what's frightening is looking at that track this morning, NOLA is in this thing's path. of course, as you say, the models are still projecting events out 5 days +, so we'll see. i'm rooting for more shear. go shear go!
Keep watching as those tracks bend further and further to the east. These are the latest model runs: You can see that increasingly dramatic northward bend in all models except the BAM group which are persistent in the more southerly track. Even the NHC's track has bent northward at 7am. If you want to see animation from some of the models, you can view it here. Just click the individual submit buttons, wait for the javascript to load, scroll down and click FWD. Click the LAST button to see where they think Ernesto will be in five days. It's interesting to note that at least three of the models now have Ernesto as far east as the Florida panhandle by day 5. I think that, ultimately, they will all begin to shift more to the north and east once we get to Monday and Tuesday, but this is going to be a big ass storm. I don't want to say it will be on par with Katrina or Rita, two of the most powerful storms ever, but the intensity forecast has it at category 3 now in 5 days and I think everyone thinks that is conservative. The only good news for Texas is that only three storms in recorded history have started from this point in the Atlantic and made landfall in Texas, so it isn't like this is a common occurrance if it were to happen. Storms have to fight to maintain a southern latitude and are almost always held on a westerly track by upper level features that we probably won't see with Ernesto. We may, in fact, see the opposite of that, which is why we are starting to see these easterly shifts in model guidance as we go forward. Obviously, everyone (and I mean everyone in Texas as well) really needs to watch Ernesto carefully. Five days out is WAY too long to make track and, particularly, intensity predictions. There is a feature in the Gulf called the loop current that is quite similar to last year at this time. It is an area of VERY warm water just to the south of Louisiana. It was responsible for the explosion in size of Rita and Katrina. You can see it on this image: Note that blob of orange, red and pink in the middle of the Gulf. That is super warm water and, if these tracks hold, directly in the path of Ernesto. That, along with the fact that forecast tracks are notoriously iffy out 5 days means we all should be paying really close attention to Ernesto and getting ourselves prepared for anything. I'll probably be making my decision to stay or go late Sunday or early Monday. I may go ahead an put up the boards tomorrow evening and just leave the damn things there until October just to avoid the hassle of doing it later - kinda like Christmas lights still up in March.
wow..the updated models are all over the place with this one. a group of them having them making the north/east turn. the others have them headed towards texas or western louisiana coast. with some stragglers on both sides.
Warm waters have no effect on track, just intensity. Max, the models are going to be like that until they can properly initialize Ernesto, which they haven't done very well so far. The one's to the south seem really unreliable. A couple of the intensity models still have Ernesto dissipating. I seriously doubt that.
That didn't make English sense. Could you explain that further, Jeff? Also, if the waters are HOT, does the storm get stronger or weaker? My guess is STRONGER? If the Gulf is cold as it shows right there, wouldn't it dissipate? There's no reason for a storm to come through the gulf if the waters are cold, yes?
The map that Jeff showed is not sea surface temperature but hurricane heat potential. Those orangish areas are where there is alot of deep and warm water for the hurricane to use as fuel. A storm can really explode when it hits one of those areas with the right conditions. Anyone remember Hurricane Opal?
Jeff, Are you in NOLA or Miss or are you seriously considering having to make the decision to evacuate Houston? Good luck to you if you do decide to leave - somehow I don't think it will be any less of a cluster**** than it was last year.
I'm in Houston, but if this were at massive cat 4 or 5 storm aiming for Houston, I wouldn't stick around mainly because I wouldn't want to go through that by myself at home with my cats. I'd rather just let it rumble through and come back later.
Some interesting things happened today with Ernie. The center relocated under the CDO and the ULL to the west really began moving quickly towards Mexico. This means that the shear is really letting up on the storm now and it shows on the latest satellite pics. In fact there is another ULL to its north that seems to be helping to vent the storm. This thing is probably going to strengthen to hurricane strength really soon, maybe even by morning. Now that the storm is alot more organized the computer models should get a good handle on it. By morning we should have a much clearer picture. The northwest jog is definately a good thing for us here, but keep your eye on this. Things can change.
there seems to be much more agreement, already. except a couple, the models seem to be swinging it to the north...east of here. looks like a few of those models have it going in dangerously close to NOLA. can you imagine the psychologial effect if a year later those levees are breached again? they were breached of course during Rita. but now..after a year...and more people have come back. wow. i'll take wind shear for 200, Alex.
i'm with you. i've said it tons of times before...but cat 4 or above, i'm out. i'm not sticking in my 40 year old home surrounded by huge 40 year old trees to ride out a storm of that magnitude with 2 little kids, my wife and my dog. not when i have family who'd be happy to have us come visit.
