jpeters3

He's not completely insane in the observation that if continued NW motion were to occur, this thing would make landfall smack dab on Galveston. What should be emphasized is that models show a more northward turn which should take it toward Port Arthur. But there is nothing in the current trajectory that suggests Houston is "safe."

Uh, if it were at Houston's latitude, it would have made landfall already... Edit: I suspect you are seeing Corpus Christi on the map.

This seems to support ~ 948 mb.

If this is supported by a dropsonde, we have yet another 7-8 hPa drop between passes. Amazing.

That was me... (where is the Picard facepalm meme when you need it...) EDIT by jburns. Here you go.

Ok, I will be nicer. I was feeling a bit defensive of the person they jumped on because they were only responding (in good fun) to my suggestion for guesses.

were you dead on??? wow.

FWIW, CIMSS site is back up. ADT is at 6.5, 929 mb, 127 kt. http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/adt/odt13L.html

Go poop on somebody else's parade. There is room for a little bit of responsible fun here.

Deff not on this pass, and probably not before landfall.

Predictions? 945/130 is mine.

Thank you for saying what we were all thinking. I don't want to get started with how I feel about posters calling them "canes" either...

I actually have to back off my initial statement. Back of the envelope calculation says that you need a 10 K difference in mean layer temperature to get pressure differences that large. That can't be explained by the planes flying at different altitudes. So something is wrong...

Though, if you are right about the pressure sensor being off, then they might actually be at the same heights... Makes sense that they would make passes at different altitudes though. Don't want a mid-air collision in the middle of a hurricane...

I find it highly unlikely that the airplane's pressure sensor is that off. If it is, they have bigger problems. The aircraft are flying at different altitudes, and the most likely explanation is that the standard extrapolation formula is simply inaccurate in this particular hurricane. There are known biases with these formulas. Edit: if you know the hypsometric equation, than you know they must make assumptions about the thermodynamic structure below the plane. So if these assumptions are off, the extrapolation is off.

It's just a simple reduction from the plane's current pressure/altitude.

It's just simple formula - doesn't mean there is "something wrong with the plane" Also, planes are flying at different altitudes, which probably explains the different extrapolations.

I don't think it's the plane per se, it's probably that the traditional reduction formula isn't very accurate in this situation.

Got it. Apologize for my critical post.

I was gonna say... I would sh*t my pants if i lived along the coast and was expecting a 13 foot storm surge.

This logic is flawed. You seem to state that you need good organization to get good organization. But what you are failing to acknowledge is that there is a transitional time period between bad organization and good organization. Not saying that RI is imminent or even that it will definitively happen, but just that it is irresponsible to throw in the towel based on ill-concieved notions.

You're hard pressed to find large scale anticyclone with very high RH in the middle troposphere within it... And large scale anticyclones are favorable regions for TC intensification.

I suspect the comma shape was due to northerly shear. It's possible that this will go away as the shear abates.

Every hot tower = RI, and every minor warming of the cloud tops or slight degradation of the satellite presentation = weakening.

We've discussed the RH issue a bit. I don't think this will be a huge hinderance to strengthening so long as shear is low. Dynamically, the pulse-like nature is more connected to shear than to RH. Now, when shear is present, low RH probably has a more deleterious effect than high RH. But it does look like the system is trying to get its act together, in a way that It hasn't throughout the entirety of its life up to this point. For instance, the new pulses of convection are forming a concentric ring.