hawkeye_wx

The GFS and ICON show the large differences that occur on Wednesday. At that point, when this system is south of Hispaniola, the GFS suddenly blows it up into a rapidly-strengthening hurricane and drives it north across the island. The ICON, on the other hand, does not develop it much until Sunday. It still feels a northward tug, but it remains too weak and shallow to get pulled further north, so it waits for the ridge to build in and turn it westward, at which point it blows up. Regarding the current state of the system, I'm not seeing any close surface circulation this morning. The center of surface spin is out ahead of most of the convection.

So this system does appear to be organizing earlier than some models were predicting. They now mostly develop it before it reaches the central Caribbean. However, there are still two camps. The GFS and Euro AIFS are still lifting it northward over Hispaniola, while the Euro and ICON begin to turn it north, but then a rebuilding ridge to the north causes the system to stall and turn back to the west.

A series of decent showers added up to 0.40" here overnight.

The GFS has a piece of energy in the sw Caribbean that competes with the energy coming in from the east. That also causes it to stop much earlier and end up much farther northeast. The Euro, on the other hand, has the main wave remaining the dominant energy, and also has stronger ridging to the north, which keeps the system moving westward.

We got a little rain yesterday, enough to wet the surface, but then overnight a nice soak boosted my total to 0.60".

We have underperformed a fair amount this weekend. On Friday the NWS had 91º in the forecast for both Sat/Sun. However, yesterday we only hit 86º and today we are stuck at 83º.

Today was the first breezy day in a long time. It seems like the last month has been dead calm almost every day. It has been extremely warm, but it's very different than the heat a couple months ago. If the sun goes behind a cloud or the wind kicks up, it's suddenly comfortable. Also, by late afternoon it's already cooling off. By evening, it feels amazing. There is a big construction project by my house that has been ongoing since July, in which tens of thousands of yards of soil has been excavated and moved around. They have been very lucky to have such dry weather over the last several weeks. They are about to start work on the end of my street. Hopefully, they can get it done before the weather becomes more active.

Wow, Humberto has had an epic collapse. In just a couple days it has gone from cat 5 to an exposed vort.

Imelda has a great outflow channel to the north, but it appears to be fighting dry air. Convection within the core is looking a bit ragged this evening.

Recon is finally into Humberto. The pressure is 929 mb. There are a couple wind maxima and the max wind on the first pass was only 120 kts flight level.

It appears Imelda is fighting some dry air getting pulled in from the west.

The average high drops below 70º tomorrow. The forecast has mid to upper 80s for the next seven days.

This thing really got stuck in the Bahamas, and has been slow to develop. It has barely moved in the last 24 hours.

The T# is up to 7.0, which is 160 mph. This certainly looks near cat 5.

I'm still not seeing anything in the recon plans regarding flying into Humberto. As far as I know/remember, they always fly into hurricanes within range, as Humberto clearly is.

Models have consistently been predicting that Humberto would slowly organize today into early Friday, but then late Friday the shear would drop and the storm would begin to strengthen more rapidly and accelerate westward.

Another wild 18z Euro run.... has a 966 mb and a 933 mb hurricane off the coast.

The visible loop confirms 93L has a well-defined surface vortex. It just needs to exit the shear zone.

This is going to be wild. Two hurricanes right next to each other off the southeast US coast? I've been tracking the tropics since the late 1980s and I can't remember anything like this.

A nice line of storms moved southward through central and eastern Iowa last evening. It produced what may have been the best light show of the year. I finished with 0.66" of rain, a welcome soak. The solid storm a week ago and the one last night have re-greened the lawns a bit. My September rain total is 1.29".

GOES is having trouble today. It has been almost two hours since the satellite data has updated.

I'm curious to know why we have three recon planes flying all the way out to a tropical storm in the middle of the ocean, which isn't going to affect any land.

Gabrielle is getting its act together today. Recon shows the pressure down to 997 mb. The wind has not caught up, yet.

Ugh. The early to mid next week system is now expected to pass well south of Iowa, so models have really dried up through ten days again, and that's after barely getting anything the last couple days. The ensemble averages have been too optimistic with their prediction of a wetter pattern.

It was looking like nothing would make it into Cedar Rapids today, but a storm cluster to the west tonight built eastward and gave us a very solid storm. I finished with a badly-needed 0.39".