cptcatz

Can you explain the implications of this picture?

Yep. I was supposed to move here to Boca Raton on the day Irma hit. Luckily I was able to delay the move a week so I missed the storm but saw the damage which was pretty significant but nothing compared to what the models were showing a couple days prior having it move up the east coast instead of the west coast. Since then, we got nothing in 2018, then had the strongest hurricane on record in the Atlantic basin barreling down at us coming to a screeching halt and turning right before hitting us. 2020, the most active season on record (which the local media made sure we knew), gave us a hurricane warning from Isaias which ended up causing a brisk breeze, and big scary Eta which gave us a good soaking of some moderately flooding rain. I'm well aware of the balls we're dodging being I love to track hurricanes, but there are so many new people in Florida that have moved down in the past year or two who went through the false alarms of Dorian and 2020 and are not prepared for a real hurricane strike. Of course the old timers, especially those who have been here since 2004, let alone 1992, know what to do, but it'll be interesting to see complacent the newcomers are when something finally hits us.

We had the same thing happen in last year's thread, and then it started quick and didn't end...

Elsa was moving at 30 mph so those 75 mph observed winds would have been 50 mph if the storm was moving at 5 mph. Regardless, 75 mph sustained winds in a cyclone equals a hurricane.

Well good thing you don't make the call on these things. The Meteorological Service of Barbados reported a sustained wind of 74 mph and a gust to 86 mph.

Who cares what the aircraft recon showed? That's not the best way to classify a storm. There were surface observations that showed that the storm was indeed a hurricane. You can't argue with actual surface observations.

This post held up well forecasting Laura a month in advance.

Radar loop makes it look like it's heading directly for a Tampa Bay landfall.

Interesting satellite presentation right now. Looks like the convection near the center north of Cuba is really waning while the big blob south of Cuba is firing off. Will that affect the structure or future impacts?

That would be quite the deviation from the incredibly tight model consensus. Is this wishcasting or an actual possibility?

Haha that actually made me laugh out loud. If enough of us pray I think we could make it happen. My backyard weather station just recorded a temp drop from 91 to 79 in the last 30 minutes, sustained wind is at 13.4 mph with gusts to 20 mph. It's looking very ominous out.

Looks like the first big bands should be getting here in Boca Raton within the next few minutes.

What do those numbers mean?

Even with the weird trends with this storm, gotta give credit to the NHC for getting the forecast center line almost dead on five days ago, threading the needle through Haiti and Jamaica and going just south of that little Cuba peninsula. Also besides for the few hours when it got to a hurricane, they got the intensity forecast pretty well too. Pretty impressive.

IR looks like a mess but on visible it actually looks like a nicely rotating storm. If the low and mid centers are stacked it seems like it could still intensify.

HWRF still thinks she's gonna strengthen big time. What does it see that the other models don't (or vice versa)?

Looks like the center might slide right to the south of the Haiti peninsula and there's some nice convection popping up on the west side. It might not be time to let her go just yet...

Nice shot of the convection over the LLC 20210703_080005~2.mp4

A spot of deep convection just popped up over the LLC. Might this be its last chance?

Except that the cold DID bother her... remember when she couldn't get her act together in the eastern Atlantic because of the cold SSTs? Very un-Elsa-like...

Yeah the convection is looking weird for the past couple hours. Recon should be in the center in a matter of minutes which should shed some light.

Posting from Boca Raton. The 5pm cone moved to where we are now barely on the edge of it. Wouldn't mind a nice squally day to watch on Tuesday following the long weekend but really don't want to lose power. It seems that being on the edge of the cone four days out means you're gonna get a direct hit, going by how things have been going lately.

Yep, a Michael/Wilma track would do it.

Can anyone explain what is going on in the 12z Euro? It looks like Elsa gets strung out between Cuba and the Bahamas but then regroups off the Keys and then continues into the Gulf.

Right off the bat it's initialized at 1002 mb while the NHC has it at 995. The recon and surface observations weren't input to the 12z run so the 18z should be much more telling.