An Attempt At Trumping Tropical Systems

 

How many of you noticed what happened yesterday? Posted at around 5:10 PM by the NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER

510 PM EDT MON JUL 5 2010
FOR THE NORTH ATLANTIC...CARIBBEAN SEA AND THE GULF OF MEXICO...
1. A SMALL WELL-DEFINED LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM LOCATED ABOUT 50 MILES
SOUTH-SOUTHEAST OF MORGAN CITY LOUISIANA IS MOVING ONSHORE
TERREBONNE PARISH NEAR CAILLOU BAY. DOPPLER RADAR AND SATELLITE
DATA INDICATE THAT SUSTAINED WINDS NEAR TROPICAL-STORM-FORCE COULD
OCCUR ACROSS TERREBONNE PARISH...ESPECIALLY IN TERREBONNE
BAY...LATE THIS AFTERNOON AND EARLY EVENING AS THE SYSTEM MOVES
ONSHORE. THERE IS A HIGH CHANCE...60 PERCENT...OF THIS SYSTEM
BECOMING A TROPICAL CYCLONE BEFORE IT MOVES ONSHORE. THIS SYSTEM
WILL MOVE SLOWLY NORTHWESTWARD AFTER LANDFALL AND PRODUCE LOCALLY
HEAVY RAINFALL OVER PORTIONS OF SOUTH-CENTRAL AND SOUTHEASTERN
LOUISIANA. INTERESTS SHOULD MONITOR PRODUCTS ISSUED BY THEIR LOCAL
NATIONAL WEATHER FORECAST OFFICE FOR ADDITIONAL UPDATES AND ANY
WATCHES OR WARNINGS

Now if you seen this then you had seen that 3 hrs prior to this there was a near 0% chance of development. So within 3 hrs NHC increases the percentage from 0-60% for developing. You would think that this thing had gained some deep convection and became really organized..

This is what the system looked like at the time of the upgrade..

Look to the Coast of Louisiana and that was invest 95 at the time of the upgrade. Impressive convection? Only if you consider weak convection with warm cloud tops impressive. It gets better yet..

 

Interesting observation there is that it was still attached to a stationary front which means this was still a non tropical low because one of the prerequisites is for any tropical cyclone to have no interaction & association with a front.

So what was the sense of raising this to 60%? Real time obs showed winds to 21 MPH. This is a far cry from tropical storm force winds. However, even if there were Tropical storm force winds at the very most this could have become was a subtropical system because of the frontal boundary attached to it.

At 8pm the percentage dropped back down to 0%. So in a time span of 6 hrs we went from 0% to 60 & to 0 % and as of 2 AM we were still highlighted yellow at 0% after the system moved on shore quite a few hours earlier. Strange it has not been removed..

Was there a reason for creating the false perception once again? Regardless ..R,W,S kept the system at less then a 2% chance of developing and never wavered!