Tropical Storm Richard is likely later today
The Hurricane Hunters are in Tropical Depression Nineteen, and have found winds of tropical storm force that support upgrading the depression to Tropical Storm Richard. Between 8:15 - 8:30am EDT, the Air Force hurricane hunter aircraft measured surface winds of 40 - 70 mph with their SFMR instrument in the heavy thunderstorm region on the east side of TD 19's center. Winds at the aircraft's flight level of 1400 feet peaked at 46 mph. These measurements support upgrading TD 19 to at least a 40 mph tropical storm. Winds have been steadily rising this morning at NOAA buoy 42057, located about 50 miles west-southwest of the center of TD 19, on its weak side. Winds were 27 mph, gusting to 29 mph, at 7:43am EDT this morning. Recent satellite imagery shows that the surface circulation center of TD 19 is nearly exposed to view, thanks to moderate wind shear of 10 - 20 knots from upper-level southwesterly winds. TD 19 has a moderate and increasing amount of heavy thunderstorm activity which is getting more organized, with a curved spiral band forming on the storm's south side. The storm is bringing very heavy rain to Jamaica. Water vapor satellite loops show considerable dry air to the west and north of TD 19, and the southwesterly winds over the storm are bringing some of this dry into the core of the storm, keeping all the heavy thunderstorm development confined to the east side of the center. The waters beneath TD 19 are very warm, 29°C, but TD 19 will not be able to take full advantage of these warm waters until the shear relaxes and stops pushing dry air into the core.
Figure 1. Morning satellite image of TD 19.
Intensity forecast for TD 19
The latest SHIPS model forecast predicts that wind shear over the Western Caribbean will remain in the moderate range, 10 - 20 knots, through Friday morning. As the storm moves westwards on Friday, it will position itself beneath an upper-level high pressure system, which will allow shear to drop to the low range, less than 10 knots. With water temperatures a very warm 29°C and warm waters extending to great depth, TD 19 should be able to attain at least Category 1 hurricane strength by Saturday. NHC is currently giving TD 19 a 3% chance of becoming a major Category 3 hurricane. Given the latest data from the Hurricane Hunters and the latest set of computer models runs, I believe the odds are higher, near 30%. The main inhibiting factor for intensification will be the possibility of the dry air to the west of TD 19 getting wrapped into the core of the storm while it is trying to organize.
Track forecast for TD 19
Steering currents are weak in the Western Caribbean, and will remain weak through Friday morning, resulting in a slow, erratic movement for TD 19. A slow drift to the south is the most popular track expected by the major models. Thus, Jamaica can expect rains to increase and become torrential at times until Saturday, when the storm will finally move off. The Cayman Islands and possibly the north coast of Honduras can also expect very heavy rains of 3 - 6 inches Friday through Saturday. By Friday afternoon, a ridge of high pressure is expected to build in, forcing TD 19 to the west or west-northwest, bringing the storm to a landfall in Belize or Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula Sunday night. The models are divided on what might happen after Sunday, with the GFS, NOGAPS, and UKMET models indicating a continued west-northwest track taking TD 19 across the Yucatan Peninsula and into the Gulf of Mexico, where high wind shear would destroy the storm early next week before it could make landfall in the U.S. The other model solution, provided by the ECMWF, GFDL, and HWRF models, is for TD 19 to get caught up by a trough of low pressure moving across the Eastern U.S. early next week, which would take the storm to the northwest through the Yucatan Channel and into the west coast of Florida as early as Monday night. A band of very strong upper-level winds associated with the jet stream will be over the Gulf of Mexico early next week, so it is likely that if TD 19 follows this track, the storm will be weakening quickly as it approaches Florida. Either solution is possible, and we will have to wait to see what future model runs show will happen. The 5am EDT NHC wind probability forecast is giving the highest odds for tropical storm-force winds at Guanaja in Honduras and Cozumel in Mexico, at 34% and 37%, respectively. Key West is the only U.S. city being given odds, and these are just 3%. These odds will very likely rise with the 11am NHC advisory.
Invest 90L
A tropical wave that emerged off the coast of Africa yesterday (Invest 90L) has a modest amount of spin and some growing thunderstorm activity. NHC is giving the system a 10% chance of developing into a tropical depression by Saturday. This system is not a threat to cross the Atlantic and affect the Lesser Antilles or North America.
