WxWatcher007

Today was the first day I started looking past tropical and ahead to late fall. Not there yet, but it’s coming. Yeah, this has felt like a fall of yore to me. Pretty seasonable and dry. Only thing missing is a hybrid hurricane low lol.

Dodging ALL THE PEOPLE WITH LIGHTS was a lot, but I ended up with good stuff.

I did last night. Around 7:30pm with the mega burst—that moved slowly. Then late around 1am where you could see waves of light pulsing from north to south in real time. It was unbelievable.

What a night!

Walked out of an Albany restaurant after dinner with my wife and the sky had reds everywhere. It was unreal.

Absolutely spectacular

My peak season forecast is running out of time (Aug 20–Oct 20) and in the coming 10 days I think I have 2-3 more chances (two long shots) to get names on the board. 1. Western Caribbean, where the models led by the GFS have a signal for another system to potentially come out of a CAG or other vorticity seedling. This is the best chance for something else to pop imo before the lid goes back on the basin—probably until November. 2. Eastern Atlantic, where the NHC has a lemon but I don’t think TCG odds are good at all. 3. Eastern seaboard, where there’s a modest signal for some type of non-tropical low associated with a trough that could become subtropical. This has not worked at all this season, so I doubt it happens here.

My peak season forecast is running out of time (Aug 20–Oct 20) and in the coming 10 days I think I have 2-3 more chances (two long shots) to get names on the board. 1. Western Caribbean, where the models led by the GFS have a signal for another system to potentially come out of a CAG or other vorticity seedling. This is the best chance for something else to pop imo before the lid goes back on the basin—probably until November. 2. Eastern Atlantic, where the NHC has a lemon but I don’t think TCG odds are good at all. 3. Eastern seaboard, where there’s a modest signal for some type of non-tropical low associated with a trough that could become subtropical. This has not worked at all this season, so I doubt it happens here.

I agree with most of what you said, but I think I might respectfully disagree in part. I think that to an extent the higher surge was baked in. The expanse of it I think ended up lower geographically because the RMW ended up smaller and the specific landfall location to a lesser extent. There are examples of former upper echelon hurricanes bringing tremendous surge—Katrina obviously, but I think Ike and Opal are other examples. At its peak, here was the NHC surge forecast Of course the northern extent of this won’t verify but that’s because of landfall location and size. At this point, the NHC essentially had a Tampa hit: The NHC expects to find 9-13’ in the peak surge zone, verifying their peak surge forecast. I don’t like people speaking in absolutes in tropical, but I do think it was clear this was going to be one of the worst surge events for the west coast of Florida and in some spots that forecast looks to verify. Maybe we’re saying the same thing though lol

So close lol

Absolutely. Not necessarily the worst case given the surge in Tampa Bay, but very high impact. It’s only the…people that wanted to see Tampa get slabbed that will say it wasn’t too bad. I don’t like throwing out the “in my experience” stuff, but truly—16 tropical chases and in 12 of them (I checked lol) I felt the landfall point didn’t reveal itself until the final hours. Heck, NHC has said so too with the 20nm error rate in the last 12-24 hours. It’s almost always close if you care about exact landfall point (and most shouldn’t).

Pretty surprised there aren’t more surge monitors along the coast, but the final numbers will be sorted out. It still looks to me like a very high impact major Hurricane from the limited information I’ve seen—from surge at the coast, to wind speed/duration St Petersburg east across the peninsula, to exceptional rainfall, and a prolific tornado outbreak. For me and my forecast—too far north with the track but still in the zone I guess. Intensity was about what I expected. Glad I kept talking about the rain potential because that ended up bad. Hopefully the region can get back on its feet soon.

I think we need to wait and see the totality of damage reports to know the true scale of Milton’s impact, but there’s no question that Helene’s was one of the worst in U.S. history. Of course, there’s no competition…especially to families that lost everything or someone in either storm.

