Tropical Storm Philippe and the Bahamian/Florida Blobette: October 8, Update A

I think Tropical Storm Philippe has been a simulacrum of his former self since yesterday. (Oooh… big word alert! :-)).

Officially Philippe is still a Tropical Storm, with estimated winds of 50mph and central pressure of 994mb. He is heading NE at 30mph, and is centered at around 35.3N, 46W. I think he is much weaker than that and has been since yesterday. Here is the latest Infra-red satellite image of him:

You can see that there is barely any convection left in this system, and the vorticity (circulation) is mostly connected to that front that I showed you a couple of days ago instead of being a stand-alone blob of vorticity, which is what we would expect to see in a tropical storm. Another indication that he’s no longer a tropical storm is that he is moving forward at 30mph. With very few exceptions, this fast forward speed indicates that other things are afoot (and aloft ;-)). This is my last entry on Philippe.

I’m sure most readers aren’t to bothered about Philippe now anyway… you all want to know what is developing in the Bahama/Florida region, don’t you? It’s been a magnificently breezy and cool day here in St. Petersburg (Florida), I must say. It reminds me of a lovely blustery day in the UK. :-)

I’ve been watching this blobette all day. This morning it did not have any vorticity (circulation) to speak of, however that is slowly slowly changing and it now has an itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny amount in the lowest level of the troposphere. This is not enough to make this into anything at the moment, but the trend is in the right direction and I’ll be watching this one (you might get more than one update from me tomorrow!). The center of this vorticity (circulation) is currently split into two connected areas – one is over the Bahamas, just north of Cuba, and the other is in the Gulf near southwest Florida/the Keys. It really is very much a blobette at the moment. The convection is also not very strong, and is also spread out over a large area, as you can see in this IR satellite image:

If the circulation continues to improve and it can pull itself together, we might have a little system off the east coast of Florida, which might head north towards Georgia (too soon to say because it’s not really developed). However, I agree with the NHC, it will be making things a bit windy and slightly wet even if it doesn’t develop into anything formal. The next name is Rina! Rina, really? >From that font of all knowledge, Google, Rina is a girl’s name variant of a bunch of other names and is not a name in and of itself. Anyone know a non-variant Rina? Have they used all the she-‘R’ names up already? Still, it’s easy to say and spell. :-)

Enjoy your Saturday! It’s wine-o-clock time where I am. :-) More tomorrow … assuming I haven’t got blown away! ;-)
Tally ho!
J.

Blogs archived at http://jyotikastorms.blogspot.com/
Twitter @JyovianStorm

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DISCLAIMER: These remarks are just what I think/see regarding tropical storms - not the opinion of any organization I represent. If you are making an evacuation decision, please heed your local emergency management and the National Hurricane Center's official forecast and the National Weather Service announcements. This is not an official forecast. If I "run away, run away" (Monty Python), I'll let you know.
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