gymengineer

He updated: up to 10.41 MLLW now.

In spite of the satellite appearance, Ian’s wind field on the NW to SE axis is remarkably symmetrical. Obviously nothing near when it was a major hurricane, but the SE side has a large extent of TS force winds even in the low clouds.

And not just the 74/75 knot peak. That’s 10 separate SMFR readings at hurricane force.

I would guess so too, but so much of the discussion in the last couple of pages seemed to be around decision making based on the NHC’s forecasted track.

Is the general public relying too much on the NHC since of course it’s not the NHC that actually orders evacuations? Lee County ordered mandatory zone A and B evacuations Monday morning. I just think emergency management should be the primary public facing entity for decision making, not a forecasting agency.

Folks, just read the advisory. NHC has already stated Ian is moving NNE at 15 degrees. Exact NNE is 22.5

Extrapolated pressure is 946.0 min.

The first forecasts for storm surge, beginning on Friday for coastal GA and SC have the water level at #4 all time at Fort Pulaski, GA (close to the water level from the October 1947 hurricane) and #10 all time at Charleston, SC (close to the water level from Hurricane David in 1979). The river/water forecasts don’t extend into Saturday yet; I would guess Friday overnight’s high tides would be even higher as Ian gets to Georgia. And all this is without a forecast track yet of Ian making it offshore and headed back toward the GA/SC coast.

Northeast eyewall

Allan’s graphic, as always, is super helpful to see the range of landfall points and why it’s always so hard to nail down the exact landfall location on the west coast of Florida:

It was a buoy mission.

955 mb

Both the HWRF and HMON are so much more intense at landfall than yesterday’s runs. The HMON shows a Cat 4 landfall just northwest of Ft. Myers and the HWRF shows a mid Category 3 landfall at Indian Shores.

There was something weird about that particular dropsonde though. It happened before the 961 mb dropsonde in the eye and was labeled northwest eyewall.

Yup, Charleston is already forecasted to reach major flood stage on Thursday just from the northeasterly fetch. Their third highest water level was from Irma when the center was in southwestern Georgia. Ian’s wind field is not going to be as large as Irma’s, but a track overwater toward the SC coast would push saltwater flooding even higher.

The Euro still does its thing to otherwise level headed people. After the 6Z run today, there were so many accredited meteorologists on Twitter explaining why because that model consistently underdeveloped Ian, once it finally picked up the strength of the vortex, of course it caved to the GFS solution of stronger means further west….and therefore possible minimal effects on the FL west coast. Now, with one single 18Z run, the same rush to explain, except now it’s for the south of Tampa landfall, is building.

And then Elsa underperformed the storm surge warnings a season later, even though it was at hurricane status closer to Tampa. So the size of the wind field and lead time fetch matter a lot for storm surge height, especially in the GOM.

Are you all comparing the same frame? 72 hours on the 18Z Euro is 18Z on Wednesday. Compared to 18Z Wednesday on the 12Z run, it’s a bit further north, not west.

The 18Z GFS is still showing the “yank” NNW to place the center just south of the NS coast.

With another "I" storm possibly bringing significant damage to the US, I thought it would be a quick, interesting exercise to see how much "I" storms have cost the US in just the past two decades. I left out Iniki because Iniki was the third name used that season from the Central Pacific list, not the ninth. These damage totals are in 2022 CPI adjusted dollars. Isabel (2003): $8.7 Billion Ivan (2004): $31.6 Billion Ike (2008): $40.2 Billion Irene (2011): $17.4 Billion Isaac (2012): $3.5 Billion Irma (2017): $59.5 Billion Imelda (2019): $5.7 Billion Isaias (2020): $5.3 Billion Ida (2021): $78.7 Billion Total: $250.6 Billion in damage As a frame of reference, this amount is close to the total damage to the US from the 2005 hurricane season, and about 80% the total damage from 2017, the two costliest seasons by far.

Why does it seem the former director of the NHC does not know about the best track files tipping off impending upgrades?

At 48 hours is where it splits for the GFS ensemble members. The northern tracks turn NW while the southern group continues WNW for one more day.

This is a fairly obvious point, but it’s hard to get the landfall city nailed down in advance when you have a hurricane moving northward (NNE or NNW) toward the west coast of the peninsula part of Florida…given the angles along the coastline. Both Charley and Irma were forecast to landfall significantly further north less than 24 hours before the actual landfall. If this storm is going to the panhandle instead, it’s an easier forecast.