NorthHillsWx

8 US landfalls including two Hurricanes and a major plus a major (one of the most expensive and damaging hurricanes in history) landfall in Mexico and a strong, rare hit on Newfoundland? I am struggling to see how this alone is a dude, not including the fish storms and ACE

Anyone downplaying this season is a joke. Numbers, ACE, major landfalls… I mean come on

One of the great fish storms in history. Sam deserved a landfall somewhere just to be remembered (though I’m sure whoever would’ve been impacted would disagree!). Just crazy all the days we’ve woken up to a beautiful eye on satellite imagery

Sam has cleared out a symmetrical, beautiful eye once again. This is an incredible storm

Pretty incredible to maintain this intensity for this long these don’t happen every year…

This has been quite the specimen for sure. And absolutely gorgeous this morning to boot

Picked up 0.02” overnight my mtd is now 3.53”

It’s possible Sam could reach or exceed 40 units of ACE. That’s incredible

Dry as of late. Looking like 3.51” is going to be the total for the month. Beautiful weather, even yesterday’s 87 degrees didn’t feel too terrible. Rest of week looks amazing

Sam looks quite healthy atm.

For those tracking seasonal ACE we will be exceeding the typical year end value for the Atlantic overnight. With two likely areas of development and Sam ongoing as a major hurricane for the next couple of days, we are likely to end up well above the average by next week. Knowing the frequency of strong October storms in recent years, the 2021 ACE value could be incredibly high by seasons end. Sam is likely to exceed 30 units, as Larry did earlier this year, making these exceptionally high ACE producing storms

You’re not lying! This looks like a major that just made landfall. Just even more impressive how resilient Ida was after landfall to maintain that intensity over land/marsh while watching this storm collapse over open ocean

Rapid, rapid decay right there. Wow

That’s an awesome animation.

I bet they mention in the 11:00 advisory that it’s possible Sam attained cat 5 for a period this afternoon

From a “look perspective” it’s hard to imagine how a storm could be any stronger presentation wise about 5-8 hours ago. It definitely degraded since recons departed and even more so once recon arrived. A small tight core like Sam has it wouldn’t take much degradation for wind speed to come down quickly, unlike larger storms. There is literally zero hard evidence to support a cat 5 from earlier. However, sat estimates almost always fail to get the exact intensity and have a low bias for tiny storms, like Sam. It would honestly shock me if this didn’t peak at least 140 kts just from the ferocity of that satellite shot and the speed those eyewall towers were moving. Also, the pressure is consistent with a cat 5 storm of this size. That being said, there is zero hard evidence this made it to cat 5 and then does it really matter if it only maintained that intensity for a couple of hours? To us, yes, but NHC issues advisories based on intensity at time of advisory or based on hard evidence between them. Lacking the latter, this is going to stay a 4 in post analysis. Ida has a chance for an upgrade bc there was hard evidence, from wind measurements on land, recon, and pressure that it did reach the threshold. This to me was likely a stronger storm at peak but will be very unlikely to be upgraded without the hard evidence of nonstop recon and ground truth.

It’s really, really difficult to find a more beautiful satellite structure of an Atlantic hurricane than the one we have with Sam right now.

What a beast of a storm

Looks like we may have seen our last rainfall for the month

May be a hurricane by 11 tonight

Finished with 1.20” for the event for a monthly total to date of 3.51”

Finally getting into the good rain. Up to 0.51” and pouring

0.37” yesterday and overnight so far. 2.68” mtd

2.31”

The rain shield is holding strong. That’s 45 more rain drops than we’ve had