Jonesing for a Chase

[Ed Lizard]

Euro ensembles would appear to generally support the operational GFS, and at least some members are stronger than the operational Euro, a system near/just North of the Yucatan, and a ridge to steer it towards NE Tamaulipas or Deep South Texas.

[toad strangler]

Gimme a Dean. I want a rematch with a Yucatan Cat 5. I was close-but-no-cigar last time. Need to right that wrong.

Since we are taking requests, I would like a slow WNW moving and large Bahama Mamma. Landfall anywhere from Fort Lauderdale to Melbourne.

Thx

[eekuasepinniW]

Hey, thanks!

Yeah, the USGS coverage is worldwide, essentially-- which is very cool. I'm excited to finally have an easy way of figuring out my altitude. As long as I have my 3G connection, it's cool.

I used that app to snoop Key West and found it to be off. It showed the "solares hill" area as being 5-6 feet when it's actually 18 feet. Other spots I checked seemed quite accurate, though.

[wxmx]

It's hard not to feel tingly looking at those GFDL and GFS tracks which have really persisted with the deep-W, Caribbean Cruiser scenario for the last 24 hr or so. The Euro still isn't showing much with this system, but no matter-- I'll seize onto the positive signs with nothing short of a death grip.

It shows a two for one deal and you're complaining

[kab2791]

12Z GFS

[Srain]

Despite Don's lameness last week, extending my stay in TX was cool because it allowed me to do some "recon" for future TX chases.

I've chased on the Upper TX coast (Houston/Galveston region) and I've chased in the deep S (Brownsville/Port Isabel & Kenedy Co.)-- but I'd never really checked out the C TX coast. So, I ended my TX trip with a night in Port Lavaca and a driving tour of Matagorda Bay-- just to get the lay of the land. The map below shows where I drove and what towns I checked out.

HISTORY

Re: Matagorda Bay's hurricane history...

* The last direct hit was Claudette 2003, which made landfall on Matagorda Island, just E of Port O'Connor, with winds of 80 kt.

* The last major was the legendary Carla 1961, a very large and intense cyclone which really hammered the Bay. The center came ashore near Port O'Connor or a shade W of there, putting that town and Port Lavaca squarely in the right-front quad and intense inner core. The whole region was devastated, and Carla remains the benchmark hurricane for this region.

* In the distant past, the great Indianola Hurricane of 1886 came ashore a bit further S with estimated winds of 135 kt. While Matagorda Bay probably wasn't in the RMW, the city of Indianola-- at that time an important port on the W shore of the Bay-- was permanently wiped out and never rebuilt.

TOUR

I stayed in Port Lavaca (green), which the biggest city on the Bay (pop. ~12K). It's a substantive town for this area, but it's seen better days-- it's rather shabby and rundown. I was there on a Saturday night and the town had very little pulse-- even in the historic downtown area, where Main St hits the water. It almost felt like a ghost town to me.

From there, I did two tours.

First I drove S:

* Indianola (purple) is just marshlands with a small fishing village now. It's hard to believe a thriving port city was once here. A monument-- sort of like a gravestone-- marks the city's brief life: 1844 - 1886.

* Port O'Connor (pop. ~1K) (orange) is an isolated hamlet at the W entrance to the Bay. An extremely flat grid of small, one-story houses and mobile homes, it has very few hotels, although I did find one decent-sized one whose rooms are on a second story, well above sea level.

Then I drove E, around the Bay:

* Point Comfort (pop. ~780) (red) is a village across Lavaca Bay from Port Lavaca, next to a giant refinery. There seemed to be no hotels and it did not strike me as a good chase destination.

* Palacios (pop. ~5K) (yellow) is one of the more substantive cities in this region-- a little bigger and a little brighter and fresher than some of the other towns. But, like the others, it looks extremely vulnerable to me. (By the way, although the town's name is Spanish, it is correctly pronounced in the harshest gringo style: “Puh-LASH-us”. Ugh. )

* Matagorda (pop. ~700) (green) is fishing village near the E entrance to the Bay. Again, it looks exceedingly vulnerable to me. A great, fancy bridge connects the church-dotted town center to a long string of beach houses (many on stilts) on the barrier island-- all of it about 3 ft above sea level.

