Major Hurricane Milton

[gallopinggertie]

1 minute ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

NHC looks to have this going right up Tampa Bay Wed evening.

Just to the south of the bay (like by 15 miles).

Would that be enough for Tampa to escape the surge?

[andyhb]

Just now, gallopinggertie said:

Just to the south of the bay (like by 15 miles).

Would that be enough for Tampa to escape the surge?

Yes. Anything south of the bay would mean water gets pulled out to sea from offshore flow on the north side of the eye vs. the bad scenario where it gets piled up by onshore flow in the right front quad.

[andyhb]

Kind of leaning towards this one underperforming given the magnitude of dry air and shear that begins to influence it as it moves closer to landfall. Environment is going to become very hostile and we should see rapid weakening from whatever the peak is.

[GaWx]

18 minutes ago, Amped said:

The ICON almost hits the Yucatan. Well south of its 12z run through 36hrs.

After that further S track near Yucatan, 18Z Icon landfalls like the 12Z at Sarasota but it is delayed til very late Wed night.

[USCG RS]

Given the resilience we have seen as of late with these storms once they are developed, I would lean towards models showing them either holding or a slower weakening trend  over the ones showing intensity dropping off a cliff. Developed storms tend to hold together more often than not. 

Not to mention that models have the weakening happening in the final hours. Any delay and the intensity holds longer. 

Another thing to consider is the fact that the interaction which causes the shear will likely greatly expand the storm and the footprint thereof. Rough situation all around. 

 

 

[purduewx80]

34 minutes ago, GaWx said:

 Per model consensus, there’s a chance for a short-lived TC to form just E of FL from an area of convection and possible developing LLC currently in the E GOM ahead of Milton that would then move well OTS. (see IR image below). Is anyone else watching this? I’m watching this closely because it could have a non-trivial influence on Milton in some way(s). For example, the 12Z UKMET has a TC from this:

  NEW TROPICAL CYCLONE FORECAST TO DEVELOP AFTER  48 HOURS
              FORECAST POSITION AT T+ 48 : 27.6N  78.8W

                        LEAD                 CENTRAL     MAXIMUM WIND
      VERIFYING TIME    TIME   POSITION   PRESSURE (MB)  SPEED (KNOTS)
      --------------    ----   --------   -------------  -------------
    1200UTC 08.10.2024   48  27.6N  78.8W     1003            23
    0000UTC 09.10.2024   60  28.6N  75.5W     1002            28
    1200UTC 09.10.2024   72  30.0N  71.9W     1003            30
    0000UTC 10.10.2024   84  32.3N  66.5W     1004            30
    1200UTC 10.10.2024   96  35.3N  60.5W     1003            33
    0000UTC 11.10.2024  108  38.9N  54.6W      999            37
    1200UTC 11.10.2024  120              CEASED TRACKING

This is what I alluded to this morning in regards to flooding in the urban areas of coastal southeast FL tonight and tomorrow. The low will start to reform and detach from the front as part of this process. This happens regularly in that area, with winds often overperforming as convection is enhanced by coastal convergence and the Gulf Stream. It may be having some influence on Milton today, though I’m not sure how you can definitively attribute its ESE motion solely to that. Could spin up into a brief TS but it’s hard to say. 

[Amped]

5 minutes ago, andyhb said:

Kind of leaning towards this one underperforming given the magnitude of dry air and shear that begins to influence it as it moves closer to landfall. Environment is going to become very hostile and we should see rapid weakening from whatever the peak is.

My leaning too, plus the hype train for worst case scenario has already started.  

Nobody mentioning the best case scenario, the track shifts south and and the storm gets gutted by shear before landfall.

[Prospero]

10 minutes ago, andyhb said:

Yes. Anything south of the bay would mean water gets pulled out to sea from offshore flow on the north side of the eye vs. the bad scenario where it gets piled up by onshore flow in the right front quad.

If the surge is as high as it was last week with Helene, and with so much debris piled up on street after street, I assume the surge would build up during the approach to a high level sweeping up everything that is mostly small broken pieces of whatever is in those piles. If the eye passes to the south and we get strong offshore winds all of that stuff will be washed out to sea. There could be trash washing up on the beaches for a very long time.

[SnoSki14]

8 minutes ago, andyhb said:

Kind of leaning towards this one underperforming given the magnitude of dry air and shear that begins to influence it as it moves closer to landfall. Environment is going to become very hostile and we should see rapid weakening from whatever the peak is.

Whenever you mention that people think you're trolling. 

