Hurricane Zeta

[NavarreDon]

Lightning in the eyewall this late in the game....wow!!!




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[dan11295]

The overall core structure is holding together very well, baro forcing at work for sure.

[NavarreDon]

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[CheeselandSkies]

4 hours ago, hlcater said:

Most north moving gulf storms have weak/non-existent south sides. I remember when people thought Michael was remarkable because it was the exception to the rule. Not only that, take a look at environment/synoptics and a half-a-cane absolutely makes sense.

The interesting thing about Zeta and also Sally from earlier this year was that the "half-a-cane" structure was really only apparent on radar. The IR and visible presentations looked quite vigorous all the way around, in contrast to storms like Katrina and Irma (for its Marco Island landfall) where the back sides became noticeably degraded on satellite in the last hours before landfall.

[NYGiantsFan99]

sorry to be the bearer of bad news (especially after that one guy said hey atleast no levees have failed) but it appears that, according to multiple sources, that the Grand Isle Levee has been breached in 3 separate locations

[jm1220]

1 minute ago, NYGiantsFan99 said:

sorry to be the bearer of bad news (especially after that one guy said hey atleast no levees have failed) but it appears that, according to multiple sources, that the Grand Isle Levee has been breached in 3 separate locations

Not terribly shocking unfortunately. The levees in New Orleans were reinforced but not sure if the same work was done on all the other SE LA levees. The “land” in much of that area is alligator-laden swamp. 

[Rjay]

1 hour ago, LibertyBell said:

the 125-136 measurements for gusts are similar to what was reported for Laura out in SW Louisiana.

 

Reminds me of the Iowa derecho 

[gymengineer]

Mobile Regional Airport: another 90+ gust, now well east of the center. 

[mob1]

Mobile Regional Airport with a gust to 91 mph just now , pretty impressive considering how far inland Zeta is. 

 

Edit; gymengineer types faster than me. 

[NavarreDon]

Getting a decent blow in Navarre now, gusting to the mid 50’s.


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[jojo762]

Given all these highly impressive sustained winds/gusts, this will almost certainly be upgraded in post-storm analysis. 136mph?? That’s pretty top-tier, as anything higher (and usually a lot of gusts lower than that) destroys anemometers.

[andyhb]

That is one heck of a wind field on KMOB, lots of >100 kt outbounds not too far off the deck. Going to be an impressive inland wind event for MS/AL.

[shaggy]

Not too shabby 5 hours post landfall 

[tiger_deF]

Is it just me or is Zeta clearing out an eye over land? 

[jm1220]

1 minute ago, shaggy said:

Not too shabby 5 hours post landfall 

It is curious to me how the cloud tops are so cold south of the eye but there's no rain. 

[SnowGoose69]

The 20Z HRRR got that 02-03Z MOB forecast very close.  Had 90kts at 925mb with 76kts mixing to the surface 

[SnowLover22]

The structure still looks amazing. Wow!

Radar velocities still around 110-125mph. only 1,800 feet up in the atmosphere. 

[shaggy]

6 minutes ago, SnowGoose69 said:

The 20Z HRRR got that 02-03Z MOB forecast very close.  Had 90kts at 925mb with 76kts mixing to the surface 

Hrrr has shifted highest winds eastward in NC and now gets me right at 60mph gusts when earlier today it had me low to mid 40s.

[andyhb]

That is nuts. Seems to be wave-like features propagating outward from the eye/eyewall region as well.

[Moderately Unstable]

24 minutes ago, jm1220 said:

It is curious to me how the cloud tops are so cold south of the eye but there's no rain. 

I think that's due to low level dry air that worked in. You won't see it necessarily on the sat. Sat shows cloud temps, e.g., tops. Not the base or depth. Looking through the vil values at KMOB, it looks like those clouds don't have much low level moisture. This happens with winter storms too...snow starts falling, air is dry, takes time to saturate the air and get that precip to reach the surface. The clouds on the backside of this storm are definitely convective--they aren't just a cold artifact, so, they still pack some likely potent and poorly resolved winds. One of the local nws sites tweeted out something about dry air entrainment a couple hours ago when prognosticating a high gust factor so I think that's what's being seen there. May also explain some of the wave patterns. 

