Isn't this high pressure system that's over us right now supposed to stay in place for awhile? Wouldn't that steer anything away even if it did form?
High pressure doesn't sit in one place for long. It is subject to the same upper atmospheric conditions as anything else. Plus, high pressure generally serves to steer storms, not block them. In this case, any storm over the midwest would steer a low from east to west around its perimeter. It would then move west at the first point where the high weakens. It all depends on where that is. I've been checking the models and two of them are predicting something, but none of them develop it beyond a storm and only one makes it to Texas. Keep in mind that the eddy spawned by the Gulf Loop Current is sitting out in the central Gulf (a few hundred miles south of Mississippi/Alabama). While it has diminished quite a bit over the last week, it is still REALLY warm. If a storm were to traverse even a small part of that eddy, we could see rapid intensification like we saw with Felix this year and with Rita and Katrina in 2005. While I SERIOUSLY doubt that will happen, we saw with our last hurricane how quickly things can spin up in the Gulf. Fortunately, there is much cooler water to the west of the eddy, but we'll just have to see.
Just a quick update after a little more research... Currently, there is a high pressure area sitting right over Texas. It extends to around the Texas/Louisiana border and right down close to the Gulf as evidenced by the winds in Galveston out of the east/northeast. There is a low pressure system sitting over the northeast around Pennsylvania/New York. The high is forecast to move north and east into the midwest while the low is forecast to move south towards Florida and, possibly, into the northern Gulf. If it did, it would most definitely move west along the southern edge of that high pressure area. How far west and just how far south it makes it into the Gulf is dependent upon the speed and direction of the high pressure area. In addition, we have a tropical wave in the central Caribbean that is getting killed by wind shear from the sub tropical jet stream - same thing that is squashing Ingrid at the moment - but the wave is expected to push into the western Caribbean and away from wind shear where the water is still very warm. Most forecasts call for this system to move north toward Florida. The key is how these two storms interact with one another, if at all.
Cat 3 coming here, no power for weeks. Of course this is because I just went grocery shopping and filled the freezer up with over $100 worth of good steaks, chops, meat, etc.
Sorry for taking so long. These were taken very early in the rain with my Treo, so the quality sucks. Neighbor's house: Across the corner from my house: On the street. My house is to the left of the picture. Same spot, 5 hours later:
There is good news there today. Another low had developed on top of the original storm. When two lows (one with a warm core and one with a cold core) develop on top of one another, it dramatically inhibits intensification for at least a couple days. Most of the models have the storm moving northwest and coming on shore between Mississippi and the central Louisiana coastline sometime this weekend as, at most, a tropical storm. If the storm were to move straight west, it would have a better chance of intensifying because there is still quite a bit of warm water in the central Gulf as part of the loop current eddy, but it looks as if this will miss that, fortunately. Even if it did come west, none of the models predicted it would gain more than category 1 or borderline category 2 status. Part of the difficulty with this storm is that there is a massive amount of dry air flowing into the storm from the northwest that inhibits development no matter where it ends up going. Keep an eye on it, but there is more room for optimism than there was a couple days ago.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5149691.html Tropical system may pick up steam, target Texas (edit: Then again, it may not.) By ERIC BERGER Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle Forecasters along the U.S. Gulf Coast were closely watching a tropical system that crossed Florida on Wednesday and emerged into the Gulf of Mexico. The system, which remained below even tropical depression strength, could potentially develop into a tropical storm by today and possibly a hurricane by this weekend. The upper-atmosphere dynamics steering it are complicated, and computer models differed on where the area of disturbed weather might head after reaching the eastern Gulf. Some models brought the system toward Texas this weekend as a strong tropical storm. Others moved it northwest toward Louisiana, Mississippi or the Florida Panhandle. Until the system re-forms over the Gulf, forecasters said, computer models cannot offer reliable guidance on where it might go. Models are even less proficient at predicting how strong the system might get. There was some concern about the area of thunderstorms, because Hurricane Humberto formed quickly from a similarly poorly organized area of low pressure into a hurricane while in the Gulf earlier this month. This new system has the advantage of meeting potentially even warmer water than Humberto. However, low-pressure circulation in the upper atmosphere and other factors could inhibit development of the system coming off Florida. Shell Oil Co. said it planned to evacuate about 700 staff deemed not essential to drilling and production in the Gulf by the end of the day Wednesday. In Plaquemines Parish, portions of which were destroyed by Katrina in 2005, nervous residents were calling local officials for any news. Since Katrina, "people are gun-shy, and they're going to call, which is good," Phillip Truxillo, Plaquemines' emergency management director, said.
I'm not buying into Jeff Master's good news just yet. The center of low pressure has jumped all over the place for the past few days, and wherever they think they've found the center of low pressure, that is where they've initialized the model runs. I'm sure they couldn't get a decent bead on the center of low pressure because there was such a strong mass of thunderstorms breaking off to the Northeast. When I say "breaking off," I mean breaking off from the center of circulation. The center of circulation has been fairly constant---it's marched almost due west across Florida for close to 48 hours now, and it sure as heck has a tropical cyclone footprint. It is still moving due west continually at odds with the models, and it is about to be centered over the warm water current. I sure as hell don't know as much as these meteorologists, but as I watch the thunderstorm activity pick up around this center of circulation this morning as it slowly moves due west........I can't help but think that all of the data might be confusing them a bit.
Invest 93L is not really more organized that it was before, but it has the chance to reach tropical storm strength before making landfall. All the models have it hitting between Pensacola and central Louisiana and none of the reliable intensity models have it reaching hurricane status before landfall.
Tropical Depression 10 is just off the panhandle coast of florida right now. It's projected to strengthen into a Tropical Depression by tomorrow and head north into Alabama, Missisippi then Louisiana. Nothing to worry about, but I would keep an eye on it anyway.
OK, weather nerds. Hurricane season is pretty much over. Let's move on to the more pressing issue: Spoiler WHEN IS THE FIRST COLD FRONT OF THE SEASON COMING??
i think he said only a couple of hurricanes ever have ever made landfall on the Texas coast past that point.
