tiger_deF

Complete fantasy land but it’s not often you see a model run with a left hook into NE

What a beast, cloud tops in the eyewall are still cooling and becoming more symmetrical

00z ICON shifts farther west but replaces a high out in the northern Atlantic with a trough, which is not the scenario you’d want to see for even a glancing blow. That being said there’s still a ton of variation with the upper level environment 8 days out. I thought it was an easy recurve a day ago, still the most likely scenario but worth watching for the next couple of days.

Now that we have a consistent long-range hit, we need to watch for windshield wiping vs serious trends in either direction. If a few runs show it hitting farther down the coast or going OTS, as long as the models keep waffling and shift in the other direction then the hope is alive

Juicy setup on the EC-AIFS

We are extremely overdue, not counting tropical storm meh-nri. Every season we have model runs showing impacts which almost inevitably whiff. I remember Erika, Lee, Isaias, even Joaquin being shown as threats that never ended up materializing. But the historical precedent is there for big hits as unlikely as they are, and the east coast is definitely more at risk this year than the past few gulf-heavy seasons.

Given the likely higher than average (though still extremely unlikely) chance of a tropical impact this season, recent interesting model runs, and the tropical clutter in the August disco, I figure it’s time to bring back the tropics megathread!

As hostile as the basin state has been for many weeks, the tropical wave at 40W sure is looking good tonight. Lower level vorticity has been increasing dramatically over the past 6 hours and the convection is some of the healthiest I’ve seen in the MDR. Will likely get sheared apart closer to the islands (and the fast background flow will make any consolidation difficult ), but it’s certainly worth keeping an eye on.

86/77 in Arlington. Dog is already refusing to finish a full walk.

GFS has been showing development in the western Caribbean for three runs in a row, now in only 6-7 days. Will be the next place to watch. Hoping that nothing develops or that it is more of a gulf threat, since the west coast of Florida will be uniquely vulnerable

Leslie has been feeling shy, so of course once model intensities have plummeted and all eyes are off her she has decided to put on a show

00z GFS sends an even stronger major hurricane into the same area in 12 days, and sends it up the eastern seaboard. Almost certainly not verifying but would be absolutely catastrophic if it did.

This is quite a rare case of EPAC-ATL crossover, but in the opposite direction! Typically Atlantic systems cross over to the EPAC, but this late season the crossover AOI from the EPAC to the Gulf of Mexico has worked in tandem with CAG-induced instability and vorticity in the region and produced a bonafide low pressure region with intense and persistent confection. I’d still doubt major hurricane status given the northerly shear, but the setup is quite conductive for west to east GOM systems - a rarity even in the past 100 years. Will be interesting to see the evolution of this system, and how it interacts with the punishing high pressure, the trough to the North, and potentially even Leslie if it scoots across the peninsula fast enough.

Crazy season to track. From a cat 5 early July major, to a total shutdown of the basin in peak season, to multiple powerful major hurricanes causing the greatest damage since Katrina during late season. 2024 will be talked about for many decades in the future, not just due to the incredible amount of hurricane landfalls on the gulf coast, but due to the truly anomalous pattern of tropical cyclonegenesis and intensification. Is this another artifact of AGW or just a season with many conflicting signals which have constructively and destructively interfered with each other, or both? Only time will tell.