Tropics Are Quiet With Potentials On the Table!

With IGOR now out of the picture and moving towards Newfoundland ..the tropics are once again on the quiet side. For the season so far we stand at 11 Named Storms with Karl being the most recent…

You can see looking at this image that we are now starting to decline climatologically as far as the season is concern. This would naturally argue for things to start to slow down as we are now past the peak and in that declining slope.

This, however, does not mean that storms can not still happen but the frequency of them should be slower.

So with IGOR now not a concern to the east coast and the residents of Bermuda now cleaning up after IGOR, attention turns to potential prospects for the next system.

Last nights 00z ECM was showing a rather strong cyclone developing in the W Caribbean at about 168 hrs out and then moving across the YUCATAN by 240 hours out. However, todays 12 Z run, while still developing a system is much weaker and now moves it across the islands and to the South of Florida and then along the Florida coast.

The GFS on the other hand…develops two areas of low pressure around 180 hrs out..and then by 228 hours out it merges those two into one cyclone. What is pretty ironic with the 12 Z GFS is that it basically has the one piece of energy or cyclone if you will ..sitting in the same location from 180 hrs thru and up to 252 hrs which then it starts to drift to the west and then is on land over the YUCATAN.

Now the pretty amazing part of this is that while it is over the YUCATAN the GFS actually deepens this cyclone..

However..this GFS run gets even better because at 300 hrs out this is still over the YUCATAN. So you are looking at a model suggesting that a tropical cyclone is going to develop and its going to basically stay in one location, absorb another piece of energy..and then drift to the west at or about 252 hrs out…make landfall on the YUCATAN probably between 252-264..stay over land from that time  up thru when it finally emerges off the coast at 336 hrs out.

So, lets do the math here folks 336 hrs minus 264 hrs equals 72 hours or 72 hours that this system stays over land but does not dissipate or lose its tropical characteristics. Not only that but finally by 384 hrs this makes landfall in Western Florida..

Now this is a really interesting run to look out and as you can see i pointed out what i think are potential flaws thru out this posting. But where is this system coming from? What piece of energy does this actually develop from?

It appears it develops from PGI46 L..so lets look at PGI 46 L. Wait you say? Where is there an invest called PGI 46 L. This area is not yet highlighted by the National Hurricane center..however.CIMSS has a very resourceful tool called the Predict Page which shows invested areas potentially.

So this looks like from the track laid out what the models are starting to sniff out so to speak. You can see expectation is a due west track and shear is relatively light at 5-10 knots.

Decent divergence is occurring ..however..the best convergence lays well to the south and over land.

Meanwhile the vorticity is really stretched out and elongated and it is actually outside of the best vorticity area. Another potential problem lies in the dry air that will be dropping down from the North as seen on this image below and when you put the image into loop form.

So ATM..we do have a potential on the table as the models are sniffing out development but as one can see the ECM is not consistent run to run and the GFS version is not really believable. This is something that falls in the range of 8-10 days out.

So, while you will read things around the net saying that this has the potential to be massive etc and read things where people are getting worried about an East Coast landfall etc..the reality of the situation is that we have nothing even developed. You have model interpretations of what they think could possibly happen . However…right now that is all it is. Stick to 5 days at a time and it will make things alot easier when trying to figure out what will and will not happen.