Subtropical Storm Beryl: May 27, Update A

Subtropical Storm Beryl (actually Tropical Storm Beryl – I expect that change in the next advisory) is going to make land-fall today. She’s just off the north Florida/south Georgia coast, at around 30.1N, 79.6W. She is moving westward at 10mph. They sent a plane into the system this morning, and found that she was stronger than they expected, so they have increased her winds to 60mph (central pressure 998mb), which now makes her a mid-strength Tropical Storm (TS range: 39-73mph). I am not at all surprised by this increase. I still don’t think she will get to hurricane strength because although there is a bit of room for her to get stronger, she is already interacting with land which will keep her in check.  She is now moving over the Gulf Stream so her convection has increased a lot since yesterday as you can see in this visible satellite image:

If you are in northeast Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina, you can expect a breezy day and maybe some rain later (perfect late-May weather if you lived in the UK ;-)). If you are in other parts of Florida (like here in St. Petersburg), Georgia and the Carolinas you can expect some intermittent clouds and possible rain also because of Beryl – she’s like a spider… weak body but long arms! J

The NHC had a good handle on the track and have her forecast center of cone track going into the general Jacksonville area.  You can now see the center of Beryl on the Jacksonville radar: http://radar.weather.gov/ridge/radar.php?rid=JAX&product=N0Z&overlay=11101111&loop=yes. However it looks like the bulk of the winds and rain will be over Georgia.

Northeastern Florida and Georgia have already had a 2ft storm surge (on a side note, I bet the surfers have had a great time over the past few days!). To look at the storm surge I use NOAA’s National Ocean Service website, Tides Online, which is an excellent site (I really hope they don’t plan to make it ‘better’ – I’ll complain properly about a few changes that have been made to other sites during the off season at some point… Why do people do that? Sigh.): http://tidesonline.nos.noaa.gov/geographic.html. Click on the state you are interested in, and then the location within that state. For example, I clicked on Florida and then on Mayport:

The top graph shows the water level. In this graph, the red line is the actual observed sea level, the blue line is what the predicted water level would be because of the tides, and the green line is the difference between the two. The height of the green line gives you the storm surge level.  The graph below that is wind speed (still increasing at Mayport at this time) and direction. Below that is air pressure (which you can see is still dropping), and below that is air and sea surface temperature.

Finally for now, I just got my first on-the-ground report for this season! Yay! John is in Folkston, Ga, 50 miles NW of Jax. He says: “It's windy, about 30 mph, mostly cloudy.  No rain and some sun.  We can see the clouds moving counter clock wise.  More later with any change.” Thank you John! J

And as he said… more later!

Ciao for now,

J.

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

-------------------------------
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.
-------------------------------