1 minute ago, Amped said:

My leaning too, plus the hype train for worst case scenario has already started.  

Nobody mentioning the best case scenario, the track shifts south and and the storm gets gutted by shear before landfall.

That was my earlier thoughts. This is not a Helene situation 

[dbullsfan]

I feel like this storm can land fall as a Cat2 or even high end cat 1 and “underperform” to peoples expectations regarding wind speed and still be extremely devastating. The storm surge built up from a cat 4 isn’t just going to go away because of rapid intensification as it nears land fall.


.

[GaWx]

Fwiw here are the TC/STC tracks since 1851 for storms that formed 10/1-10:

[Floydbuster]

 

[Moderately Unstable]

4 minutes ago, andyhb said:

Kind of leaning towards this one underperforming given the magnitude of dry air and shear that begins to influence it as it moves closer to landfall. Environment is going to become very hostile and we should see rapid weakening from whatever the peak is.

I agree although I think underperformance is relative. The degree of vort displacement and dissolution on the latest regional models and dry air entrainment seem overdone. It's also certainly looking likely to achieve quite "high end" in the next couple days. Small storm in good spot. The decoupling of the LL and mid level wind fields and degree of dry air entrainment near landfall are somewhat hard to believe...the HMON shreds it to bits on approach to an unusually robust extent and probably one that doesn't hold.

Ultimately I think the timing of the incoming trough and jet streak (still wobbling a bit run to run on the 2 pvu progs on the globals in depth and in southerly extent) along with the eventual approach angle (W-E vs SW-NE) are going to factor in - without those nailed down, there will be some changes in the next couple of days.  Still, the main memo is, this will not landfall at peak intensity. Likely situation here is continued RI up to c4 and slower further increase to peak at c5, EWRC with slightly less favorable environment and other parameters increasing the size of the storm but dropping winds with minor reduction in symmetry, shear increases on approach leading to a northerly displacement of the vort max and wind fields, with ensuing tilting of the column netting a storm that "underperforms" with wind - more strong gusts than sustained. Intensity wise, I think it comes in as a weakening 3 with a large but asymmetrical wind field and a (relatively) dry southerly half. 

 However - I think this southerly jog is not actually a good thing intensity wise - the shear axis and jet are north. Arguably the less time the storm spends in high shear, the stronger it will remain on approach. That's part of why I don't buy the regionals that fully shred it and would make it a modest 2. If you assume a NE track on approach, it threads the needle just a touch more and it's still likely a low end major - probably why nhc is going with that in the current forecast. 

This storm is not Helene. E.g, not every storm is storm of the century even if it does become a c5 over the open gom. The issue, I think, is that a lot of the zones here as articulated at length...are messes right now from Helene. And while the current consensus is just S of Tampa Bay, which would spare them a bit, we are several days out with a fair degree of track forecast spread. Tampa Bay gets lucky quite frequently. I'm not sure they'll be lucky this time, even if the storm is weakening, as impacts will be exacerbated by antecedent rainfall and existing damage to structures. Also factoring in a slightly more ne approach angle, they will still get a period of onshore flow. Overall - TB is still in cross hairs right now, and some of the guidance still takes the center N of the city. 

 

[Amped]

The GFS is just really darn slow this run.

Edit: GFS is still a northern outlier, unless you include the NAVGEM.

[Floydbuster]

Steering current usually have to be really strong to yank a system out from near the Bay of Campeche. Milton will be very lucky that there should be just enough influence to do so.

[TPAwx]

GFS appears to be heading for a landfall north of TB.  Big time surge for the Bay area..

[GaWx]

The 18Z GFS landfalls near Crystal River (similar to 12Z) but isn’t til 11AM EDT on Thu! Those earlier CMC Fri landfalls aren’t looking quite as crazy as they were.

[WxSynopsisDavid]

Really, the debate of underperformance should be silent until we see the 00z model suite that gets ingest with the recon data being collected to the north. Either the data we seen today is spot on with shear and dry air or it overdone the limiting factors. Won’t know until that 00z data comes out.

[beanskip]

2 minutes ago, GaWx said:

The 18Z GFS landfalls near Crystal River (similar to 12Z) but isn’t til 11AM EDT on Thu! Those earlier CMC Fri landfalls aren’t looking quite as crazy as they were.

No kidding -- at 11 am Thursday on the 12z run the storm was well out into the Atlantic. I remember storms with wide envelopes of track, but not sure I remember one with such disparity on the timing of landfall. 

[Rd9108]

I doubt if this gets to get a 4 or 5 and weakens at landfall that will do much if anything for the surge. Everybody always focuses on the winds but look at Katrina. 

