not being drawn into Mexico by a high pressure, but I'll let him tell you. Let me say this, if he hits this thing, he's going down as all time guru (especially if the South Florida landfall zone gets its Hurricane score later).
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Ah yes, the Gulf - the next headache, and of course one we thought was coming on. The tropical disturbance between Cozumel and Cancun yesterday is now off the northwest tip of the Yucatan. It sent a piece northeastward now east of Florida and with it came a biblical deluge in southwest Florida. Another piece is coming out now, but it should not be as heavy as the core of the system is moving to the west. In the meantime, low pressure has formed to its southwest on the front. The two should combine later today and tomorrow and be near 20 north, 95 west, as at least a tropical storm Thursday morning. Gales and 15-foot seas are already occurring in the west central Gulf, and this system has a good chance, if indeed it consolidates and stays over the water, to become a hurricane.
My call here (and in the face of uncertainty like this, I will freely admit I would need divine guidance to hit) is that this sits around Thursday, then starts northward Friday and turns northeastward Saturday, reaching the central Gulf Coast Sunday or Monday (zone 3 on my hurricane forecast chart, not the pattern overview zone 3.) With it being Tuesday, and with no solid center, one can understand the comment above. With the bulk of the modeling just killing it, one can also understand the comment above. However, the overall pattern looks like it can happen. The upper ridge over Mexico will try to steer it inland Thursday night or Friday, but if we still have it over the water Friday, then it's going to be a big problem for someone over the weekend or early next week. Maybe it's the new coffee I was sent by a faithful reader (in fact, the best coffee I have ever tasted) which has a name with "Monsoon" in it, but I feel as if there is plenty of reason to at least give you readers an honest attempt at hitting this thing this morning. Whether it rivals some of the other long-range Gulf calls made this year, or the 9-day idea that Isabel would get back to 80 west and hit the United States, well, let's see. In any case, I am making the forecast for development and then the turn toward the central Gulf Coast this weekend as a starting point for this, even though I can see the way it could crash and burn before getting off the ground.
To show you how crazy the modeling is, there is little agreement on the pattern in Europe on Kate. The UKMET takes the storm eastward over the next five days, and the U.S. models take it westward. The upgrade to a hurricane last night, in the face of some of the other "pulling teeth" things that have gone on this year, looks like it blew up. The system is being yanked around by the upper low that I think the models are thinking is Kate and moving westward when it actually may just be system that developed on its own using part of Kate's energy ( the Obi-Wan effect I have written about.) One thing is for sure - if it did develop, it could not be named "Edith" because, as we all know, you can't have your Kate and Edith too!
But here is something to chew on. While agreement is all hunky-dory as to how the Pacific flow flattens, and that the jet breaks through, real problems start over North America and the Atlantic as far as what to do with different systems down the road. Sound familiar (last year)? If one looks at the water-temperature profile, (and I will be showing it on the Long Ranger) two things stand out like a frostbitten thumb. Of the winters that turned colder than normal in the East, the last two out of three had the Atlantic warm and had large pools of warm water in the gulf of Alaska. The winters of our discontent had much colder water in the gulf of Alaska and strong signaling going on (La Nina). But with this pattern flip coming up, and the uncertainty surrounding it both on the northern and southern fronts, the relevance to winter is something we can talk about later.
One more thing...I am seeing things that are getting me to think that in 7-14 days, once rid of any Gulf problems, Caribbean problems may be of concern. More on that if it starts to show.
Note and aside: The cloud shot this morning looks a little like Michelangelo's painting on the Sistine Chapel, with one mass of thunderstorms reaching to touch the other mass.
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Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Steve
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MF'n Super Bowl Champions
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