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Major Hurricane Irene live tracking


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I'm there.

me too. Funny how last week, the models had the westerlies so far north at the Canada, US border. Now we've seen the eastern trough come in stronger and stronger, with not just one but 2 or 3 major strong shortwaves. All it takes is a weak trough to turn a storm out, and now we have atleast 2 strong ones. The first one acts as a block, and allows Irene to stall and strenthen over the Bahamas. As well as tug it north, keeping well offshore GA, and the next incoming trough affects it as well, and helps brush it toward the outer Banks. I bet we're not done, as the troughs come in stronger each run. You can thank the strong Texas Ridge for that this year.

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aren't they always nervous regarding east coasters?

yeah, but there has been a lot of "certainty" with this one... maybe that's always the case. it keeps ending up further north than most expect in the shorter term and the "trend" (if models do that) is hard to not see at this point. seems premature to bail but if the euro comes in east etc it could be harder to keep a straight face that this is "expected" in the course of the ultimate SE landfall.

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this run is quite a bit further east. At 96 hours its free to wobble or shift direction, but by that time, its felt the strong effects of the first deep eastern US trough, so thats why its 200 miles east of Florida and gets dragged north /nw to around 300 miles east of GA coast . By 108 hours, a new trough in the wstern lakes is digging. There's not much ridging to steer it strongly nw. At 120, its still about 150 miles southeast of Wilmington. East trends continue.

I still think the period in days 4-6 are going to be a key. First off, the trough lifts out in the time period and Irene gets left behind in weak steering flow with the westerlies well to the north. If the ridge builds in more strongly, it could drift closer to the coast, or it could just meander. Then, the depth and orientation of the next trough is key. The GFS seems to have trended deeper this run with that trough, which could result in a pick up to the NNE. I still think that given the mean pattern and where the trough/ridge are a complete miss of the US coast is unlikely, but obviously its non-zero.

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Wow kind of deflated. I have been waiting almost 20 years now to experience again a storm like Fran or Hugo at home. guess I will keep waiting.

It's possible that the GFS is too far west or east. The ensembles and the euro will help us determine if this new track is significant.

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After 29 straight U.S. hits from GFS runs going back to a week ago today and with none of those just scraping the U.S., this 30th one came VERY close to missing the U.S. completely! Nevertheless, it is officially 30 straight hits. More importantly, the fish possiblity is growing somewhat, which means the chances are growing for the GFS failing despite 30+ runs showing a U.S. hit. Of course, the Euro has shown seven hits in a row, itself.

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We will have a better picture of where the landfall will be by Wednesday or Thursday. The predictions as the where Irene will go have been pretty wild the past week - first an East Coast hit, then into the Gulf of Mexico, then back to and East Coast landfall. The best thing if you are in the region of uncertainty is to prepare, remain vigilant and don't focus on every minor shift of the track.

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Th 0Z ensembles showed the NNE to NE turn, but there was pretty good spread on where the turn begins, with many quite far W over FL. The 12Z ensembles will be interesting. Also, Irene is crawling now...could have effects on track if it allows more time for the second trough to lift out and be the difference between NNW, N, or NNE as the storm approaches the U.S. Still a long way to go and even Florida is not out of the woods by any stretch imo.

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I remember watching a documentary of sorts about Hugo a long time ago, and they outlined very well just how lucky Charleston got with it. I don't remember all of the details, but suffice it to say, I don't think Charleston would be the same today.

I wish I could remember who produced it...

Not that anyone believes in a Charleston landfall at the moment (lol), but I have family friends who lived in Charleston in '89 and were there for Hugo's landfall. It certainly wasn't as bad as it could have been, but according to them conditions were still unbelievable. Hugo's path was devastating enough. Something landfalling just south of Charleston...yikes. I don't know if you've been to Charleston, but every bit of its historic downtown sits directly on the water with little to no protection.

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Ok lets see how the models do today with actual observations... Bermuda sounding at 12z shows the 500mb height to be 5910m... which is a little bit stronger than what the 12z GFS indicated. The same is true for the soundings in Florida, the ridge is a little stronger than indicated on the 12z GFS.

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Been some significant changes since the last center fix, so with recon getting ready to do a NE to SW pass within the next 20 minutes, it will be quite interesting to see what they find. Some rather deep convection has developed over the last hour, and the radar shows that the eye is tightening significantly as well.

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I guess people assumed you were making that argument since you linked to a SAL map and then made a follow up post talking about "imbalances in the area". You just need to be more clear when you write.

I was clear enough.

There is a tendency for people to gloss these over too quickly; that's the issue my friend.

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GFS rolling in and dragging this about 75 miles east of the 00z run through 96 hours, likely in response to lower heights in the Northeast.

Welp – we have our own assessment of the models and there antecedent trends and so forth … but after reading some of the official discussions …just going by the tone et al, the idea of keeping Irene just off shore until impacting the upper MA/lower New England is probably going to be the last possibility examined.

But that is no dig at all - it stands to reason because those scenarios …the “LI Express” as they are called, are a bit more rare than an FL/SC/NC strike given a storm in Irene’s position. Additionally, this is a bit of an a-typical type of East Coast threat aloft. Just taking 1938 as the perfect paradigm to compare all against, re-analysis of that event had a deep trough anomaly in the OV with nearly normal wind field at mid and upper levels along and off-shore the EC. Anything around or just off the Bahamas would have been sucked up and driven do N at ludicrous speed given those sometimes orientations aloft. We don’t really see that here… We have a ridge anomaly on either side of a shear axis/weakness, and the storm really just takes the path of least resistance.

My hunch in this is that beta-drift will continuously tug this to the right and tend to verify the track on the eastern side of the current envelope – it may already be registering that way as the system is clearly right of guidance from this time yesterday – human interpretation of said guidance notwithstanding.

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12z GFS initialized at 1003mb...not sure exactly how much that throws it's output into doubt but it can't be ideal.

I would think that the GFS does not have the resolution to pick up on the actual pressure of a strong tropical system. It still indicates rapid strengthening, though, which is what's most important. I'm not sure how this "low" resolution directly impacts its forecasted track.

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One thing to watch the next 24 hours is if the storm trends more W vs WNW as it passes along the north short of Hispaniola. This has happened before. The shift east in the guidance is obvious and without an upper low over the Deep South many times it is difficult to get these re-curving storms to keep much of a westward component once they start to re-curve. The strong west Atlantic ridge will keep it from going much further east than 75W before crossing 35N, but a miss or Outer Banks brush is certainly on the table.

If we do see the landmass of Hispaniola interact with the system and possibly keep a bit south of where the thinking is now the next 24 hours, than the re-curve may happen a bit further west and the models could trend west again. The next 24 hours are pretty big for this system.

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