Go West Young Man (Oct 2012) Part 1

If you were not made aware of what majority of the latest guidance is suggesting it may be the time to start watching the guidance if you live anywhere along the east coast from Florida into the Northeast USA...

Over the past couple days we have been doing exactly this and we have been watching what had become the 18th Tropical Depression of the season become the 18th Tropical storm of the season. It is important to keep in mind that your professional agencies were not expecting much more then 12 storms with there original outlook. We were expecting 14 so we have now gone even 5 over what we were expecting and we were told we were going to be to high with our # of storms..

So this brings us to Sandy... Sandy is looking quite healthy in the overnight hours here...

Current pressure on the storm as of 2 AM was 998 mbs with sustained winds of 45 mph. We have been reading across the internet about people thinking that this will not become anything like what the Majority of guidance is suggesting but our question becomes what is this based on?

Besides the upper atmosphere which we will look at you want to look at something called Tropical Cyclone Heat Potential and also the water temperatures...

As can be seen by the bottom image there is plenty of TCHP for Sandy to tap in and the waters along the path are also quite warm and we still are in hurricane season. In other words it is not over yet and two of the important aspects above are favorable for development.
Next and you can see this on the water vapor image posted on the top is that we really do not have any dry air that this system has to contend with.

The system at the present time is under excellent convergence and divergence..

A couple things that we would like to see improve is that even though the shear across the system is not that bad presently with about 5 to perhaps 20 knots is the wall of shear that is to its north..

So you can see that is one area of concern. The next is that the system is not  vertically stacked yet and you can see this looking at the 700 mb level the 500 mb level and the 200 mb level..

So as you can see there are a few areas that we would like to see improve.. Now what about the track and what guidance is suggesting. The first one posted is going to be the GFS as this is essentially the only model that keeps this out to sea.. 

So as you can see by the GFS above it keeps this away from the coast. However starting below is the next model which is the ECM and you can see that the ECM definitely is further west with this system.

And you can see that the ECM is further west then the GFS..which this is quite important to remember  as well.. 
Below this is the Nogaps model. Now many people do not understand how to use the model as a tool to compare to other guidance..You must keep in mind that the NOGAPS is the most progressive model in history..
In other words that model should be the model to have been the furthest east..HOWEVER ...when it does not due what is suppose to be done (due to its bias) and it ends up further west and slower..then 9 out of 10 times it is going to end up being the model showing the most accurate path for the storm to take..because of that bias that would be sending it well east AKA GFS.. Remember to that the GFS is a lower resolution model and tends to break down ridges to quickly..

Next on the list is the GGEM and as you can see this gets the pressure all the way down to 939 MBs..

So as you can see the GFS essentially is on its own tonight with its solution of staying out to sea.
It is to early to discuss specifics on pressure etc and also on impact..

Right now we see nothing that really should hinder from this strengthening as it begins to move north . We think the chances are high that this will come up the eastern seaboard and we think that this will become our 18th Hurricane of the season.
What makes it interesting is that the rain cold transition over to snow in C PA and points to the west..
In summary the system is slowly strengthening and should continue to do so..
The GFS is considered an outlier 
We think the chances are pretty high of this coming up the coast 

What we do not know is if it will be purely tropical or because of the trough interaction and the cold front coming thru it may end up taking on a Hybrid Status which would allow the pressures to get as low as they are presently showing...

Impacts are just generalized in what to expect if this all comes to realization:
1. Winds that will be hurricane force
2. Rain changing to snow in well inland places..
3. Beach erosion
4. Flooding and depending on how much flooding then there could be trees that would come down do to the amount of rain..(further inland snow) 
So there is a lot to watch over the next couple days and if the GFS is going to stand where it is then it probably will not catch on to under 72 hours...
We are placing an alert for people to keep an eye on this as it gets itself organized and moves northwards
Stay tuned for more information during the days ahead..