Finally the NHC has named tropical storm Fay... We all know it should have been named yesterday but hey at least it only took them 24 hours to fix the problem! The storm looks impressive especially considering the fact it's being impeded by Hispaniola... Usually this would lead to the death of a tropical system but with Fay we have a different situation on our hands... Because Fay is still weak, the effect of the mountainous terrain of Hispaniola is not going to be near the effect as if it was a strong hurricane. Hurricanes are such a perfect engines that the littlest change can lead to catastrophic failure... Case in point.... If you had a major hurricane running into Hispaniola you would shear the insides apart destroying the center of circulation. Once that happens it's VERY difficult for the system to get its act back together. Even if it would pop back into the warm Caribbean waters, it would take days for the system to even get back to hurricane status.... A great example of this was Major hurricane Isidore in 2002. It hit the Yucatan Peninsula as a strong Cat-3, and even after traveling across the entire gulf it was never able to regain hurricane status again... Fay won't have this problem... Since you don't have a really strong low level circulation like you have in a major hurricane the effects will be minimal.... You never really change this perfect engine because it hasn't even been cranked yet... So when Fay pops back out over the warm Caribbean waters you will see it start to intensify almost immediately!!!
Ok, now with the track... Well I think its safe to say that Fay is not going to ride up the east coast... I felt really good with a much more western solution on the track but now it looks like its going to be even more west than the typical GFS bias... I touched a little on GFS problems with heat transfer and why it always seems to break down the ridge much to quick... This is why it has such a right bias on tracks even when the US is not a landfall threat... Also I touched on how this is a unique situation where we are waiting for the ridge to build back in instead of usually waiting for it to break down... Well two things are for sure today, one the ridge is building back in much faster than anyone thought, and two Fay is transferring its energy to the south of Hispaniola...
When I say transferring its energy, I mean the storms center is reforming south of Hispaniola... This never would have happened if this was already a hurricane. So yes it's still weak but again I can't stress enough that this is actually BAD BAD news for the US. I already touched on why it will intensify, but now let's talk about how Fay transferring its energy south is not good news for the people along the gulf coast. You might say well its only about a 60-70 mile difference so why is this that bad? That 60-70 mile difference means hundreds of miles for the US. If Fay would have stayed north of Hispaniola I would say my South Florida area landfall forecast looked pretty darn good.... But since its going to stay south of Hispaniola I really feel like anywhere from New Orleans to Big Bend of Florida need to start taking this storm very seriously...
The NHC has FAY making landfall as a tropical storm very close to where hurricane Charley struck... Honestly you might as well throw that track forecast away as I almost guarantee that won't happen... Plus it will be much stronger than a tropical storm if somehow that did happen... Again I'm not trying to say I know everything but with common sense tropical knowledge over the past 8 years and using the teleconnections I definitely don't think that will materialize...
First the ridge is going to build in stronger than the GFS thinks... Remember the NHC's baby, the GFDL, is initialized with GFS model data... So if you have bad data in, your going to get bad data out. Ironically the 12z run of the GFDL picks up on this hard western turn and has a strong Cat-3 hitting the Florida Panahandle... So to me it will only be a matter of time for the NHC to keep shifting their track west... We will have to see what the 18z GFDL shows, but if its still near the Big Bend of Florida then to me that's a VERY BAD sign for the Gulf Coast resident to the west around Pensacola, Mobile, Biloxi, Gulfport, and even New Orleans... It's not time to worry yet, but it's time to start taking notice...
The second big reason why I think the NHC's track is going to be wrong is because they don't have the correct location of where the storm will be.... All tropical systems want to find the warm water and especially in this situation with a weak storm its going to find that water... Bottom line is it's going to either reform north of Hispanola or south or Hispanola... It's not going to ride through the middle of the island like the SPC shows... So again even though I'm only have a 20-30 mile south difference from them, that will translate to a few hundred mile difference west at landfall... It's really amazing how the smallest track error makes a huge difference. 60-70 miles south could be the difference between a south Florida landfall and a Mobile landfall... With Fay's intensity, all I have to say is if it does go through the Gulf of Mexico, LOOK OUT!!! My track takes it over some of the warmest waters in the Carribean and the Gulf of Mexico... I'm honestly very worried and feel confident in saying that we will have a major hurricane on our hands early next week in the Gulf of Mexico!!!
Ever heard of the saying, "WHAT A DIFFERENCE A DAY MAKES, 24 LITTLE HOURS"... Well this is, "WHAT A DIFFERENCE 18Z MAKES, 18 LITTLE HOURS"...
2 comments:
The scary thing about Fay is that Hispaniola hasn't really had much of an impact. Winds even increased over land and mountains!
This is bad news. I can't really come up with anything that suggests this doesn't become a major hurricane in the gulf. Great info here, Greg. The two model graphics need to be used in class to show the model bias "to the right"...reminds me of a billion tropical systems before it.
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