Teleconnection Time!!!

It's one thing to forecast a few days ahead of time and in the case of Fay basically now casting a storm, but it's a whole different ball game to forecast 10 days out... Some people think this is impossible but I beg to differ... Doug Gillham is the best long range forecaster I have ever known... Joe Bastardi is the best long range forecaster I have followed on the internet... Both of these men have an uncanny ability to forecast long range events... They take into account common bias/patterns they have seen over and over to make a long range forecast... Think of a rope... If I tug on one side of the rope it will eventually affect the other side of the rope... Teleconnections work the same way... Weather on one side of the globe will eventually affect the other side of the globe... The atmosphere is a fluid so eventually everything will come full circle...

Japan is a GREAT example of this... A trough/ridge patten in Asia will correlate to a similar pattern in the US 6-10 days latter... 6 days off the west coast of the US and 10 days off the east coast of the US... Tokyo, Japan is correlated with Cape Hatteras, NC and the south east China coast is correlated with the Gulf of Mexico region... I'm going to show you some interesting patterns that could affect the South East US coast in 9-10 days...

Here is yesterdays Japanese model 12z 500mb forecast... You see a trough in Japan and a ridge to its south and across China... So for the US you would expect a trough in the north east extending down into the midatlantic... You would also expect a ridge across the deep south and Florida... This would correlate to 9-10 days away since were forecasting for the South East US at about the August 29th/30th timeframe...

Here is Japanese model 12z 500mb forecast for today.... It's showing a trough exiting the island of Japan and another trough building in from the west... It also shows a ridge building in more to the east, and notice you have a landfalling typhoon in China... This is very important to notice... Especially the almost due west motion from the day before into land... Of course just because we have a typhoon in China doesn't mean at all we will have a hurricane heading towards the US. However if we did have a hurricane heading towards the US coast we can use the ideas from Asia to get a good idea where the US hurricane might go... Again this is just pattern recognition not hurricane formation prediction... I can't predict if a hurricane is going to form looking at this but I can forecast the eventual path looking at this... That's really important to understand!!! Forecasting for the US south east coast, this would line up with the August 30th/31st timeframe...

Here is the Japanese model 12z 500mb forecast for tomorrow... The second trough is heading towards Japan and the ridge is still strong to the south.... Again forecasting for the south east US is would line up with the August 31st/September 1st timeframe...

Here is the Japanese model for 12z 500mb on Sunday the 24th of August... You see a trough heading into Japan and you really see the ridge building back in strong to the south of Japan and into China... This would match up for the SE US on September 2nd/3rd...

Ok now that we have that lets look at a European 0z 500mb forecast for August 28th... Why the european??? I really believe it's far superior to the GFS for long range forecasting... You can see the euro picking up on a tropical cyclone heading towards the east coast of Cuba...

The Canadian 0z 500mb chart for August 27th also shows a tropical cyclone... The Canandian's track is a little further north of the euro's track, taking the tropical cyclone towards the Bahamas...

So what's the bottom line??? Ok both the European and the Canadian show a tropical cyclone heading towards the US... There tracks are not exactly dead on, but it's fairly close for that far out... Also looking at the eastern atlantic I believe these solutions are very possible as there is a lot of convection/rising motion out there... Knowing what we do with the teleconnections, I feel strong in saying we have a good chance at a landfalling hurricane in about 9/10 days.... We know there is a strong ridge south of Japan and we also know that we have a landfalling typhoon in China that headed basically due west because of that ridge. If you you put everything together like a puzzle, I feel strong in saying that if there is any tropical cyclones out in the atlantic it will keep heading towards the US... I don't see ANY reason why any tropical systems heading towards the US during the late August/early September timeframe will curve out to sea...

It will be very interesting to see if the GFS has it's traditional bias of curving the storm too far to the right... If the Euro's postion is correct we could have a storm moving towards south Florida and into the Gulf of Mexico... If the Candian's position is correct we could have a storm moving towards the south east US coast... Either one is possible but the bottom line is we have a big threat for a landfalling hurricane about 9/10 days from now... Time will tell but I think this is going to be fairly close to what happens!!!