csnavywx

1 minute ago, WinterWolf said:

Of course…but this is gonna be SUBSTANTIALLY STRONGER which wherever that NE Quadrant comes in will just scour what towns are there…this is gonna be worse.   

Every storm in this rarified air is different. Katrina's surge will be hard to beat due to its gaping maw and cat 5 intensity well before landfall, which allowed a significant swell and surge to build before it made landfall (it weakened only very shortly before landfall). Ida has had less time, even though it will be stronger in terms of max wind. I suspect the wind damage will be the standout with this one -- though the surge on any cat4/cat5 is no slouch either.

Really beginning to think that Nora screwed the pooch. The push from differential shear on Fri-Sat morn plus the outflow push from Nora into the TUTT over the western GOM has really left this in a bad spot. We need a lucky break now.

I was expecting stronger when I got up this morning, but this is definitely over my guess. We need an EWRC and fast. Main hurricane levees are at risk at this level. Any more strengthening will not help in that regard.

 T-numbers shooting up: 5.6 current, 6.1 raw; Satcon showing major (100) with hourly up to 105kt.

Pretty obvious strengthening ongoing atm with the storm crossing a warm eddy (as part of the Loop Current). Eye looking to try and clear out with a more classic look likely soon, given deep convection has wrapped around the center.

The TUTT cell to the west has finally started sinking south in the last couple of hours. We should start seeing a more westerly component to motion now (finally).

6 minutes ago, Down The Rabbit Hole said:

Dry air - you can see it in the WV loops

Won't matter unless it can get ingested. She's sitting in a large moisture envelope and under low shear. Pretty well buffered at the moment.

5 minutes ago, OSUmetstud said:

You've been solid on catching that. Where is our diabatic ridge coupling???

Yeah no kidding. Kind of need that right now. Ida has *kind of* taken her time getting re-organized today, so I imagine we're not quite getting the extra boost.

There's a bit of an easterly shear vector in the mid-upper levels tonight and RI should be fully underway. Hoping that gives her a nudge back to the west before LF.

She's still leaning east-of-prog and the margin for NOLA taking the NE eyewall is getting razor thin. I keep saying this, but it needs to stop and soon.

2 minutes ago, LakeEffectKing said:

This will be 140mph+ by morning, if not sooner...

Hah, I wondered where you were at. 

Yeah, it's been slowly symmetrizing all day after being a bit tilted and asymmetric this morning. Should be able to take advantage of its improved structure tonight.

It's more than just political ideation. If somebody wants to be taken seriously scientifically, as he does, they have a duty to support their claims honestly and update their priors when they're wrong. He almost never does, especially when it comes to CC. It invariably turns into waving around conspiracies as explanations -- which doesn't actually explain jack squat, it's a punt and turns into eternally engulfing or circular reasoning. Every piece of evidence against it becomes evidence *for* it. I've lain down the gauntlet on this stuff several times on this forum (nobody on the other side of the argument has picked it up) -- and at this point we've cleaved off CC discussion to its own forum essentially because we're expected to carry emotional baggage for intellectually immature or dishonest people.

Sorry for the mini-rant. His actual seeding subject is an interesting question, but it's a thorny one. You'd have to try it on fish storms first and it would be very hard to control for. We've actually already tried, but with inconclusive results. Not to mention all of the HAARP-type folks that would come out of the woodwork and basically get it shut down before we're able to get anything useful out of it.

5 minutes ago, OSUmetstud said:

7 
URNT12 KWBC 281019
VORTEX DATA MESSAGE  AL092021
A. 28/09:44:45Z
B. 24.06 deg N 085.26 deg W
C. 700 MB 3035 m
D. 987 mb
E. 195 deg 08 kt
F. OPEN SE
G. E03/35/10
H. 53 kt
I. 307 deg 16 nm 09:40:49Z
J. 052 deg 52 kt
K. 307 deg 22 nm 09:39:16Z
L. 63 kt
M. 133 deg 14 nm 09:51:04Z
N. 225 deg 66 kt
O. 132 deg 15 nm 09:51:11Z
P. 10 C / 3067 m
Q. 14 C / 3053 m
R. 10 C / NA
S. 12345 / 7
T. 0.01 / 0.5 nm
U. NOAA3 0809A IDA OB 07
MAX FL WIND 66 KT 132 / 15 NM 09:51:11Z

 

Weird eye shape there, elliptical with a 30-210 degree axis, 10 NM by 35 NM. 

That would explain the series of opposing cycling hot towers a little while ago -- probably fired along the major axis.

Core is now emerged over the Gulf of Batabano -- should make second landfall in an hour or two. Notable that towers immediately began to re-fire the second it came back over water.