The shear is definitely letting up a bit, but I wonder if the interaction with the Dominican Republic is having an effect. The storm is a bit ragged though it could just be going through a replacement cycle. It looks as though it may have even bumped a bit more to the northeast, but we'll see when the hurricane hunter makes its pass at 2am. It appears Ernesto will also have to encounter a decent portion of the Cuban coastline. Even if the eye isn't over land, the mountainous Cuban terrain will probably prevent the storm from strengthening quickly. The models are in much better agreement now, but I'll feel better when we see that on Monday. If it continues to bounce a bit to the east and north as we've seen, it will have a tough time recovering enough westerly movement to get over to Texas, but we're a long ways out. The westernmost outlier of the major models is in the NOLA/Bilouxi area with the eastern most showing a landfall on the Gulf coast of Florida. The GFDL has bounced around a bit as well showing now a westerly shift near Cuba followed by a northward movement and then a shift back to the east before making landfall in the Florida panhandle. While it has been fairly accurate with track in terms of the final desitnation as other models have slowly come into agreement with it, its path has been literally all over the map and, ironically, not terribly accurate in the short term despite seemingly being the consensus in the long term. One thing that is very interesting is that all the tracks are in pretty good agreement with regard to forward speed bringing the storm onshore early Friday. The bad news is that means it will spend 3-4 days over the Gulf of Mexico and its warm waters. The highest intensity track has it as a cat 4 before going onshore as a strong cat 3. The SHIPS and GFDL, on the other hand, bring it onshore as a weak cat 3. Intensity will change a LOT over the next few days. The track will likely continue to find some consensus but we won't know the ultimate track or strength of the storm before mid-week.
I disagree about its appearance. It looks as good as it has ever looked to me. I can see some rapid strengthening occuring soon. Timing is everything with these things. That trough you mentioned earlier could very well miss the storm and it could then begin a slow westard jog towards TX/LA. Dr. Jeff Masters mentioned this earlier today in his blog. No one is out of the picture yet, but again its too early to tell.
OK, here is what is freaking me out. My grandmother (my mom's mom), who lives alone across Lake Ponchatraine from New Orleans in Covington, just went to the hospital a couple of days ago to have surgery done on her heart. Her house had a lot of damage from Katrina and just now getting back some sort of order after having a lot of things worked on and remodeled because of it. Anyway, they have not done the procedure cause she is having all kinds of complications and is in the ICU in critical condition. Because of the surgery, my mom flew to New Orleans a couple of days ago to help her out for the next couple of weeks after the surgery. Now, here is where it gets freaky. My wife went to see this world-renown psychic in town in April. She had seen him a couple of times before and he has been eerily right on stuff he has told my her in the past. So, she sits down in front of him at this particular reading. The first thing out of his mouth is asking her if she knows someone with a long first name starting with the letter 'K'. My wife thinks a little bit, but couldn't think of anyone. He starts sputtering names out and one hits my wife and makes her remember that my mom's name is Kathleen (goes by Kathy). He then tells her that she MUST tell my mom that there is another hurricane coming, another big storm on it's way. Now, here it is, my grandmother in critical condition in the hospital sitting in the middle of New Orleans, my mother there by her side, and a hurricane entering the coast. I don't even know what to say.
From the latest Masters blog at 9:15 CST... The new center position is good news for the U.S., since Ernesto's closer approach to Cuba and Hispanolia will keep the storm weaker than it otherwise would have been. In the past few hours, the cloud pattern on infrared satellite imagery has gotten more fragmented, which may be due to storm starting to struggle due to interaction with the island of Hispanolia. It could also be a temporary adjustment due to reorganization of the storm around the new center, or an increase in wind shear, which is still a substantial 15-20 knots. The forecast The new set of model runs show more agreement that Ernesto will make it to the Gulf Coast by Friday as a hurricane, possibly a major hurricane. All four major global models are forecasting a landfall between Louisiana and Florida by the end of the week, so the threat to Texas appears lower now. It is still possible that Ernesto could stall shortly before landfall and assume an unpredictable path, however. The GFS model's solution of bringing Ernesto over Key West and inland farther north near Tampa appears unrealistic, due to the failure of the model to put the surface center in the same place as the center at mid levels of the atmosphere. The NHC forecast now is also nudged slightly to the right and the intensity forecast is down 5 knots from the previous. I'm not saying we shouldn't be prepared. We should. There is no question. In 5 days, someone is going to have a nasty hurricane sitting on their doorstep. We all need to pay attention and not get caught with our pants down.
It was fragmented but what he didnt mention in that post was that convection was deepening near the center of storm. Look for yourself. http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/flt/t2/loop-rb.html Edit: there is still shear. Look at the western edge of the storm. See how little cirrus outflow there is on the western edge. Then again look closer and see how the thunderstorms developing to the south and west aren't flying apart quickly like they have been. The shear is there but it has lessened quite a bit. Edit 2: This looks EXTREMELY bad for Haiti. Even a tropical storm there cause massive damage and loss of life due to all the deforestation.
Xenon: Agreed 100%. It IS strengthening no question. There still IS sheer that is inhibiting some of its progress. It will, no doubt, be a hurricane tomorrow. I really feel bad for Hati. This could be a humanitarian disaster. They lost 1000 lives when the last tropical storm hit and it wasn't the same strength as Ernesto.
Will no one stand up against the oil companies who shoot storms with lasers to make them hotter and therefore bigger?
Jeff have you seen the GFDL intensity forecast for that typhoon in the Pacific? 200 mph! Incredible. Good thing that one won't be bothering anyone but a bunch of fish.
