Tropical Storm Erika

[AvantHiatus]

Dropping 20-30+" of rain over SNJ in the process. Purely loltastic

Watch it go so far south and sit in the gulf for days. I have a feeling this is far from over.

[famartin]

Hope Mexico is preparing.

Anyway, once this is over with hopefully there can be some analysis of what went wrong. Do the models usually have an awful job modeling the behavior of weak systems

Yes. Shallow/weak circulation = less skill

[AvantHiatus]

So many scenarios on the table from regeneration in a different location to something like the Euro.

[Bob Chill]

Yes. Shallow/weak circulation = less skill

 

Exactly. And I personally don't think anything has gone wrong. NHC expressed over and over how uncertain d3+ was since the beginning and it was never forecast to become a cane inside of 3 days. All the H's on the plot maps were d4-5. There was no reason to buy into anything "bigger" until if/when the storm entered a more favorable environment and that was never progged until well after it got past hispanola. 

[gymengineer]

Exactly. And I personally don't think anything has gone wrong. NHC expressed over and over how uncertain d3+ was since the beginning and it was never forecast to become a cane inside of 3 days. All the H's on the plot maps were d4-5. There was no reason to buy into anything "bigger" until if/when the storm entered a more favorable environment and that was never progged until well after it got past hispanola. 

It's the year-by-year creep of when to start seriously discussing/analyzing an event. It's of course been happening with winter storms too, and of course model skill *has* been getting better (day 5 skill level = what used to be day 3, etc.). But, we see more and more of the HWRF/GFDL-family T+150 hr maps posted. And as some have pointed out, the maps keep on getting prettier and more detailed. So, there are multiple 936-mb-type solutions just off the east coast floating around while the system was still a newly-formed weak tropical storm. All/most of them were tongue-in-cheek, but I bet that deep down, people were thinking "Well, if it were to only strengthen half-as-much, there'd still be a hurricane threat." 

 

A modest tropical storm struggling against sheer for the entire short range was a big indication that this was going to be a hard-to-determine solution, especially given all the land masses in between. 

[Wonderdog]

Hope Mexico is preparing. 

Anyway, once this is over with hopefully there can be some analysis of what went wrong. Do the models usually have an awful job modeling the behavior of weak systems? Or is it the interaction with land that so radically altered its path?

You always hear from forecasters that tropical systems pose problems for them. This one isn't any different. Maybe the fact that it is weak makes it that much harder to figure out. My uneducated guess is we need it to clear those islands before coming up with a forecast that has some legs. It would not surprise me if the Canadian model turns out to be close to correct.

[Wonderdog]

http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/east/eaus/flash-wv.html

 

I wonder if Erika is helping to push the water vapor in a northerly direction steaming up from the GOM.

[Amped]

Hope Mexico is preparing. 

Anyway, once this is over with hopefully there can be some analysis of what went wrong. Do the models usually have an awful job modeling the behavior of weak systems? Or is it the interaction with land that so radically altered its path?

Xtrap FTW!

[WxUSAF]

 

I want to see these gifs in the winter for our numerous HECS/Miller A's. 

[Kevin Reilly]

http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/east/eaus/flash-wv.html

 

I wonder if Erika is helping to push the water vapor in a northerly direction steaming up from the GOM.

I think that's just the upper level low backing back and retrograding to the southwest a bit pumping up the moisture and the heights in the southeastern states.  That upper air low will play a huge part in the future track of whatever is left of Erika

[JC-CT]

It would not surprise me if the Canadian model turns out to be close to correct.

For real?

[Ian]

Not sure it was that hard to predict but everyone hugs models now.

[mattie g]

Not sure it was that hard to predict but everyone hugs models now.

Your call was money.

[IsentropicLift]

I'd give up snow for the next 5 Winters to see the GGEM verify. Not gonna happen.

[AlaskaETC]

I'd give up snow for the next 5 Winters to see the GGEM verify. Not gonna happen.

 

Doesn't look that impressive to me.

[AvantHiatus]

Now enter the pessimism for the next 5 tropical seasons. Erika is an outlier, just accept it.

[IsentropicLift]

Doesn't look that impressive to me.

30"+ of rain for parts of my state.

[BTRWx]

Not so bad to me

http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/east/watl/rb-animated.gif

[WEATHER53]

Is the battering of it yet to come because it still looks solid?

[AvantHiatus]

Is the battering of it yet to come because it still looks solid?

 

For posterity...

[BTRWx]

Erika is firing up great convection, but we've seen that the last three nights. What I think is good, is that it is still creating a good amount of vorticity 

 

 

 

 

Shear seems a tad better for now

 

 

and there is plenty of TCHP

 

 

 

The problem is that the track may take Erika directly over Cuba, and there is tough terrain there as well. A track like this also reduces the time Erika might have to get things together. Without a real good LLC and vertically stacked system, this thing will be middling even if it ends up in a favorable environment. Cuba could be curtains, and even if it isn't, the Gulf of Mexico might not be as favorable as the east coast of Florida not only in terms of shear but the huge disparity in TCHP.  But we'll see. If it reorganizes a bit further north idk. 

 

Not terribly optimistic at this point. 

What if she went south of mainland Cuba? We've seen some pretty big jumps already...

 

[JC-CT]

...ERIKA DEGENERATES TO A TROUGH OF LOW PRESSURE...

Time of Death: 9:30am

(walks to podium and taps mic)

Unlike its brother Danny, the world had very high expectations for Erika. Unlike Danny, Erika never realized its potential and left us all disappointed. The only surprises Erika gave us, were events which shocked the conscience. Erika was likely flawed from the beginning, and we should have known very early on that Erika was in trouble. The snake oil salesmen it surrounded itself with used our love for tropical and desperation to flee our boring disposition to make us believe. It was only at the very end, with Erika in its death throes and beyond all hope, that the peddlers, the most advanced computer models on our planet, abandoned their solutions.

Erika is gone now, and lo, the boring that is El Jefe Nino has returned.

Let us bow our heads.

May the death of Erika be complete and irrevocable, the unredeemable Canadian burn eternally, and remaining models turn from their wicked ways.

Amen

Pretty amusing wxwatcher

[BTRWx]

Just think if winter storms were to dissipate like that over higher terrain. Thank goodness that's not the case!

[Ian]

Now enter the pessimism for the next 5 tropical seasons. Erika is an outlier, just accept it.

Not really. Nino climo supports what happened for one. You don't usually get giant hurricanes by running a weak low thru days and days of shear. "In theory" if it survived that there might have been a small window but even there you're probably not talking a huge storm.

[AvantHiatus]

Not really. Nino climo supports what happened for one. You don't usually get giant hurricanes by running a weak low thru days and days of shear. "In theory" if it survived that there might have been a small window but even there you're probably not talking a huge storm.

That does not explain how Danny reached Category 3 and the persistent dry air at 500-700mb. Looking back, shear was only in the 10-20kt range for a good chunk of the formation phase.

 

I get this impression that the Atlantic simply operates in a dual state with the Pacific. When the pacific calms down again we can expect a massive burst in Atlantic Basin activity.