42 minutes ago, jburns said:

Rare for them to forecast that extreme so quickly from what is now a cat 1. I hope people pay attention.

Given the way it behaved today with less than ideal conditions -- I can't blame them. Max shear drops off to ~5kt tomorrow with the vector aligned with the track and plenty of OHC. Only remaining fly is how badly the formative inner core is damaged. This little double speedbump interrupted what was probably a hellacious RI episode.

4 minutes ago, OSUmetstud said:

The synoptic pattern to me suggests that stronger=west. I think a stronger Ida ends up diabatically building that ridge to the northwest of it. 

The diabatic pump is real, however I think *at the moment* it's more about the differential steering flow (versus a weaker/shallower and more tilted Ida that some ensembles and deterministic runs had forecast). This constant slight deviation to the right of track adds up over time -- at least until the shear vector weakens and shifts direction late tonight and tomorrow morning.

The effect might cancel out -- but we could really do with fewer corrections to the east.

5 minutes ago, Tezeta said:

That’s the same terrain that disrupted gustav. Maybe it’ll put in some work here. 

Short-term land disruption is generally more effective in limiting downstream intensification once an inner core has become established. This is due to wind curve flattening or spreading. This larger windfield becomes less concentrated near the core (because of frictional spin-down and interruption of latent heat flux) and also generally becomes pretty inertially stable -- making it more difficult for wind maxima to contract and spin back up. Irma and Isidore are good examples of this. It may not work very well in this case due to the fact that the inner core is still in a formative stage and the TS-force wind field is still pretty small.

FL winds are up about 10 knots from the previous SE-NW pass by recon. Already strengthening pretty rapidly.

4 minutes ago, WinterWxLuvr said:

Wouldn’t a path east of New Orleans be potentially problematic also. Katrina was east of the city and the damage came from Lake Pontchartrain did it not?

It would be, but Katrina was not a worst-case scenario for NOLA, believe it or not. It escaped the worst of the wind damage and a further west track would have funneled surge up the mouth of the Mississippi for a longer duration.

3 minutes ago, eyewall said:

Yeah we will have to see if that will occur or if it event slips east of NOLA like Katrina did and slams Bay St. Louis.

Stronger earlier plus right of center adjustments are not great. Still have some hope it stays far enough west to spare NOLA. At least in this case there's no trough trying to dig the 'cane out and eroding the ridge as it does so.

5 am advisory now forecasting borderline cat 3 on landfall but notes the following wrt intensity: 

It should be noted that this intensity is lower than that forecast 
by the HMON model, the HCCA corrected consensus model, and the 
Florida State Superensemble. 

MWCR 270900Z 28008KT 250V130 9000 -SHRA BKN014 SCT028 26/25 Q1003
MWCR 270800Z 32008KT 290V350 9999 -SHRA BKN010 26/25 Q1003
MWCR 270700Z 35010KT 330V040 9999 BKN018 26/25 Q1004
MWCR 270600Z 06010KT 9999 FEW016 BKN030 27/24 Q1005
MWCR 270500Z 09017KT 9999 FEW016 BKN030 27/24 Q1007 

Looks like the center is passing north of Grand Cayman. Radar confirms this.

Just now, MUWX said:

Forecasting a major in the initial forecast is unprecedented. This initial advisory is about as aggressive as they ever get. 

Pretty much this. It's already an aggressive forecast. Warranted, mind you, but already explicitly forecasting RI.

Having said that, the LLC got going in a hurry this morning and we're already on the northern side of the guidance envelope (from yesterday's runs), so -- not great news. We'll get Cuba as a speed bump at least, but I'm not sure how much that's really going to help. The "good solution" space is even narrower than yesterday.

Convection now coalescing on the northern end of the wave. Should get a nice convective burst out of that tonight.

13 minutes ago, NavarreDon said:

Not pointing this at anyone directly but, not sure how we can predict landfall from a system without a closed circulation. History tells us that this is a crapshoot at best. Using Grace as an example, before formation models trended from the FL big bend W to the MS/AL border. After formation they trended back E thru AL then into the FL Panhandle. The only thing that’s relatively sure now is a more N formation should equal a more E track & a more S formation should equal a more W track. At this point ,In the USA, people from Brownsville to at least the W FL Panhandle should have a eye raised for 99L.


.

TC formation generally favors the north end of the wave circulation envelope, where the curvature vorticity is naturally maximized. So, the modeling developing there isn't particularly surprising. Also, the synoptic steering features for Grace were more uncertain. Steering here is driven by a very large and displaced subtropical ridge, so there's less uncertainty on that component.

There's just not much "good" solution space. The best case seems to be on the lower-prob south end or a messy/slow initial vortex formation. And as mentioned before, that's not a very long list.