Gulf of Mexico storm not likely to become a depression; storm kills 11 in Haiti
The large extratropical storm that has been pounding Florida and the Bahamas this week with heavy rain and high surf extended its reach yesterday, killing at least 11 people in Haiti. According to Reuters, most of the victims were killed while crossing rivers or when their flimsy homes collapsed. Approximately six inches of rain fell on Haiti's southwest peninsula in the 24 hours ending at 8pm EDT. Hundreds of homes were flooded and dozens destroyed in the flooding, which left 40% of the southern city of Cayes underwater. The impoverished Caribbean country is still struggling to recover from the massive flooding that killed over 800 people during the hurricane season of 2008. In March, UN chief Ban Ki-moon and Bill Clinton--who was this week appointed UN special envoy to the island--toured Haiti together and urged the international community to continue to aid the country. Participants at a Washington international donors conference in April agreed to donate $324 million to help Haiti rebuild.
The worst of the rain and flooding is over for Florida, which has seen rainfall amounts this week as high as 23.75 inches at the Flagler County Fairgrounds. Another 1 - 2 inches are expected in Northeast Florida today from the storm, along with beach erosion, 6 - 8 foot waves, and tides 1 - 2 feet above normal. The bad weather in Northeast Florida should subside substantially on Saturday.
Figure 1. Long range radar out of New Orleans.
The storm responsible for the heavy rains is now headed north-northwest, and should make landfall Saturday near the Louisiana/Mississippi border. The storm has developed a warm core at low levels, and NHC designated it Invest 90L late this morning. Latest visible satellite loops show a modest amount of heavy thunderstorm activity on the east side of the storm's circulation, but development is being hindered by dry air, and wind shear of 20 knots. Long range radar out of New Orleans (Figure 1) shows little organization or banding of the radar echoes. With only 24 hours to go until the system moves inland, it does not have enough time to develop into a depression. Since there will be strong winds from the west creating wind shear over the storm, plus dry air to the storm's west, most of the heavy rain should be confined to the east of the storm's center, along a stretch of coast from New Orleans to Pensacola. Rainfall totals of 2 - 4 inches can be expected.
Figure 2. Latest satellite image of the Gulf of Mexico storm.
I'll have an update Saturday.
Portlight.org/wunderground shirts are now available on Ebay.
Jeff Masters
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Does anyone have a clue what the winds are on the west side of the system, I am just looking at a NOAA buoy...
yuk...yuk...yuk...
National Weather Service New Orleans la
414 am CDT Friday may 22 2009
Short term...
main system circulation located about 25.15n 87.55w. Definite cold
core system with a connection to deep tropical moisture flowing
into the east side of the system from the Atlantic and Caribbean.
Cold dry air subsidence coming into the system interacting with
the warm moist atmosphere is causing numerous sh/ts to develop
from Cuba through the eastern and northern Gulf. This interaction
is also developing some moderate bl to middle level vorticity centers that
are rotation around the middle level low. The closest cyclical vorticity
is located at 29.0n 87.5w. Lots of ts outflow boundaries coming
from all convection which also proves this system has a lot of
overturning due to cool dry air being advected into the individual
ts cores oweing to its baroclinicity.
Moisture is plentiful with this system but not being used
efficiently. One of the bigger problems is the fetch length to the
east of the system. Stronger winds well away from the center will
continue to bring Gulf water to the eastern shorelines of southeast la
and coastal miss.
System will begin to make its way northwest today and move into the area
Saturday.
Long term...
eventhough the system moves north of the area...we continue to be
caught in its wake trough. This will help keep things unsettled
but pop numbers should fall back somewhat by the start of the week.
UKMET believes it's already warm core
http://moe.met.fsu.edu/cyclonephase/ukm/fcst/archive/09052206/7.html
GFS is close with the UKMET
It's at least a Subtropical Low, not fully Extratropical anymore. The vortex is dying because wind shear is just at marginal to high and a regular tropical system can't handle that. So here you have 90L which is subtropical at best, shearing itself apart. If it was fully Extratropical, I honestly would believe it would be stronger. I'm not an expert, but I've been tracking storms since 1999.
That has a familiar ring to it...
They actually have numbers for test storms, 80-89.
They are gathering more information, the microwave data from NRL and CIMSS, where they can look into the "core" and determine temperature. Also, the only way they can get a GFDL or HWRF run is to declare an invest.
One of the least understood parts of tropical cyclones is intensity, rapid increase and rapid decrease. With the low so close to land, they just want to cover all bases.
Thought u might be interested in knowing that we had a couple of tornados touch down on New Providence on Tuesday, during the worst of the action here. While waterspouts are very common here during the rainy season (read hurricane season) on-land tornados are much less common.
I see the debate about the central CAR blob, and I have to agree with the people saying it's not currently anything with tropical characteristics. HOwever, it does seem that persistant instability and appropriately warm SSTs there could potentially lead to some development there in the next 10 days. While I'm not stating categorically that something WILL happen, I wouldn't be surprised to see some kind of low pressure system develop in that area.
Cyclone Phase Diagram
See?!?!?! That's what I like about this here blog...there's always sumpin' new to lern....
So if you look at the west half of the system, lots of green arrows with 1 big bar so the wind is over ten kts there but the blue and yellows, looks like the top speed is 20-24 knots, am I reading that right?
I figured the winds would get up to 35 knots on the west side of the storm...anyone think that is going to happen??
This should help..Learning Series: Cyclone Phase Diagrams
#64771 - Sun Mar 26 2006 03:01 AM
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In the second installment of the much-delayed learning series for the off-season, we'll take a look at the idea of cyclone phase and the cyclone phase diagrams, as suggested some time ago by Margie. As a brief reminder or introduction, the phase diagrams are available in real-time at http://moe.met.fsu.edu/cyclonephase/.
ya have to have special 3D glasses....
I would venture to guess it's possible, but the highest winds will be associated with the T-Storms to the north and east of center. I think there may be 35 knot winds in a few of those............felt primarily along the coast.
What does matter is that this disturbance is bringing copious amounts of rain to FL and as it lifts to the north it will bring heavy rains to AL, Miss, GA and LA.
NWS Radar Mobile
Thanks
Link
Which of those systems do you think is better organized? One of them, of course, is our 90L in the GOM. But, I will talk about the other system later, when I read some answer to my question.
The one on the left is better organized, but the thunderstorms have been sheared away leaving an exposed center. 90L looks ragged, even for a normal gulf low.
I'd say the one on the left is a little better organized, noting that the thunderstorm activity is closer to the COC. However, our 90L doesn't look THAT different from the system on the left and is not too far off from that. But I'm guessing the system on the left was a TS when that image was taken...
The one on the left has its power shear away to the east
Viewing: 401 - 451
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