Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Good evening,

A hurricane hunter aircraft found winds of 45 knots in Ophelia this afternoon. The thing is that the trough off the eastern United States to the northwest of the storm is shearing Ophelia from the south southwest. This is clearly seen in the animated gif attached. This shear is also the steering mechanism for the track guidance which is consistently taking the storm into the central Atlantic east of Bermuda.



Below is the track guidance, image from CIMSS


No worries for the US.
Now, for some of you in Florida there is a cool front getting ready to move near the Peninsula by Friday
night that will end up stalled near the Florida Keys by Sunday night.
Much drier air is in store with lows in the mid 40s in north Florida, in the middle to low 60s down to central Florida and the southwest coast, and interior south Florida, with middle 70s southeast and the Keys.

A couple of things are happening that may be good for the rest of the hurricane season as well.
The southern branch of the jet stream has shown up a bit early across the central Gulf of Mexico. While a very strong ridge of high pressure will build in over the deep south with the gradient flow dipping south over the Florida Straits. These are pattern shifts we expect to see in mid October or a little later that indicate the beginning oof the end. If this pattern holds (knock on my hea...I mean wood), there may be little to look forward to as far as tropical cyclones along the Gulf Coast for the remainder of this season. There still is a threat that if a system spins up on a tail end of a front over the western Gulf or Caribbean that we may see a storm but I'd rather be optimistic.

That's all for tonight,
B

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