IMPRESSIONS

A few overall observations:

* Elevation. I was really stricken by how low-lying all of the towns are: they're all right on the water and barely a few feet above sea level. Not only that, but the slope of the land is so gentle, you can drive miles inland and not gain much elevation. While I've come to expect this sort of extreme vulnerability in the LA bayous, I was surprised to see it firsthand in this part of TX.

* Buildings. There's a general lack of big, sturdy, multistory, modern buildings in this region. Scott747 once said to me, "Any town in TX with the word 'Port' in its name is flimsy and rundown." Totally true-- not just of the "ports", but really of all the towns around Matagorda Bay. There just aren't a lot of options for riding out extremely high winds-- not to mention, there are very few places to safely park a car (i.e., elevated parking structures).

My overall impression is that the Bay would be awesome for chasing Cat-1/2 hurricanes or ones that are smaller in size (i.e., Claudette), and very tough for stronger cyclones (i.e., Carla) or ones that are very large and surgey (i.e., Ike). I'd be cool with riding out a Cat 3 or even a 4 in a second-story hotel room in most of these towns, but the car is a problem-- where to put it.

Given this, if a really large, intense hurricane were approaching the Bay, I would probably use Victoria (purple) or Bay City (red) as a staging area and leave the car there, and pay a local (or whomever) to drive me out to my chosen bayside destination to ride out the storm. That seems to be the best general plan.

Anyhoo, who knows when I’ll need to actually enact any of this planning-- but thinking ahead is never a bad thing.

[Ed Lizard]

Thats me. I know its weenieish to put any faith in the GFS in the medium term, especially beyond the resolution chop, but Josh and Scott and whoever wins with a nice chase around Corpus Christi or Matagorda Bay, and we'd wipe out half the rainfall deficit in a couple of days.

And my kids would be back in school, and even a miss like Rita was good for the Southern equivalent of 4 snowdays (two days to flee and two to return) and Ike was good for a solid 10 S.E.S.D.s for my kids.

[HurricaneJosh]

I used that app to snoop Key West and found it to be off. It showed the "solares hill" area as being 5-6 feet when it's actually 18 feet. Other spots I checked seemed quite accurate, though.

OK, this is an interesting coincidence, but one of the places where I tested the app was Solares Hill. (You can get elevation for places even if you're not physically there.)

When I click several places on Solares Hill, I get 15 ft. It's not the 18 ft that it's known for, but it's much closer than what you got. Maybe your GPS was off and feeding an incorrect location into the query.

What other spots did you check?

[HurricaneJosh]

Wouldn't it be bizarre if I were actually able to apply all of my newfound knowledge of Matagorda Bay this year?

[eekuasepinniW]

OK, this is an interesting coincidence, but one of the places where I tested the app was Solares Hill. (You can get elevation for places even if you're not physically there.)

When I click several places on Solares Hill, I get 15 ft. It's not the 18 ft that it's known for, but it's much closer than what you got. Maybe your GPS was off and feeding an incorrect location into the query.

What other spots did you check?

That's weird. No clue what the issue was. I was comparing its readouts to this PDF http://www.keywestcity.com/egov/docs/1179941507_255767.pdf and it was accurate with everything but the hill. Maybe I just have fat fingers and missed the "summit".

That's an awesome PDF, btw. You should probably print it out and keep it in your Florida Keys chasing folder.

I also tried various places in the upper keys, around Myrtle Beach, and all three Connecticut Lakes in northern NH-- it's extremely accurate for those. Overall, I like it.

[HurricaneJosh]

That's weird. No clue what the issue was. I was comparing its readouts to this PDF http://www.keywestcity.com/egov/docs/1179941507_255767.pdf and it was accurate with everything but the hill. Maybe I just have fat fingers and missed the "summit".

That's an awesome PDF, btw. You should probably print it out and keep it in your Florida Keys chasing folder.

I also tried various places in the upper keys, around Myrtle Beach, and all three Connecticut Lakes in northern NH-- it's extremely accurate for those. Overall, I like it.

That is an awesome PDF-- thank you! I will, indeed, save it.

Interestingly, my Elevation Pro reading matches what the PDF says-- with the highest point being 15 ft in the block between Simonton, Elizabeth, Angela, and Petronia Streets.

