Good evening,

What a difference in the last 8 hours. This morning I would have bet the farm that NHC would name
invest 95L this afternoon. Air Force hurricane  hunters found no surface circulation in the suspect area north of the western tip of Cuba. That is great news...but...the mid level circulation is trapped in the southern Gulf of Mexico and will begin to be influenced by a vigorous trough crossing the northern Gulf Coast during the next 72 hours. The trough will take the mid level feature northeastward toward the Bug Bend of Florida. No tropical characteristics will be associated with the system but there is plentiful moisture available as evidence by the record breaking rainfall amounts over the Lower Keys during the past 24 hours. The previous record occurred in 1910 as the category 3 to 4 hurricane of October 17 passed just west of Key West producing 4.08 inches of rainfall. There has been 6.55 inches since midnight and more expected. With this in mind expect that there will be another couple of days of rainy conditions across Florida similar to last week with small craft advisory conditions spread across the coastal waters surrounding the Florida Peninsula. The following animation shows the evolution of the forecast through 96 hours.

Sorry I haven't posted during the last few days, the last 3 mid-nights have been a little rough, last night was a very long night. Check out the products from www.srh.noaa.gov/key warning products from overnight.
Stay tuned,
Bill

A trough will head eastward across the eastern United States Friday with a ridge of high pressure building over the Deep South Friday night and Saturday. The trough and associated surface boundary will be much drier than the system last weekend, and have a much more subdued impact. The surface ridge will cover most of the southern tier states through Monday while a developing low in the western Caribbean Sea slides northwestward. Winds will freshen across the southern extent of the ridge between the high and the Caribbean low. The location of the ridge will likely keep Indian Summer conditions going through Tuesday across the southern United States.

There is still much debate about the upper low from last weekend that has the science community at odds with the media. The surface feature that developed was much weaker than the upper low that produced the MCV over central Florida, and the winds along mainly the east coast of Florida, extending northward to the Outer Banks. All the features of the system were over land and had little tropical characteristics but the folks on that channel I "love so much" not, but the Weather Service and Hurricane Center in an uncomfortable position. The local WFO's were handling the event very well and advertised the impacts for up to 6 days ahead in some cases.  I tried to down play the impacts as far as the tropical development goes as did the WFO's and NHC. We kept looking at the flooding potential and at strong wind fields which is exactly what the effects were.
Several questions for the viewers again...
Would you have paid more attention to the weather if there was a named storm?
Would you have done anything different to prepare if the system was name as a tropical storm?
Is there anything I can do better to inform you with the possibility of a similar event in the future?
Please send comments to billycott@gmail.com

Thanks and have a great weekend,
Bill

There is definitely some strong winds along the Florida Central East Coast. A gail warning is in effect for the offshore waters north of Vero Beach, and a high wind warning north of Melbourne. From satellite we see a vigorous MCV, (mesoscale convective vorticy) sliding northward just inland from the coast. There is little in the way of surface circulation and an MCV is usually an mid level system.
This will produce heavy rain, string winds and maybe some strong thunderstorms as well so keep your NOAA All Hazards Radios on standby tonight if you live in northeast Florida or southeast Georgia.

BC

Good evening all,
The European model has the most stable output for the past 3 days and has good agreement with the NAM and UKMet office solutions. For this reason I will stick with this solution with several caveats.  The first graphic is the plot of upper level wind barbs over the suspect area.

The second graphic is the current wind shear measuring 40 to 50 knots of shear.

The shear tendency is showing an increasing profile as well, adding 5 to 10 knots of shear to the south of Cuba.

The current satellite morphed visible and infrared images from this evening, (10.7.11)

So I have to pick one solution and I pick the ECMWF (European model) as it carries a weak upper low that washes out into a trough early Wednesday. The reason I have to pick is because of the incredible amount of media attention that the possibility of something forming has made it so I have to make a forecast that I particularly don't like for the above reasons. I have never seen  a system form or read any research that has ever developed a tropical system with over 10 to 15 knots of shearing in the environment.
If this does develop the impacts are going to limited to some heavy rains over the Florida Peninsula, some fresh winds of around 25 to 30 knots offshore through Sunday night along the southern peninsula, and into midday Monday to the north. With 25 to 30 mph winds over the mainland areas. As for the Keys...we going to get dry slotted which means our pops (possibility of precipitation) is likely too high.
This is my take on the current forecast scenario and I can see that it differs greatly from a lot of the other forecasts around the state. You chose then let me know how I did. Really; this will be a good opportunity for my users to critique my work. I promise you that you can't be as hard on me as I am on myself.
Be ready for some good downpours and breezy conditions, with some possible flooding in low lying and poor drainage areas where flooding normally occurs.

