Fay - Will She be Feeble or Ferocious?

Hi all -

After spending several days flying into the disturbance that is now T.S. Fay, it's obvious that we still have a lot to learn about tropical systems and how to predict their motion and intensity.  From the previous posting to today's, you can see that there have been some major changes in the track forecasts.  Look at the two shown here - one from yesterday and the current forecast from 2:00 p.m. this afternoon.  I'm showing the spaghetti models from the Colorado State University website because they are visually better than most.  The first one to the right is the 2:00 a.m. forecast run on the 14th, Wednesday morning.  Compare that to the 

 model run this afternoon at 2:00 p.m.  There's a world of difference.  If the latest runs even begin to verify in three days time, our base in Tampa at MacDill AFB will be in the line of fire.  The real question, though is how strong will Fay be when she arrives.  Most models hint at a strong tropical storm to a weak hurricane.  That's good news, but the longer she stays out over the Gulf waters, the stronger she is likely to be.  For the record, 

 official 5 p.m. Saturday NHC forecast is shown here.  You can check the latest official forecast by going to the NHC website at:  http://www.nhc.noaa.gov.

So, what has NOAA been doing this week to better understand how and why these week systems develop into storms?  The two NOAA WP-3Ds, as you know, have been in Barbados flying round-the-clock missions to collect doppler radar data from which 3-D horizontal wind fields can be derived which will then be fed into the NOAA hurricane forecast model (HWRF).  Beginning Wednesday night at 11 p.m. and finishing last night at 7 p.m., these two aircraft flew four consecutive missions into the disturbance, the last resulting in the naming of the system.

To give you some idea of the type of track flown on one of these missions, here is the track shown on Google Earth for the flight flown Thursday night when the system was just east of Puerto Rico.  The different colors represent different wind speeds and the barbs show the direction of the wind at each location.  While clearly there was a circulation at the aircraft's altitude, 12,000 ft., this had not extended to the surface.  Thus, it was still officially a wave.  On the next flight during the day yesterday, Friday, a circulation was found at the surface just south of Hispanola and Fay was born.

Although the P-3s have completed their missions and will be returning to Tampa tomorrow, the NOAA G-IV is currently flying a high-altitude surveillance track out of our home base in 

 to provide profile data for the track forecast models that will be run this evening at 8:00 p.m. this evening.  While the artwork isn't all that great, the track for this flight is shown to the left.  The aircraft will first fly to the east of Florida, then south of Cuba, west through the Yucatan Strait into the Gulf and then back into MacDill AFB.  The mission will take 8 hours, but the data provided to the models should give us a much better handle on where the storm is going.

My best advice to all is to stay tuned, watch the Weather Channel and be ready.  I'll update this again when I have new material to post.  

Thanks for your nice comments on the blog.  

A New Beginning?

The disturbance we are in Barbados to fly looked so bad that we canceled the day mission today.  It does look right now at 6:00 pm this Wednesday to be getting its act together as you can see in this latest image.  You can see that it is bearing down on the northern most islands in the Caribbean and should pass over them in the next couuple of days.  

What is even more disturbing is the forecast track of this disturbance over the next five days.  As you can see from the latest model runs, it is forecast to be just off the Florida coast in five days.  At that time it may be a hurricane.  We'll just have to watch it.

Off to the airport in an hour to get our first flight off into the system at 11:00 pm this evening.  It will fly all night long, getting back into Barbados between 7:00 and 8:00 a.m. in the morning.  The second plane will takeoff at 11:00 a.m. tomorrow with the first plane repeating agian at 11:00 p.m. tomorrow night.  

And so it goes.  Stay tuned.

The Beginning of Something Big?

Hi Everyone - 

The big question on this date is whether the two systems in the Atlantic between the Lesser Antilles and Africa will amount to anything over the next week or so.  To answer that question we here at the Center have been put on alert to take our two P-3s to Barbados to start flying round-the-clock missions Wednesday morning.

At the right you see two satellite images take this afternoon that show these two systems.  The upper one image is the western most system located at about 13N, 50W.  The lower one is at about 10N, 30W.  They don't look like much, but we'll see whether they develop in time.  The western system is shown as #1 on tonight's NHC forecast site and is colored red for having a high probability for intensification.  The eastern system is orange and shown as #2.  The #3 low probability (yellow) system showed up on the NHC website tonight and is not considered much of a threat.  We do not plan to explore this system in the western Caribbean.  

As I said, we leave tomorrow for Barbados - at 0900 local Tampa time.  We should arrive there about 3:30 pm tomorrow afternoon.  We had trouble finding rooms for the 32 people going down within our allowance of $164 per room per day, but our agent at the airport finally came through for us.  We'll be staying at the Barbados Hilton Hotel. 

 

Not too shabby, eh?

Stay tuned in the coming days for the continuing saga of what are called disturbances AL92 and AL93.

More later.

Just In! Bill Gray's Updated Hurricane Forecast

Just in!  Bill Gray, shown at right, and his colleagues at Colorado State University have just updated their forecast for the 2008 hurricane season.  

In early June they were forecasting 15 named storms, 8 hurricanes and 5 major (Cat 3 and above) hurricanes this season.  Now their totals have swelled to 17 named storms, 9 hurricanes and 5 major storms.  

Since we have only had 4 named storms so far this season, their remains the possibility of 13 more storms, 7 hurricanes and 4 major storms.  Still a lot of storms to go and about two months, give or take, to get them in.  Time will tell. 

At the Aircraft Operations Center, all of the aircraft and crews are standing at the ready.

More later.

Hello and Goodbye Edouard

After a great week in Wisconsin, I rushed back thinking that my group would be deploying to St. Croix in the Virgin Islands on Sunday or Monday.  Well, it was not to be.  The system in the Atlantic that our customers were anxious about simply didn't materialize.  Hence, no trip to the sunny beaches of the Caribbean.

While we were looking to the east, a depression was forming to our backs in the Gulf of Mexico.  As it reached tropical storm strength, it was named Edouard - the fifth named storm of the season - and headed west towards Texas.  This morning, Edouard made landfall in NE Texas and is currently bringing heavy rains and squally weather to the Houston area and to the east as far as western Louisiana.  

The radar image above was taken from the Houston National Weather Service radar at approximately 1:00 p.m. EDT today, Tuesday.  

So, we say goodbye to Edouard and await what comes next.  At the moment, the tropics from the Gulf to the west coast of Africa is devoid of disturbed weather considered even slightly favorable for development into a tropical storm.  We have a long way to go in the 2008 hurricane season, so we're not ready to toss in the towel just yet.

Some of you inquired as to how you might learn of our plans on a real-time basis.  After some hounding by a couple of you, I"m giving you the number and extension to our P-3 hurricane hotline which is used to provide personnel here of the latest plan for the day.  The number is:

1-800-729-6622 x3128

If you care about the Gulfstream G-IV, that extension is:  3144

Some of you also indicated an interest in the Weather Channel's interactive radar display which is currently in its Beta stage on the web.  The image to the right shows the storm that passed by and around us last week.  The display can be zoomed in or out, and various controls at the bottom of the display allow you to play, pause, stop, control transparency, etc.  You can also put in your city or zip code and the map will go instantly to your neighborhood or wherever you wish.

This is online and can be found at:

http://www.weather.com/weather/map/interactive

This is not a link (I haven't figured out how to insert links yet - my next project), so you must copy and past in your browser.

Enjoy, and stay tuned for the next installment, which will chronicle "Fay," if and when she develops.  Fay will be followed by Gustav and then Hanna.  

See you next time.