Glad to hear you generally found the app to be accurate. Like I said, I've been pleased with the results of the spot checks I've done, and it's really helped me with calibrating my barometer. When I use the elevation values it gives me as the reference-altitudes values for the barometer, then my sea-level pressure readings always match pretty closely with the nearby METAR stations.

[HurricaneJosh]

[Ed Lizard]

Amazing how the models went so dullsville in 24 hours. Maybe they'll go the other way the next 0Z runs.

[HurricaneJosh]

Amazing how the models went so dullsville in 24 hours. Maybe they'll go the other way the next 0Z runs.

Yeah.

[HurricaneJosh]

Hmmm. Kinda yummy. Can't help getting some tingles from this:

[Scott747]

Hmmm. Kinda yummy. Can't help getting some tingles from this:

Sent you an email about 30 min ago.

LGEM shows a cat 3 - Track would be just N of Mahahual.

[HurricaneJosh]

Sent you an email about 30 min ago.

LGEM shows a cat 3 - Track would be just N of Mahahual.

Wow-- these model runs today are pure porn. Yowee. Hard not to get a little excited looking at these-- but of course I'm wary of getting suckered in again.

[Ed Lizard]

18Z GFS gives total 93L fail then takes an awesome storm right into Shredderola at the truncation chop.

[HurricaneJosh]

Still yummy-ish:

[HurricaneJosh]

I know it's fantasy porn, but I just need to save and treasure this here. I almost want to print and save it in a gold locket around my neck-- to keep it close to my heart:

[Floydbuster]

I know it's fantasy porn, but I just need to save and treasure this here. I almost want to print and save it in a gold locket around my neck-- to keep it close to my heart:

Little Iris redux?

[HurricaneJosh]

Little Iris redux?

Sort of-- it has that tight micro look. But Iris was even further S. This landfall point-- near the MX/BZ border-- is very Janet. But it's of course absurd of me to make that comparison, since Janet was wicked strong (~914 mb/150 kt).

[Scorpion]

Gotta hope it forms soon for that to happen. HWRF is notoriously low with the pressures though, look at the wind mainly. Perhaps a strong 3 is possible then.

[HurricaneJosh]

Gotta hope it forms soon for that to happen. HWRF is notoriously low with the pressures though, look at the wind mainly. Perhaps a strong 3 is possible then.

Yeah, I was looking at the 10-m wind-- mid-range Cat 3, which would be awesome.

[Floydbuster]

Yeah, I was looking at the 10-m wind-- mid-range Cat 3, which would be awesome.

I remember Iris well because I spent half the time watching the start of Operation Enduring Freedom and the other half watching Hurricane Iris. The system jumped fast south of Hispaniola from a TD to a 60 mph storm.

[CUmet]

There simply isn't enough time for this to get up to anything above a Cat 2 by the Yucatan IMO. Most likely is probably an intensifying TS under ripe conditions for RI, but just ran out of time (like Karl of last year).

Now, if this gets enough time over the Bay of Campeche...well who knows.

[wxmx]

There simply isn't enough time for this to get up to anything above a Cat 2 by the Yucatan IMO. Most likely is probably an intensifying TS under ripe conditions for RI, but just ran out of time (like Karl of last year).

Now, if this gets enough time over the Bay of Campeche...well who knows.

It would have to hit further north than modeled for some Bay of Campeche yumminess... 20N+, otherwise it would probably have less than 48 hours to intensify, something like what the HWRF is modeling, trackwise.

[HurricaneJosh]

There simply isn't enough time for this to get up to anything above a Cat 2 by the Yucatan IMO. Most likely is probably an intensifying TS under ripe conditions for RI, but just ran out of time (like Karl of last year).

Now, if this gets enough time over the Bay of Campeche...well who knows.

It would have to hit further north than modeled for some Bay of Campeche yumminess... 20N+, otherwise it would probably have less than 48 hours to intensify, something like what the HWRF is modeling, trackwise.

Yeah, I see what you're saying. Despite the bullishness of the models, it's hard not to be discouraged by the real baldness of the disturbance right now. If it's going to make a move, it's got to start now-- and yet we all know the unique curse of the E Caribbean.

It's just frustrating, because the models were such a tease today-- literally showing my favorite setup: a W-moving major hitting the Yucatan. Grrrrr.

[ORH_wxman]

zzzzzzzzz

for now.

[HurricaneJosh]

zzzzzzzzz

for now.

Who asked you?