NorthHillsWx

I WAS THINKING OF THIS. Very similar situation

Recon shows this a mid range cat 2 at the moment. The storm clearly ingested dry air. That takes time to resolve

It’s got the “took a huge gulp of ML dry air” look

Lee dropped 45 kts from 5 am to 11 pm yesterday. From rapid intensification to rapid weakening in a short period

Picked up 0.15” from yesterday’s afternoon storm

Inner core then nothing. That’s not a healthy look

As strong as Lee was last night/early this morning, it had nothing on Jova. Definitely some SW shear at the moment, you can clearly see it impacting the cloud tops to the SW of the storms main convective envelope. We’ll have to see if Lee has a part 2 phase of intensification and also what internal changes occur as to whether a or not the storm peaked earlier today or if we can see a second max

98.5 today. MAKE IT STOP

What’a remarkable with this storm is just how well forecast this RI has been

Based on recon and the fact this thing is still going to town, I think it’s a given we’ve just witnessed the most insane rate of RI in Atlantic history

It was up there

I cannot emphasize how crazy I think recon would have been for Jova last evening. I truly think that was one of the higher end of higher end storms in our lives. We’ll never truly know how strong it got but it’s structure was perfect and the pinhole eye was terrifying

Rarely does the first recon mission into a storm meet expectations like this but holy moly

Quickest cat 5 in history

Not sure anyone else caught it but the 18z GFS turns Lee into a blizzard in parts of SE Canada

Lee may reach cat 4 by 5 pm. This thing is absolutely going off at the moment

Yep. This storm is going to be an absolute beaut with a pretty eye too. By tomorrow morning (maybe earlier) I expect cat 4

Wow, go back 3 weeks and I’d just like to admit how wrong I was about this season. The Caribbean was sheared, TUTTs were running rampant across the Atlantic, the east coast trough was more dominant than the monsoon trough in western Caribbean, and SAL was killing all African waves shortly after they entered the Atlantic. With ENSO and the promise of El Niño shear becoming an increasing part of the picture, I openly questioned CSUs bullish prediction. How wrong I was. We have entered a hyperactive period in an El Niño year. If you told me the last 10 days of august would feature 6 named storms, 2 majors, and we’d carry that into September I’d laughed at you. But here we are. Lee is going to be a high end hurricane and Margot looks like another storm with major hurricane potential. Just wow for an El Niño year. I admit defeat, I was so very wrong

Cat 2 incoming at 11:00

Bombs away…

97.9 imby. On the subject of RDU, the airport consistently reports max temp readings 3-4 degrees above what I see. They broke 100 today and we were not particularly close EDIT: RDU broke 102 today!

160 mph Cat 5 at 11 pm. 80 kt increase in intensity since this morning. Absolutely nuclear

I’ll interrupt your regular scheduled programming to tell you to hop over to the EPAC and check out hurricane Jova. One of the most intense bouts of rapid intensification you will see and this thing has likely become a category 5 beast

Hit 95.7 yesterday. Hotter than a hoochie Coochie today. We’ll likely top that…

As expected, loss estimates from Idalia have come way down. While some early estimates placed damage at nearly 20 billion, estimates have fallen to a more paltry number of 3-5 billion https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/private-market-insured-losses-hurricane-idalia-be-3-5-bln-moodys-rms-2023-09-04/