If @ineedsnow made it to Lakeland he’s getting a hell of a show. Gusting to hurricane force there. Could go even higher in the coming hours.

Real impressive stuff. I hope inland folks are prepared.

Daytona Beach gusting to 76 mph. Going to be a long night across the region.

It’s one of those things where multiple data points will confirm the intensity of a storm, for the reasons stated above. Here’s one good data point.

Hurricane Leslie Discussion Number 31 NWS National Hurricane Center Miami FL AL132024 1100 PM AST Wed Oct 09 2024 Since the previous advisory, a small eye feature has started appearing on geostationary infrared imagery with Leslie, surrounded by a ring of very cold (below -70 C) cloud top temperatures. This structure is also supported by an earlier SAR-RCM2 pass that showed a tight inner core with a radius of maximum wind that had contracted from yesterday. 00 UTC subjective Dvorak estimates from TAFB and SAB were T5.0/90-kt and T5.5/102-kt, respectively. Objective intensity estimates were somewhat lower, between 79-86 kt, and blending the data results in a 90 kt intensity this cycle. A Saildrone (SD-1036) appears to be near the path of Leslie, and is currently reporting sustained tropical-storm-force winds that are quickly increasing about 50 n mi northwest of the center. As noted previously, another saildrone (SD-1040) indicated that sea-surface temperatures near Leslie are warmer than expected, near 29 C. At the same time, the hurricane is in a very narrow region of low vertical wind shear that should persist for another 6-12 h. While the interpolated intensity guidance is a bit lower, the raw model output of all four of the hurricane-regional models (HAFS-A/B, HMON, HWRF) show Leslie briefly becoming a major hurricane in 12 h. Because the raw model output from these intensity aids has been outperforming the interpolated guidance over the past day, the NHC intensity forecast will now show a 100 kt peak tomorrow morning. However, this peak is likely to be short-lived, as strong upper-level northerly flow, via outflow from Milton and Invest 93L, will soon overtake the hurricane, likely leading to rapid weakening. Those same hurricane-regional models show Leslie weakening below hurricane intensity in 36 h, and that rapid weakening continues to be reflected in the latest intensity forecast. While sheared puffs of deep convection may continue for a subsequent day or two, eventually Leslie is likely to lose the necessary convective organization to be classified as a tropical cyclone. The NHC forecast continues to show Leslie becoming post-tropical by the end of the weekend, though this could occur sooner than forecast given the proximity of very dry environmental air and high shear affecting the system. Leslie continues to move northwestward, estimated at 315/7 kt this evening. The track forecast is more straightforward, with Leslie rounding the western edge of a subtropical ridge to its east, resulting in a gradual turn northward and then northeastward over the forecast period. With that said, there has been a notable westward and poleward shift in the guidance this cycle, and the NHC track forecast was moved in that direction, but not as far as the latest TVCN and HCCA consensus aids. FORECAST POSITIONS AND MAX WINDS INIT 10/0300Z 22.6N 49.3W 90 KT 105 MPH 12H 10/1200Z 23.3N 49.9W 100 KT 115 MPH 24H 11/0000Z 24.4N 50.4W 80 KT 90 MPH 36H 11/1200Z 26.0N 50.1W 55 KT 65 MPH 48H 12/0000Z 28.4N 48.4W 45 KT 50 MPH 60H 12/1200Z 30.7N 45.5W 45 KT 50 MPH 72H 13/0000Z 33.0N 41.6W 45 KT 50 MPH 96H 14/0000Z 36.0N 31.0W 40 KT 45 MPH...POST-TROPICAL 120H 15/0000Z 37.1N 21.9W 30 KT 35 MPH...POST-TROP/REMNT LOW $$ Forecaster Papin

I’ll tell you what—the stuff that has developed has really popped. Leslie is thriving in advance of the coming shear. Thanks @Windspeed for pointing it out. Clearing out an eye in the central Atlantic after being written off.

GO LESLIE GO

Might be even worse on the backside/sting jet

Rainfall totals so far