Oil continues impacting Louisiana coast; storms for Caribbean and SE U.S. waters?
Light southeast to east winds are expected to blow over the northern Gulf of Mexico today through Sunday, resulting in potential oiling of Louisiana shorelines from the mouth of the Mississippi River westward 150 miles, according to the latest trajectory forecasts from NOAA. Clouds over the Gulf of Mexico have cleared, and we should get a good view late this afternoon on how far south the oil spill has penetrated into the Loop Current. Statements from NOAA and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite data imply that most of the oil that was pulled southwards to the northern boundary of the Loop Current is now caught in a counter-clockwise rotating eddy just to the north of the Loop Current. Some oil has escaped this eddy and is on its way south towards the Florida Keys. This tongue of oil consists of "numerous light sheens with some emulsified patties and streams," according to NOAA. I wish they'd provide more information about what the sensitivity of various ecosystems may be to oil at these concentrations. It would also be good to have more information about what the concentration of the toxic dispersants are in the surface waters of the spill, but I expect no one knows. The oil will grow more dilute as it travels the 500 miles to the Florida Keys. My present expectation is that the oil entering the Loop Current this week will cause only minor problems in the Keys next week. However, there is a lot of uncertainty about what the oil may do to the fragile Keys ecosystem. SAR imagery from last night and this morning continue to show a large plume of oil being drawn southeastward from the oil spill location into the northern boundary of the Loop Current. With winds expected to remain light over the coming week, I expect oil will continue to be drawn southwards into the Loop Current and the counter-clockwise rotating eddy just to its north. Much of the oil caught in this eddy may circulate around the eddy in 3 or so days, and potentially enter the Loop Current early next week. As I discussed in my post Wednesday, the Loop Current is very unstable right now, and is moving chaotically 10+ miles in a single day, making prediction difficult.
Figure 1. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) image of the oil spill taken at 7:56am EDT May 20, 2010, by the Canadian Space Agency’s (CSA) RadarSat-1 satellite. Image credit: Center for Southeastern Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing, University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. SAR images have a resolution of 8 - 50 meters, and can be taken through clouds and precipitation.
Figure 2. Latest oil trajectory forecast from NOAA for this Saturday.
Oil spill resources
My post Wednesday with answers to some of the common questions I get about the spill
My post on the Southwest Florida "Forbidden Zone" where surface oil will rarely go
My post on what oil might do to a hurricane
NOAA trajectory forecasts
Deepwater Horizon Unified Command web site
Oil Spill Academic Task Force
University of South Florida Ocean Circulation Group oil spill forecasts
ROFFS Deepwater Horizon page
Surface current forecasts from NOAA's HYCOM model
HYCOM ocean current forecasts from LSU
Potential serious rainfall threat to Haiti next week
Long-range forecasts from the NOGAPS model, and to a lesser extent, the ECMWF and GFS models, continue to predict an increase in moisture and decrease in wind shear over the Western Caribbean 4 - 6 days from now, leading to development of a tropical disturbance with heavy rains in the Western Caribbean early next week. A strong subtropical jet stream over the southern Gulf of Mexico will steer the disturbance to the north and east, and the potential exists for heavy rains of 3 - 6 inches to affect eastern Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic in the Tuesday - Thursday time frame next week. It is possible that a tropical depression could form from this tropical disturbance, though most of the models indicate that high levels of wind shear will make this improbable.
Southeast U.S. coastal storm next week could become subtropical
A region of cloudiness and showers just east of the Bahama Islands will develop into a strong extratropical storm over the weekend. This storm is expected to move slowly northwestward towards the Southeast U.S. coast Sunday and Monday, and could bring 20 - 30 mph winds and heavy rain to the coast of North Carolina by Tuesday. While the storm will initially form in a region of high wind shear and be entirely extratropical, it will move into a region of lower wind shear in a gap between the polar jet stream to the north and the subtropical jet stream to its south early next week. At that time, the low will be positioned near the warm waters of the Gulf Stream, and will have the opportunity to develop a shallow warm core and transition to a subtropical storm. The models are divided on whether the storm will eventually make landfall on the Southeast U.S. coast 6 - 7 days from now, and it is too early to offer odds on this occurring. The counter-clockwise flow of air around this low will probably lead to northeasterly winds over the oil spill region Monday through Wednesday, keeping oil away from the coasts of Alabama and the Florida Panhandle, but pushing oil westwards towards Texas. Wunderblogger Weather456 has a more detailed discussion of the potential development of this system in his blog this morning.