Typhoon Megi takes aim at China
Typhoon Megi continues it slow march towards China at 5 mph, and is expected to make landfall Saturday morning on the Chinese coast opposite from Taiwan. Megi has been gradually declining in strength as it heads north, due to steadily rising wind shear (now a moderate 10 - 20 knots) and cooling sea surface temperatures. Megi is moving slow enough and is large and powerful enough that it is probably upwelling cold water from the depths to the surface faster than it can move away, and these upwelling cool waters are keeping Megi from being a major Category 3 typhoon. Wind shear will increase dramatically to 20 - 40 knots on Friday as the typhoon makes its final approach to the coast of China, and this shear should be high enough to reduce Megi to Category 1 status before landfall. Megi will still be a very large and powerful storm capable of causing considerable wind and storm surge damage even at Category 1 strength. However, heavy rain will likely be the storm's main threat, since it is moving slowly and is a huge storm. I expect Megi will be a billion-dollar disaster for China, mostly due to flooding from heavy rains. The outer rain bands of Megi are already affecting the coast of China near Taiwan, as seen on China's radar composite, as well as Taiwan radar.
The clean-up continues in the Philippines from Megi, which hit northern Luzon island on Monday morning at 3:30 UTC as a Category 5 super typhoon with sustained winds of 165 mph and a central pressure of 914 mb. Severe damage was done to Isabela Province in northern Luzon, and 19 deaths are being blamed on the storm. Considering most major typhoon that have hit the Philippine in recent year have killed hundreds and sometimes thousands of people, the low death toll from Megi is a testament to the excellent efforts by officials in the Philippines to get people out of harm's way in advance of the storm.
Figure 2. Rainfall rate for Megi as observed by the F-17 polar orbiting satellite at 5:49am EDT October 21, 2010. Heavy rains in excess of one inch per hour (orange colors) were present on the south side of Megi's eye, and a region of heavy rain was also present in a spiral band approaching the coast of China opposite from Taiwan. Image credit: Navy Research Lab, Monterey.
Next update
I'll have an update this afternoon.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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Sounds very similar to tropical forecasting.
from its previous heading of (3.3degree east of) SouthEast
TS.Richard's average speed moving between its last 2 reported positions had decreased to ~2.3mph(~3.8km/h) from its previous moving speed of ~10.3mph(~16.6km/h)
Invest 99L
20Oct 12pmGMT - 17.7n82.5w - 30knots - 1008mb - ATCF*1007mb
20Oct 06pmGMT - 17.6n81.7w - 30knots - 1008mb - ATCF*17.1n82.2w*17.6n81.6w
TropicalDepression19
21Oct 12amGMT - 17.5n81.2w - 30knots(~55.6km/h) - 1006mb - ATCF*17.6n81.2w
21Oct 03amGMT - 17.5n81.1w - 35mph (~56.3km/h) _ 1006mb - NHC.Adv.#1
21Oct 06amGMT - 17.2n80.9w - 30knots(~55.6km/h) - 1006mb - ATCF*17.3n80.9w*1005mb*17.2n80.8w
21Oct 09amGMT - 17.0n80.7w - 35mph (~56.3km/h) _ 1005mb - NHC.Adv.#2
TropicalStormRichard
21Oct 12amGMT - 16.6n80.6w - 35knots(~64.8km/h) - 1006mb - ATCF*30knots*16.5n80.7w
21Oct 03pmGMT - 16.2n80.4w - 40mph (~64.4km/h) _ 1006mb - NHC.Adv.#3
21Oct 06pmGMT - 16.1n80.4w - 35knots(~64.8km/h) - 1006mb - ATCF
* Before NHC reevaluated&revised the ATCF numbers.
Copy&paste 17.7n82.5w, 17.6n81.7w, 17.5n81.2w, 17.5n81.1w, 17.2n80.9w-17.0n80.7w, 17.0n80.7w-16.6n80.6w, 16.6n80.6w-16.2n80.4w, 16.2n80.4w-16.1n80.4w, tji, puz, jee into the GreatCircleMapper for a look at the last 12^hours.
We are here in Texas boys! Not wanting anything xtreme for anyone..just what we do and we're ready to help...plus I love visiting
FL...
at 168 hours....
Really good one kman!!!
It appears to me to have drifted to being near 16 N and 79.8 W, now stationary.
A mystery around every corner LOL
It is, that Invest just doesn't know it yet.
Yeah, we are very good friends. He just always gets me for my mistakes and I get him for his lol
Now:
According to many on here, the season was over a month ago.
Joe Bastardi
"THURSDAY 1 P.M.
IS RICHARD GOING TO BE THE STRONGEST STORM OF THE YEAR?
That option, though distant is on the table. Latest model runs try to take this west (the GFS and UKMET also) and of course that would bring to mind what happened with the greatest late-season storm on record, on what is still the warmest satellite year on record, Mitch in late October and early November 1998... also an analog year to this year.
It will be interesting to see if Richard is getting pulled even farther east under the convection, though the convection is expanding west. I was expecting a more northward run of the GFS at midday, but it did not respond. However, the increase in organization, though slow now, may suddenly feed back, and this could be a major hurricane with sub 950 mb pressure by Saturday evening, and then it's anyone's guess how low it can go before interacting with land.