 

To a similar degree--although the storm is over land, two things can help maintain strength in addition to the upper level divergence. First a portion of inflow has remained over the gulf the last several hours and is visible on satellite feeding into the storm's core. Second, the low levels of the atmosphere if sufficiently humid can near the coast act in a manner similar to shallow water regions and result in a longer term maintenance of strength. The third thing at play here continues to be baroclinic influence. This is a warm core system being aided by what are basically cold core dynamics. Unusual, but not unprecedented. 

 

MU

[Amped]

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

[Moderately Unstable]

Yes, agree sat presentation is now finally degrading. Like the rest of this storm it has taken its time in doing so. Short range guidance did well on that. Then again, you can always find models in any situation that did well and didn't. Statistical intensity guidance in this case was crap, dynamic was solid. Probably better modeled the baroclinic factors than the statistical.

 

Very interesting storm to watch. The signal the last several days of yet another tropical system in a couple weeks in the Caribbean is just adding insult to injury at this point. Wayyyy too far out to talk track or intensity or what have you but the models have clearly locked onto a potent tropical wave that tries to do something in the second week of November. Very long range but good model agreement on that possibility. I hope we make it to theta. I really want to be able to make horrible jokes that none of my friends understand about the theta in theta. 

[Roger Smith]

I want to see Mu and Nu doing the Fujiwara. 

[jojo762]

Still plenty of 100-120mph bins showing up on KMBX at ~3KFT. Impressive given that Zeta has been on land for nearly 300 miles now.

[purduewx80]

The New Orleans NWS office was able to launch their 00Z sounding within the eye.

It recorded their warmest 500mb temperature in its history (back to 1948).

[BombsAway1288]

2 hours ago, purduewx80 said:

The New Orleans NWS office was able to launch their 00Z sounding within the eye.

It recorded their warmest 500mb temperature in its history (back to 1948).

That is absolutely wild and awesome at the same time

[Calderon]

So far 2 fatalities. 1 in New Orleans due to a downed powerline and 1 in Biloxi due to probable drowning on the waterfront.

[dan11295]

1.5M Customers without power now from Louisiana to Georgia.

EDIT: now 1.8M outages rising rapidly in N Georgia, although cant find any ASOS gusts  over 45-50 last hour in GA.

[NavarreDon]

This may be one of the strangest disco's I've ever seen (MOB).....2020 I guess.

.NEAR TERM UPDATE /Now Through Friday/...Hurricane Zeta was
moving rapidly northeast at ~30 mph over the interior of southeast
MS/southwest AL. Along the path, Zeta has been responsible for
downing widespread trees which have taken out power lines and
have contributed to structural damage. Life threatening/dangerous
storm surge will continue over the coast. Zeta will continue to
accelerate northeast through the night and is progged to lift out
of the forecast area shortly after midnight. As the center of Zeta
lifts out and weakens, strong winds will begin to taper as well
as the tornado threat. Rain bands will also gradually move from
west to east. A vigorous southern stream mid-level trof ejects
eastward over the Lower MS River Valley Thursday and makes steady
eastward progress over the southeast US Thursday night. This
feature supports the passage of a strong cold front Thursday,
which brings drier and cooler air to the local area in its wake.

Coolest highs will be over the western zones with numbers in the
mid 60s. Mid 70s along I-65 and 77 to 82 east of I-65 southward to
the FL Panhandle. Overnight lows dip down into the mid to upper
40s north of the coast Thursday night.

[dan11295]

Appears most of New Orleans metro avoid the strongest winds thankfully with strongest winds east of the center. Am guessing you may see more damage from parts of MS Gulf coast than N.O. proper.