[CoastalWx]

We get the surge and what not is important. But the fact of the matter is that it could substantially weaken overall from its peak, before landfall.

[WxSynopsisDavid]

Just now, CoastalWx said:

We get the surge and what not is important. But the fact of the matter is that it could substantially weaken overall from its peak, before landfall.

Only mitigates the wind threat. Really the focus should not be on intensity but rather surge and flooding. ERC will likely happen, and the storm will grow in diameter before landfall.

Another factor is how slow Milton is moving now vs model predictions. Milton is moving slower which gives time to complete an ERC and regain lost intensity should shear and dry air be overdone at landfall. If it’s not, Milton rolls in at Cat 2/Cat 3 but brings that high-end surge and flooding threat. 

[CoastalWx]

Just now, WxSynopsisDavid said:

Only mitigates the wind threat. Really the focus should not be on intensity but rather surge and flooding. ERC will likely happen, and the storm will grow in diameter before landfall.

Another factor is how slow Milton is moving now vs model predictions. Milton is moving slower which gives time to complete an ERC and regain lost intensity should shear and dry air be overdone at landfall. If it’s not, Milton rolls in at Cat 2/Cat 3 but brings that high-end surge and flooding threat. 

Just pointing it out from a meteorological point of view. Nobody is trying to diminish the threat. 

[40/70 Benchmark]

4 minutes ago, WxSynopsisDavid said:

Only mitigates the wind threat. Really the focus should not be on intensity but rather surge and flooding. ERC will likely happen, and the storm will grow in diameter before landfall.

Another factor is how slow Milton is moving now vs model predictions. Milton is moving slower which gives time to complete an ERC and regain lost intensity should shear and dry air be overdone at landfall. If it’s not, Milton rolls in at Cat 2/Cat 3 but brings that high-end surge and flooding threat. 

I highly doubt any reintensifcstion prior to landfall this time around.

[lilj4425]

The same people saying this is going to weaken are the same ones who said Helene was going to be weak category 2 at landfall. And we all saw how that went. 

[SnowGoose69]

2 minutes ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

I highly doubt any reintensifcstion prior to landfall this time around.

I'd think it definitely would not have enough time, we can assume an ERC happens or shear to some degree knocks it down close enough to landfall it likely peaks awhile before coming ashore

[wncsnow]

1 minute ago, lilj4425 said:

The same people saying this is going to weaken are the same ones who said Helene was going to be weak category 2 at landfall. And we all saw how that went. 

Some people still think Helene was a Category 2 at landfall. 

[40/70 Benchmark]

Just now, lilj4425 said:

The same people saying this is going to weaken are the same ones saying Helene was going to be weak category 2 at landfall.

The shear vector doesn't remain parallel to its movement this go around.

[40/70 Benchmark]

1 minute ago, SnowGoose69 said:

I'd think it definitely would not have enough time, we can assume an ERC happens or shear to some degree knocks it down close enough to landfall it likely peaks awhile before coming ashore

Thing is it doesn't look like its only internal processes modulating intensity...in order to reintensify following an EWRC the environment needs to be favorable. However, these same factors causing it to weaken will also expand the system, which is detrimental in terms of surge. 

[Random Chaos]

21 minutes ago, lilj4425 said:

The same people saying this is going to weaken are the same ones who said Helene was going to be weak category 2 at landfall. And we all saw how that went. 

Exactly. But more importantly it doesn't matter the strength at landfall except for a very small area near the coast line. What matters is the total integrated kinetic energy (IKE). A category 4 storm 24 hours before landfall will still have the same (or larger!) hurricane force wind field and surge if it landfalls as category 4 or if it weakens to category 2 - the strength of the hurricane only is measured based on the maximum winds in the eyewall, not the total power of the storm. Helene was a massive storm with winds and rain extending far from its core. Milton is likely to be a smaller storm when it reaches peak strength, but if it weakens (which a lot of models indicate) it's doing so because the core is weakening, and the winds spreading outward. If it stays compact, it would have the worst impact over a fairly small area, but weakening actually broadens the area of impact from hurricane strength winds and thus wind-driven (rather than purely low pressure based) coastal storm surges, which could have an even worse impact on mostly enclosed bodies of water such as Tampa Bay where a storm surge can be driven up the bay by winds.

History has many examples of weakening storms that have caused massive damage from storm surge and winds - Katrina, Isabel, etc. Just because a storm is weakening does not mean that it has lost its teeth - that takes time, usually multiple days of shear to rip a storm completely apart.