As suspected last night the shear is putting a hurtin' on Rina. The satellite presentation as deteriorated through the day and the northern semicircle of the system is being convectively subdued. The model tracks and intensity are in better agreement at least for the first 48 to 60 hours with a very slow moving system.
The last update from the National Hurricane Center kept the intensity at 75 knots but mentioned that this is likely a generous value. The shear is tilting the storm toward the northeast and dropsondes are falling outside the low level eye which is providing errors in the surface wind and pressure extrapolations.
The satellite image with the overlay of the consensus/ensemble and dynamical model tracks above shows the lack of deep convection in the northern semicircle, and a banded feature between Jamaica and the western tip of Cuba.
Above is the National Hurricane Center official track with warnings and watches.
About 40% of the commercial marine traffic flows through the Florida Straits and Yucatan Channel heading for the Panama Canal. The image below show observations from land based, buoy based, and ship based instruments relative to the storm. Not many high wind obs in the grouping which would indicate that the storm wind radii may be very small.
All this boils down to several important things. Rina is likely to become a tropical storm, then a depression very quickly, much more quickly than the hurricane center products are showing at this time. NHC has mentioned this in the last few discussions and calls. Fantasy Fest activities will have to contend with some rainfall Friday and Saturday but not a tropical cyclone, and I'm getting off the Rock for the FSU vs NC State game after all.
Cheers,
BC
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