Hurricane Gonzalo: October 13, Update A

So I woke up this morning and was a little miffed to see that this system was still considered to officially be a weak Tropical Storm with winds of 45mph:

Luckily for us (and the people that were already under/in the path of this storm!), hurricane hunter planes have been in the system all day and returned data to say that the storm was stronger than the official word/forecast. What would we do without them?! The NHC have been steadily increasing the intensity to hurricane strength over the past day and it now has winds of 85mph, central pressure of 984mb.

I'm not surprised with this increase in intensity. He already looked a little stronger than 45mph when I wrote last, and as I said then, the only thing that would keep Gonzalo from getting out of order would be his interactions with the islands - everything else was in favour (with a 'u' ;-)) of a little more intensification. Throughout the day I had a look at the vorticity maps (ok, I know it's been months since you read about these - not my fault it's been a gloriously quiet season :-) - see here for the <Science Alert!> on Vorticity Maps: http://jyotikastorms.blogspot.com/2014/08/hurricane-bertha-august-4-update-a.html). He has really good circulation in the lower half of the troposphere, and some circulation in the upper troposphere - enough to be a cat 1 hurricane, but no more. It looks like he is heading into an area of stronger wind shear, so even though the water temperatures are warm, I would not expect him to get much stronger than a cat 1 storm.

He is currently centered at 18.7N, 63.4W, heading NW at a regal 12mph. He passed just north of St. Maarten and his eye went directly over the island of Anguilla. He has quite a lot of convection - rain and thundery weather:

I heard from my great on-the-ground reporter, Tom on St. Thomas throughout the day (thank you for the updates Tom!!), who said they needed the rain and started the day expecting the storm to pass directly over them. It passed to their east, however they did lose power for a few hours. It's back (last I heard... and he needed a well earned drink! ;-)).

Once Gonzalo clears the islands, it looks like it's heading for Bermuda, which obviously needs another storm a week after a direct hit from the last one!

I have a pretty strong sneaky suspicion (ooh, alliteration!) that this track will shift to the west. But of course, Bermuda better get ready and stock up on the barrels of rum just in case.

 

Now a quick word about Fay... she fizzled out over the Atlantic. Done. Counting fishes would tire anyone!

 

That's all for today folks.

Night night!
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.
-----------------------------