I have not changed my track ideas yet, as there is plenty of time to figure this out. However, I am more bullish on the rapid intensification and the idea this will become a major hurricane.
That would make 6, arguably 7 (Alex was a major, in spite of never getting that rating yet).
Ciao for now. "
LOL, LOL, LOL !!! somebody tell him !!!!!
Nice to meet you, you are about 10 miles east of me!
Most of my neighbors are all very friendly but we had a few that are not that social and they did get out and meet the rest of us.
As soon as the storm finally passed we had one neighbor with a generator that we got cranking after the storm and used extension cords to hook up to coffee makers!
Me and the others made pot after pot of hot coffee and took it outside to the men who were working together to clear our streets and yards.(remember it was cold after Wilma passed thru here) .it was real team work and our neighborhood was in good shape fast..
the BAD part was not the "fun" stuff, it was all the "out of pocket" money this storm cost us... our home was good, but we lost our fence and 90% of our landscaping and of course the screens in our patio... every leaf off our shade trees! etc.. had to pay for big equipment to dig out roots that were still in the ground from the fallen trees and large shrubs...
and of course, none of this was covered by insurance...we had about $9,000 from our pocket to pay for immediate repairs...not counting redoing all the landscaping over the next few years.
It was a LOT of hard work cleaning up afterwards...
not something I want to do again this year! LOL
What mistakes????? LOL
Best quote of the day...
Oh, there are some lol. Meet you in the new blog.
Looks to be far enough away so as not to be a problem. Both Felix and Dean passed fairly close to our SW, particularly Dean, without incident. Still, until Richard is gone from the neighbourhood I am sleeping with one eye open.
Here is Dean's track
A point well taken...
However, where is the line drawn? Elena in 1985 never got closer than 100 miles to the Pinellas coast, yet brought wind, waves and flooding... Would that be considered a 'direct hit?'
The only one of the storms on that list that brought hurricane force winds to Pinellas was Alma in 1966... the winds peaked at 82 mph. in Treasure Island, but, across the peninsula about 10 miles away in St. Pete, the winds peaked at 65 mph.
Can you say that storm brought hurricane conditions to Pinellas and the greater Tampa Bay area? Probably not...
This leaves us back at 1921 with widespread hurricane winds across the bay area AND a landfall...
Think the people in the big bend area may disagree with you and ask if you've researched what affect the shelf off shore in that area has on a storm surge...
Tropical Storm Josephine in 1996 brought a very high surge for the strength of storm... and it hit in the big bend. Funny, it was another October system...
The Big Bend region is especially prone to storm surge flooding.
Dixie County, FL got pummeled by the 1993 "Super Storm" in March of that year. And that was not even a surface low pressure storm system, such as a TC, it was a wintertime upper-level cyclonic storm.
I think the death toll in that county with the March '93 storm was somewhere between 10 and 20, total. And that is saying a lot because the area is very sparsely settled.
Those folks were caught off guard of course. But the problem with the Big Bend is that the Continental Shelf in that area is very near the sea surface, the waters up to miles offshore are just a few feet deep at most. This compounds storm surge greatly.
You can see what people in the Keys had to deal with:
Wilma: The Untold Story
Actually, Gladys did bring sustained hurricane force winds to the coastal counties just north of Tampa Bay, such as Pasco and Hernando. Those are officially in the TB area.
And I don't know this to be a fact but I would find it hard to believe that Hurricane Easy in '50 did not bring hurricane force winds to the immediate coastal areas. It was a 120 mph max-sustained winds storm when it was passing by, just a few miles to the west of the coast.
That would mean that the right front quadrant of the eyewall must have passed over the Pinellas coast.
The problem though is that the population of the Tampa Bay area in 1950 was very low and most of the official weather measuring instrumentation was likely in Tampa, some 20 or so miles further to the east.
BINGO!
I remember the '93 storm well. It brought snow flurries to Panama City.
Below is link to graphical charts for the Florida Gulf Coast. You can look there and see what size storm brings what kind of surge anywhere on the coast.
Link
No the XTRP is wrong, must be feedback issues.
Personally, I think it's getting blown from the west, but it's all semantics.
This may not significantly decrease the chances of TS Richard to intensify, but, the amount of time he has spent in this area, may cause some serious upwelling of water from the depths.
As the surface water continues to cool, the storm's energy source will be diminishing, at least in the short term as he meanders around 16.0N/80.5W. He was at 17.0N/80.7W 15 hours ago at 5AM Thursday Morning.
The longer duration of Richard spends over this certain area for a prolonged period, enables colder water to get upwelled to the surface. So remember, if a hurricane spins around in the same area for a couple of days, chances are that its own wind (causing the high seas)(upwelling) will eventually cause it to weaken a tad, who knows?
That is until he gets his giddyup on to the West.....JMO, Rich
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