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2024 Tropical Tracking Thread


WxWatcher007
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58 minutes ago, clskinsfan said:

Yeah. I was wrong again. For gods sake dont take my views as an educated person saying them. It is beasting now. Closed off and bombs away from here. Contracting eye and a beast has been born. Prayers for the Big Bend  of Florida. Horrific for them

GeoColor - True Color daytime, multispectral IR at night

It's most likely CAT 4 now. Catastrophic.

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12 minutes ago, clskinsfan said:

It amazes me that the current weather models can see that rapid intensification. From a hurricane that was eating a ton of dry air to a beast. They predicted it. Basically human forecasting will be gone in the next 10 years. 

No JB?. :weep:

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5 minutes ago, WxWatcher007 said:

As is usually the case, I have support from folks that can let y’all know I’m ok in the likely event I lose signal.

For this trip I’ve been conferring with @MillvilleWx & @ORH_wxman. Will update as I can of course. 

Pressure down to 994.6mb here. 

Please brother watch your ass. She is nasty.

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15 minutes ago, WxWatcher007 said:

As is usually the case, I have support from folks that can let y’all know I’m ok in the likely event I lose signal.

For this trip I’ve been conferring with @MillvilleWx & @ORH_wxman. Will update as I can of course. 

Pressure down to 994.6mb here. 

Please be safe! 

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The comparisons to Hugo are pretty apt I think. Strengthening on the way in, booking along, and liable to hit a major metro area far inland hard. 

EDIT: One thing I just thought of, Hugo didn't seem to have a big affect on the southern Appalachians? I mean, like Helene is gonna blast them with. 

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5 hours ago, clskinsfan said:

What the actual fuck are you taking about?

My friend, as usual, your power of comprehension is limited, likely because of alcohol.

Is it Wild Turkey Rare Breed at 113?  Be careful with that stuff!  It is only for sipping, not guzzling.

Or Everclear at 190, cut 50%.  Again, only sipping.

Have a better day in about 12 hrs..  AND, yes, we're still friends.

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5 hours ago, MillvilleWx said:

Woke up to @WxWatcher007message that he is okay down in Perry. He said the eyewall was WILD. I’ll let anyone know more when he messages me. 

Thanks. Yep I’m doing ok. Doing the damage survey now. It’s significant to extensive in spots, but could’ve been a lot worse. Will be attempting to travel back home today. 

90WFYSY.jpeg
 

0B3guQb.jpeg
 

SbbFxDy.jpeg

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27 minutes ago, WxWatcher007 said:

I have a lot of stuff to sort through, but even though there are videos with higher gusts, there’s one video that says it all. Yahoos aside, what an experience doing this one shoulder to shoulder with one of the greats. 
 

Musta been gnarly

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I mentioned I think in this thread my father-in-law lives in Brevard, NC (south of Asheville - we heard from him last night - he’s safe - he was lucky to find one tiny area that got a little signal to get a call out.) He really has no idea how bad it is areawide - he’s mostly trapped behind fallen trees on the roads around him and one smaller one on his house but he’s ok. 
 

the pics from that whole area up to the TN /NC border are horrifying- I’ve vacationed and visited that whole area for decades. In some cases whole towns are gone.

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Things have picked up a lot, but long way to go to be closer to a respectable grade. Isaac is close to a surprise MH, but will likely fall short. 
 

Peak Season Forecast (Aug 20-Oct 20)
Named Storms: 15  (5)
Hurricanes: 10 (3)
Major Hurricanes: 5 (1)

 

Francine (H), Gordon, Helene (MH), Isaac (H), Joyce

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Final video and wrap up. 
 

4 minutes ago, WxWatcher007 said:

Thanks for the question. Here are some of my thoughts about the chase (long post alert):

I think the wind delivered. It’s extremely hard to visually estimate wind speeds (which is why doing a damage report after the storm is so important) but the Perry airport reported a wind gust of 99 and they only report 3x an hour and didn’t have a peak wind from what I could see. 

I like studying wind. Perry is about 10-15 miles inland so there’s going to be significant wind reduction due to surface friction, and I think the general public and even chaser/wx enthusiast wind expectations can be out of whack.

If any storm is making landfall, I lop off a significant percentage of what I expect in sustained and peak wind gusts. But it doesn’t diminish the storm. At all. That’s just the reality of surface wind reduction.

The eyewall of Laura was head and shoulders above what I saw in the eyewall of Helene, but Helene was better than what I saw in Idalia just last year—to be expected since they were different categories.

Laura made landfall at 150mph. LCH had sustained winds of 105 and gusts to 132 before going offline. Winds were certainly higher than those reports in both categories but still weaker than the objective advisory analysis. 

QfLeo8k.jpg
 

dPLcXpQ.png
 

The damage was incredible, but many well built structures survived. 

4mEYBdp.jpeg
 

C6W3tex.jpeg
 

Idalia was off its peak, but still produced substantial wind and lightning. There was also some structural damage. 

Here with Helene, it looked and felt worse, even at night, but looking objectively after the fact I wonder if we missed the worst winds just southeast between Perry and Salem. Too rural to do anything other than risk yourself in a highly rural location. I should’ve attempted to head there after to survey. 

OyuaaF4.png
 

Still, we were getting hit hard in Perry. That’s impressive wind even with a 20% reduction.

TLUXUgI.png
 

I’m certain I would’ve seen it in Laura if I went to a more populated area, but this is the first time I saw some store fronts blown out. 

SbbFxDy.jpeg
 

Here’s my last video documenting the worst. 


Finally—two things

1) It’s truly extraordinary to see the extent of the catastrophe. Record surge in Florida, potentially generational inland wind damage all the way into the Carolinas, and of course, the historic flooding in GA, the Carolinas, and TN. This will be the storm of record for a lot of people, and it continues to rewrite the rules on the ceiling of CAG systems. 

2) Something I said last night elsewhere—

This was the first time I really saw chaser convergence for a TC. There were some that understood that there are people whose lives would be dramatically different after the storm and others that did not care. There are always some that do things that make first responders jobs more difficult. 

I sat with an elderly couple in the lobby of the hotel as the eyewall was approaching. Folks from Perry. Terrified. Guys were talking about 150+ mph winds at 4000 ft or whatever and backslapping and making it feel like a party while the wife was barely holding back tears. I took the time to explain to them why some of us do what we do and the science of surface wind reduction. Took the time to explain that the hotel was very well built and that they didn’t need to spend the night in the staircase. Showed a little empathy and reassurance that their home wasn’t going to get ripped apart like an EF-5 in Oklahoma. 

I would consider myself a pro now. This is what I do. My first rule has always been to respect the people in the places you go. Now I’m not perfect and I can’t be. I say that and my hotel room is one less a person evacuating could get. I defied a mandatory evacuation order though Perry is outside FL’s evacuation zones and I do not drive during the worst as a rule.

Unlike when I started, these days I travel because I think I’ve gotten good enough to add on the ground value and my chases have reflected that imo. 

I’m not one to do the whole moralistic thing, but I firmly believe that chasers should never be the story. Show up and do your thing, but show respect to the people that don’t get to fly in and fly out. I cut out a number of clips and won’t post them because of the celebratory vibe they gave off. That’s just not cool to me in a catastrophic event. 

 

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