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TS Nate


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Yep. It's looking a bit better-- there's convection near the core. It looks like it just might squeeze out 65 kt before crossing between Tecolutla and Veracruz, just a tad N of where Karl crossed last year.

We'll see... seeing the SSTs in the Gulf of Mexico was a huge shocker earlier today, with only 26-27 degree Celsius waters over the core. No wonder it didn't intensify, it literally pulled an Ophelia 2005.

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What a traitor you are. :lol:

I'll admit... I screwed up on this storm big time. I made a post this morning saying how I didn't think SSTs were the culprit, but that was before actually looking at the data below. Boy was I 100% wrong.

If the storm had taken the further north track, up-welling wouldn't have bit such a major problem, but now it only has around 24 more hours over water than is in the 26-27 degree range. It was perplexing to see why the storm wasn't recovering yesterday despite the very favorable upper level conditions. Dry air might have been an issue initially, but those SSTs underneath are screaming why we saw the gutted satellite appearance yesterday. Its very reminiscent of Ophelia 2005. The thing that caught me off-guard was how seamless the transition was between the dry air preventing development near the core and the lack of warm SSTs. In reality it should have been a sign that dry air was not to blame when there was actually more convective activity going on to the west, which was closer to the dry air. Let this be a lesson how dynamic changes in SSTs can and do have a substantial impact on a tropical cyclone that causes long term mixing over the location it travels over.

Ophelia (2005)

wk38sy.jpg

Nate (2011)

2iw7zok.jpg

2v7utkz.gif

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Makes sense, Phil. And going by this logic, it should recover a bit as it moves W over warmer SSTs overnight. The NHC now explicitly says they expect it to be a 'cane at landfall.

Yes you are right... it looks like the SSTs recover to 28-29 degrees Celsius before landfall. The only cautionary thing I would mention is that the SST data above has only been updated to yesterday, and there is this a chance that the SSTs have cooled further since then due to continued up-welling. I guess minimal hurricane intensity is possible if it can do it in the next 12 hours or so below landfall, but this storm has been a major disappointment from an enthusiast and forecasting perspective.

Its worth noting that the NHC has preformed fairly well on the storm, never forecasting it to become a major hurricane, and some of their early forecasts never showed it getting beyond category 1. They deserve some kudos for staying conservative when some of the other global models were very aggressively developing this (I'm looking at you ECWMF).

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Yes you are right... it looks like the SSTs recover to 28-29 degrees Celsius before landfall. The only cautionary thing I would mention is that the SST data above has only been updated to yesterday, and there is this a chance that the SSTs have cooled further since then due to continued up-welling. I guess minimal hurricane intensity is possible if it can do it in the next 12 hours or so below landfall, but this storm has been a major disappointment from an enthusiast and forecasting perspective.

Its worth noting that the NHC has preformed fairly well on the storm, never forecasting it to become a major hurricane, and some of their early forecasts never showed it getting beyond category 1. They deserve some kudos for staying conservative when some of the other global models were very aggressively developing this (I'm looking at you ECWMF).

ECMW,F just add 12MB per day and you'll have yourself the most accurate tropical cyclone forecast there is.

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Its worth noting that the NHC has preformed fairly well on the storm, never forecasting it to become a major hurricane, and some of their early forecasts never showed it getting beyond category 1. They deserve some kudos for staying conservative when some of the other global models were very aggressively developing this (I'm looking at you ECWMF).

At least we can say that the ECMWF has been pretty consistent in overstrengthening TC's since last season.......almost akin to what the GFDL and HWRF often do. The strongest overstrengthening bias seems to me to be within the ~25N-35N corridor, but the overall bias doesn't seem to be confined to that corridor. I now always take the Euro's strength with a grain when it is much stronger than the other globals. I love it for tracks but not for strength. I think of its projection as the theoretical strongest a TC will get only if everything just happens to go just right.

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Yes you are right... it looks like the SSTs recover to 28-29 degrees Celsius before landfall. The only cautionary thing I would mention is that the SST data above has only been updated to yesterday, and there is this a chance that the SSTs have cooled further since then due to continued up-welling. I guess minimal hurricane intensity is possible if it can do it in the next 12 hours or so below landfall, but this storm has been a major disappointment from an enthusiast and forecasting perspective.

Its worth noting that the NHC has preformed fairly well on the storm, never forecasting it to become a major hurricane, and some of their early forecasts never showed it getting beyond category 1. They deserve some kudos for staying conservative when some of the other global models were very aggressively developing this (I'm looking at you ECWMF).

Yep.

For those keeping track, there are portions of the gulf that are under 22 degrees Celsius right now. Unreal.

Its hard to forecast how much up-welling would occur, but if there was a way models would incorporate SST change over the past 24 hours instead of going with a weekly average, up-welling cases like Nate could be much better forecasted.

3522k3t.png

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For those keeping track, there are portions of the gulf that are under 22 degrees Celsius right now. Unreal.

Its hard to forecast how much up-welling would occur, but if there was a way models would incorporate SST change over the past 24 hours instead of going with a weekly average, up-welling cases like Nate could be much better forecasted.

I agree. That's an incredible image. Thanks for sharing it.

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Pretty good setup for a Caribbean cruiser.

Yep, 50W to Yucatan peninsula, or Yucatan Channel and MX/TX border a la Allen or the rare FL straits - W GOM trough the Gulf Loop a la Inez... that would be the 3 extreme scenarios, plus some S FL action, if it were to follow the highest TCHP ... the N GOM and BoC are both probably screwed the rest of the season (not that there can't be anything there, just anything "good").

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Yep.

For those keeping track, there are portions of the gulf that are under 22 degrees Celsius right now. Unreal.

Its hard to forecast how much up-welling would occur, but if there was a way models would incorporate SST change over the past 24 hours instead of going with a weekly average, up-welling cases like Nate could be much better forecasted.

What models are you talking about? The GFS, for example, does an update to the SSTs once/day (I need to check, but I'm pretty sure it occurs during the 00 UTC cycle). In the future, the SST will be brought inline to the GDAS cycle (and updated along with the met. fields, every 06 hours). I'm not sure what the ECMWF does, but it's certainly at least daily like us (but I'm sure they update every twelve hours, for both of their cycles).

Now, using a once daily product (Reynold's OI) and updating only at 00 UTC is certainly sub-optimal.

The NOAA hurricane models (GFDL and HWRF) are both fully coupled to ocean models. In the future, the GFS will likely also be fully coupled to an ocean model (much like the CFSv2)...though this is quite a bit down the road.

Edit: But you do bring up a good point, and it seems these situations still aren't handled all that well....

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I'm 90% sure the ECMWF is a fully coupled model as well...

Their deterministic runs (10 day hi-res) are only coupled to a wave model (not an ocean model). Their monthly (run once/week) and seasonal runs (once/month) are done using fully coupled, atmosphere-ocean models.

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