I thought the GFS was Bizzare last night.
But now the 18z run highlights include.
16mb pressure drop while over Cuba
922mb snowicane in the Gulf of Maine.
GFS with one of it's most 2020 runs ever. Every other model allows the NErly flow @ 500mb to capture it and pull it SW across central America. GFS showed that a few runs ago but now changed it's mind. I think it's a fugiwara effect with a convective blob to the north that's preventing it from being pulled SW but I'm open to other suggestions. Probably nothing like this verifies.
ECMWF, CMC GFS are in good agreement on a TS south of Jamaica at 72hrs. It drifts southwest into central America on all models but takes varying amounts of time.
It doesn't have time to deepen into a major Hurricane on any model however.
The IR appearance is finally starting to degrade.
Amazing because radar has been showing only a few whisker bands in the SW half of the storm since landfall
Maybe it strengthens a little. If the pressure only fell 12mb in the last 12 hrs,, it's not going to make CAT3 extrapolating that rate over the next 6 hrs.
This looks similar in intensity the last 3 Hurricanes to hit SE LA.
Gustav, Isaac and Nate.
It was a raw T 7.4 at one point last night.
I think the window to deepen has just about ended. It will probably hold this intensity +-5mb up to landfall.
2020 can be added to the list now, Aug-26th - Oct21st Laura, Teddy, Delta , Epsilon.
A very good season, but the alphabet record was padded with namewaster storms.
As for what prevented the Caribbean storm from forming, Looks like it was the stupid 500mb low over Florida. It appears at around the same time the GFS lost the storm.
Yeah it's a little perplexing. GFS was also too weak with Episilon, and had trouble handling the phase. It was it splitting it into 2 lows for a while.