Does the East Coast Have to be concerned about Hurricane Earl?

This is the question that is concerning people across the internet. Will Hurricane Earl make landfall on the east coast? Well in order to answer that question we need to take a look at earl and what is currently happening and its environment.

These images are not the greatest at this point and time because we are currently in a satellite eclipse. However…the one thing you can see is that Earl has become very ragged looking. He currently looks like a storm that is being effected by a combination of shear and also dry air. As one can tell there is plenty of dry air to its west and also if you look even to its south at the bottom of the image. This is important because of the rotation of this storm essentially that could allow this dry air to get digested into the center and cause further weakening. Did I say weakening? Thats correct because even though the winds are still 135 the pressure is rising and is now at 942 MBS as of 2 AM so this actually does indicate a weakening storm.

So first to dispel some rumours that are running rampant on the internet in the forums. The chances of Earl becoming a Category 5 are pretty much over.

Another rumour was that the 12 Z ECM showed two landfalls. One around Hatteras and one in SNE around Cape Cod. This also is not true. I have images of the ECM of the in between hours and better graphics from Accu Weather and while close to the coast it is still about 35-50 miles off the coast. The ensemble means of the 12 Z ECM are further off the coast. The 00z ECM  shows pretty much the same if not slightly east..

So what do the rest of the models say..Well lets look at the GFS, UKMET and GGEM.

GFS says no east coast landfall…

GGEM says no east coast landfall

UKMET would probably imply a SNE landfall…

What about the Tropical Models. These are from 06z

As you can pretty much see that out of all the model guidance from the globals to the tropical models the consensus is that this stays off shore. There is only 3 models that bring this to an east coast landfall..thgt is three models out of how many? Would you want to hang your hat on three models when the consensus is something totally different?

So, pretty much a East Coast landfall is still not likely at happening. I put the chances of an east coast landfall at 10%. Again, this does not mean that there will not be effects along the east coast but some things have to be kept in mind.

1. Chances are as this moves further north it is going to be in a much weaker state.

2. The east coast will be on the western side which is the weaker side.

There is alot of HYPE out there! Do not believe it! HYPE creates hits and HYPE sells newspapers and even gets news ratings but it does NOT belong in weather!

Now lets look at the conditions with Earl.Convergence and divergence continue to be good.

So obviously this is still not a problem. However, shear continues to be a problem as well as dry air. And there is tons of dry air around Earl. Do not be fooled. Again YOU WILL READ on the internet and in SOME FORUMS that dry air is not doing anything to this storm. Well simple question for those touting this is the following:

1. If dry air is not doing anything to this storm then why is the storm not strengthening with the warm waters?

2. Why does the latest water vapor image show dry air working into the east side of the  center?

Its the dry air in combination with decent shear to its North. Here is the shear tendency map and it does show a narrow path that earl could travel to stay away from the shear but this would have to move basically due west and then NW in order to accomplish that.

Otherwise we are currently as of 3 Z looking at about 10-30 knots of shear across the system.

Real Wx Services has been practically the only outfit calling for this to have already reached its peak and pretty much that has been the case.

As far as movement for this system it should continue to move towards the NW ..

I really like this image because even though it shows Earl pushing against the dry air it also shows how its starting to wrap itself in as I mentioned above.

I see no compelling reason as of this point and time to change any of my thinking from what was posted a few days ago in reference to track..

From now till thursday at 6 PM will be providing continuous updates…Aside from sleep time from about 6 AM to noon ..this will be updated every couple hours.

Stay tuned for further information on this developing system.