I think the worse case scenario for us is that it shifts north and makes a landfall between Corpus and Houston and we get on the dirty side. It has to take a sharp curve in order to make a landfall in Galveston which seems unlikely at this point.
Bury your feelings deep down, MadMax. They do you credit, but they could be made to serve the Emperor.
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1523 Posted by: JeffMasters, 2:13 PM GMT on June 28, 2010 Tropical Storm Alex is slowly growing more organized as it steams away from Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. Satellite loops show that Alex's heavy thunderstorms have increased in areal extent over the past few hours, and low level spirals bands are beginning to form to the south and north. The clockwise flow around an upper-level high pressure system a few hundred miles west of Alex is bringing about 15 knots of wind shear to the storm, which is slowing intensification, and limiting heavy thunderstorm activity on the storm's northwest side. Sea Surface Temperatures are very warm, 29°C, and there is some dry air to the northwest of Alex that may be inhibiting development. The latest Hurricane Hunter center fixes, at 6:32 am CDT and 7:16 am CDT, both had central pressures of 989 mb, with top surface winds in the 50 - 55 mph range. Track forecast for Alex: which model should you trust? Our most reliable computer models have come into much better agreement this morning. A consensus forecast arrived at by averaging together most or all of the tracks of our top models--the GFS, ECMWF, GFDL, NOGAPS, HWRF, UKMET, and Canadian--is pretty much what NHC always uses as the basis of their forecast. This consensus forecast has narrowed in on the region near the Texas/Mexico border as being the most likely landfall location, with the usual cone of uncertainty surrounding it. The northernmost landfall location is Port O'Connor, as predicted by the Canadian model. The southernmost landfall location is near Tampico, Mexico, as predicted by the ECMWF model. Alex's landfall time varies from Wednesday evening to Thursday morning. Which model should you trust? Last year, the best performing models at the 3 day forecast period were the GFS, Canadian, ECMWF, and GFDL. Three out of four of those models are predicting a landfall between Brownsville and Corpus Christi, with only the ECMWF model predicting a landfall well south of the Texas border. With steering currents relatively weak, the uncertainty in landfall location is high. The average error in an NHC 72-hour track forecast last year was 230 miles, which is about the distance from Brownsville to Port O'Connor. Consider also that the NHC cone of uncertainty is the region where 2/3 of the time (using the last 5 years of statistics) the center of a storm will go. That means that 1/3 of the time a storm will not be in the cone of uncertainty. Given the slow motion of Alex and the recent uncertainty of the computer models, people living just beyond the edge of the cone of uncertainty should not be confident yet that Alex will miss them. To get the probability of receiving tropical storm force winds or hurricane force winds for your location, I recommend the NHC wind probability forecasts. The 5am EDT (09 UTC) wind probability product predicted that Brownsville, Texas had the highest odds of getting a direct hit from Alex: Brownsville, TX: 64% chance of tropical storm conditions (winds 39+ mph), 14% chance of hurricane force winds (74+ mph). This is the cumulative probability through Saturday morning. The wind probability forecasts also include separate probabilities for each 12-hour period between now and three days from now, and each 24 hours for the period 4 - 5 days from now. La Pesco, MX: 59% tropical storm, 9% hurricane. Tampico, MX: 42% tropical storm, 6% hurricane. Corpus Christi, TX: 38% tropical storm, 5% hurricane. Freeport, TX: 23% tropical storm, 2% hurricane. Galveston, TX: 18% tropical storm, 1% hurricane. Intensity forecast for Alex Alex is currently over a region of ocean with relatively low total ocean heat content (about 10 - 30 kJ/cm^2). By Tuesday and Wednesday, the heat content will increase to 40 - 70 kJ/cm^2, which is high enough to allow Alex to rapidly intensify. Wind shear is currently a moderate 15 knots, and is projected by the SHIPS model to decrease to the low range, below 10 knots, on Tuesday and Wednesday. The combination of low wind shear and high ocean heat content should allow Alex to intensify into a hurricane. NHC is giving Alex an 81% chance of being a hurricane on Wednesday morning, and a 17% chance it will be a major hurricane at that time. Water vapor satellite images, though, show plenty of dry air over Texas and the adjoining waters, and this dry air may turn out to be a significant detriment to Alex. Another factor limiting Alex's intensification may be that the atmosphere is more stable than usual right now--temperatures at 200 mb are a rather warm -50°C, and are expected to warm an additional 1 - 2 degrees by Wednesday. Another factor limiting Alex's intensification may be its slow forward speed. Alex is moving at just 6 mph, and it would not take much of a slackening of the steering currents to stall out the storm. A slow-moving storm tends to pull up cold water from the depths, limiting intensification. In fact, the ECMWF model predicts that Alex could stall out right at landfall on Thursday. In short, Alex has the potential to intensify into a major hurricane, but there are plenty of roadblocks that make this only a 20% probability in my estimation.
I've really been impressed the last few years with the performance of the European (ECMWF) Model. It doesn't appear on any of the "spaghetti" model charts (like the one on Wunderground that shows the various models plotted out on tracking charts) and I'm not sure why, but it's been remarkably consistent. With this storm, it has consistently marked landfall along the Mexican coast and has consistently predicted hurricane intensity going back several days. We are going to dodge a bullet on this one, but a more important item to note is how rare a hurricane above a category 1 is for this time of year. If Alex does indeed reach 2 or major hurricane status, that would be pretty significant for June. Also, Alex was born from an African tropical wave. To see a tropical wave spun off the coast of Africa actually develop into a hurricane in June is a statistical anomaly and does not bode well for hurricane season...unless you like a lot of storms.
Booked a place in South Padre for the 7/4 weekend; looks like I'll have to evacuate as soon as I get there. Talking about bad timing
I prefer some rain at night/morning with it being mostly cloudy during day and evening. For the weekend of course. Hosting a BBQ so crossing my fingers .
Wunderground says output from this model is restricted by international agreement and is only shown online at ECMWF's website.
Well, Dr. Neil Frank has made an appearance on KHOU...and the expression on Chief Meteorologist Gene Norman's face is [fill in the blank].
Models are zeroing in on a Mexico/Brownsville landfall as a pretty strong hurricane for June. Bullet dodged? Let's hope so. Here is the latest euro, Jeff. The only thing that is of concern is that its going to have to make a pretty abrupt turn to make this landfall point.
reading this morning that upper Texas coast may see 5 inches of rain over the July 4th weekend from this.
Yes, I live in Houston but the storms are scattered all over the city...so it didn't rain yesterday where i live or maybe it did, i didn't see it. Latest satellite image. The eye looks really strong. I bet it will be a hurricane by lunchtime or early afternoon. It's so huge. We definitely will get rain.