Tornadoes and large hail pound Oklahoma
A significant severe weather outbreak occurred last night over Oklahoma and surrounding states, with 25 tornado reports, 8 reports of damaging winds, and 23 hail reports. Severe weather wunderblogger Dr. Rob Carver has the details in his wunderblog this morning. The Vortex2 field project had a perfect opportunity to intercept these tornadoes, since they were slow moving and occurred over relatively unpopulated regions. The University of Michigan students writing our Vortex2 featured blog will have an update when their schedule allows.
Figure 3. Baseball-sized hail pounds a suburban Oklahoma City swimming pool, making huge splashes, in this remarkable video. The action gets really intense about 90 seconds into the video.
I'll be back with a new post Friday.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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Due to the variety of tropical cyclone forecasting centers across the world, tropical forecasting and naming has become subjective.
Sometimes, the JTWC would name a storm and the local area of responsibility won't, and vice versa. There are differences in policies across each agency. The IMD is an agency which I know, hesitates to name tropical systems.
That is too far west. You can see the low spinning on infrared here. Its now near 73W.
Yea they are. However, I hope that they find a solution to that oil problem soon.
Good morning.
I would say "pretty moist"... yep, we got about nine inches of rain in under 14 hours.
CRS
meant too far east. My bad
at 26N/70W is convection. The system's center is clearly at the edge of the convection.
So they are not cooler than other parts of the basin? Not cooler than average for this time of year? What about TCHP? (I will admit that we have seen some warming over the last 2 weeks :o)
some spots are cooler than average but largely speaking warmer than normal.
The SW Atlantic is often warmer than other parts further east along the same latitude.
Ya'll have a great day. Hopefully I'll get a chance to look in before tonight to monitor developments.
Looks like next several days will be wet, starting as early as this weekend.
CRS
Good Morning Captain........Translation?
AT LOWER LEVELS...HIGH PRESSURE WHICH DOMINATED THE CENTRAL
ATLANTIC WILL WEAKEN AS ANOTHER HIGH MOVES SOUTHEAST OUT OF
CANADA AND INTO THE NORTHWEST ATLANTIC. AT THE SAME TIME A LOW
WILL DEVELOP NORTH OF HISPANIOLA AND MOVE NORTH UNTIL WEDNESDAY.
THIS WILL LEAVE THE LOCAL AREA IN LIGHTER BUT DECIDEDLY SOUTHEAST
FLOW FROM TODAY UNTIL NEXT WEEKEND. THIS LOW PRESSURE AND ONE THAT
FORMS IN THE SOUTHWEST CARIBBEAN WILL PULL DEEP MOISTURE ACROSS
THE LOCAL AREA THAT WILL GENERATE HEAVY RAINS FROM TIME TO TIME
DURING THE NEXT 10 DAYS.
Stay tuned... as they like to say
Thanks.....The CMISS vort map is not showing anything in that specific area yet but it looks pretty good to me right now and in a low sheer environment at the moment........
OMG How sad. The spil is huge and you can see where the streamer or tongue of oil entered the Loop Current and is being sped rapidly. Thankfully its in an Eddy right now. Another observation from that image (zoom to 250M) is that sheen oil I see up near Big Bend or just light refraction?
The spill is getting larger and larger and I like now how all of a sudden after we demand transparency and other professionals have been saying its alot worse then 5K now they up their "estimates" to... "alot more then 5K but still uncertain".
Lets hope someone comes up with a solution to cap this well (hopefully someone other then BP) and actually try to save the Gulf instead of the oil.
Lets keep our fingers crossed that no systems develope or threaten the GOM for a long time.
OK Back to lurking.....
Big Bend area in this photo is light refraction; no reports of oil at all in this area and I'm headed out there (out of St. Marks) for some trout fishing tommorow morning....So far so good in the Big Bend.
lol, morning to you. Now you can see who has learned so much from you.
Thanks.
Much thanks.
Hey, 456! You're right, Storm!
BTW, loved the post! What do you think will happen with the Bahamas system in terms of development? I think it will at least be an Invest.
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