BC

A bit more common sense has risen in the European model this morning. A solution that I can live with and that is much more palpable than the past few days. As I spoke about yesterday the models have a low developing south of Cuba and this is still going to happen. We will discount the GFS for now as the next few runs of this model will come into alignment with the ECMWF later I'm certain. The weak low which will reside aloft with not much of a surface reflection. There is enough moisture and energy being pumped into the system to allow for a significant rain event across much of Florida beginning over the southern peninsula Sunday then spreading slowly through the east panhandle and north Florida by Wednesday at which time it is absorbed by a trough moving across the southern United States. See graphics animation below.

Clicking on the 4 arrows on the bottom right of the video will make it full screen.

Some questions about the weekend of the 15th in central west Florida and it may still be a little wet as the trough may stall over the peninsula. Will keep this in my thoughts and update as we get closer.
Let me know through email or follow the blog if you have any questions.

BC

Hi everyone,

There is a lot of discussion about the possible low pressure system developing over Cuba and moving northward through the Straits of Florida and the eastern Gulf of Mexico. There is little consensus in the models, a lot of inconsistencies in the run to run of the forecasts as well. There is also an immense ridge of high pressure across the eastern half of the United States that the models forecasting this event want to push the low through.
The model with the best solution as I see it is the UK-Met which has a weak inverted trough sliding across Cuba on the southern edge of the ridge mentioned above.
What is more realistic is that a mid to upper level trough will move out of TX toward the southeast and an upper low develops providing ample moisture and enough instability to give the Florida Peninsula and Panhandle some high rainfall amounts. The media and some others are maybe making more out of this than needed. So if you live in an area that floods with high amounts or heavy rainfall, you know what to do.
This system will not be tropical in nature and even though we should be prepared, we don't need to panic.
Take the appropriate actions and be ready for lots of rain, a little wind, and some flooding along inland, poor drainage, and low lying areas.
No graphics to show for this issue, there system hasn't developed yet. I could be wrong with this in that what develops may not be as bad as I'm saying. It certainly won't be as bad as the hype I've heard the past couple of days.

Cheers,
Bill

Sorry no update for yesterday. Needed a day away as I'm in the middle of an eleven day stretch at my real gig. :-)
Ophelia got her act together yesterday deepening into a category 3 storm very quickly after being upgraded to a hurricane in the morning. By Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunter recon there was a decrease in pressure from dropsonde measurements of 24 millibars in 3 hours by around 8 am on the 30th. This was an indication of RI (rapid intensification). The graph below is of the SATCON winds and CI number which is the Dvorak classification of a system. You can see the uptick in winds overnight from the 29th to the morning of the 30th.

The storm currently looks like it is being shear but this is just the upper level shearing blowing the outflow to the north due to the asymmetry of the circulation. The diagram below  is the phase diagram from Bob Hart at FSU and shows the storm relative thickness, and whether the storm is warm core (truly tropical) or (subtropical) asymmetric warm core. It is in the warm core phase but moving toward the asymmetric very quickly...this was from last night and from satellite analysis this morning it looks more like a subtropical storm or at least transitioning.

The trough moving off the eastern seaboard will keep the storm moving north then take it out over the Grand Banks by day 3. This means that the effects of Ophelia on Bermuda will be a very quick strafing pass to the east. 

Otherwise my friends in Florida are waking to a much drier morning and in the case of north Florida a much cooler morning. 56 was the low in Tallahassee, and dipping below 50 in eastern Tennessee this morning. Brrrrrrr! Tampa has dew points this morning in the middle 50s as far south as Sarasota.