Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Tropical Storm Ian: September 12, Update A

Tropical Storm Ian?? Ian? Really? I know a bunch of Ians and they are truly lovely chaps. Nothing as wishy-washy as a Tropical Storm! ;-) 

Nevertheless, Tropical Storm Ian is out there. He's been a blob for a few days and was upgraded to a Tropical Storm today. He is currently at 23.5N, 51.5W, heading NNW at 13mph. He is not a strong storm with winds of only 45mph (TS range: 39-73mph) and an estimated central pressure of 1005mb.

I would agree that he is a weak storm. The vorticity (circulation) is pretty good in the very lowest levels of the troposphere, but in the middle troposphere it is not very well developed, and there is nothing in the upper troposphere - although up there it looks like he will move under an area of higher vorticity that is more like a stormy front than a tropical storm.  

The satellite images are also not too impressive because he is under some pretty strong wind shear:

His entire convective activity is northeast of his center of circulation, and it is decreasing. It looks like he is moving into even stronger wind shear, so I don't know how strong he will be after another day. 

I think he is going to slow down and may actually stall for a short while. This is pretty much in keeping with the NHC official track, which shows that he is going to slow down any second now.  Ian is the Scottish version of the name 'John'.... so it's sort of fitting that he would ultimately be trying to get back to the Scotland area I suppose...
Let's see how he does after a day of wind shear first though. 

In other news... Happy Anniversary to ME! (ok, and to You :-)). I started this blog 10 years and 2 days ago and I think that calls for a celebratory toast of the liquid variety kind (not the burnt bread spread with marmalade kind - unless you are reading this over breakfast, in which case... don't burn the toast! ;-)). The inaugural entry talks about Hurricane Florence and a 6.0 magnitude earthquake in the Gulf of Mexico that happened earlier that day... might as well start with a bang, hey? ;-) 10 years, 746 posts and 120,756 website views later!! A Gaggle of History and Bunches of Storms! Not what I expected 10 years ago... so, thank you for reading, sending me reports from the ground and random funny things to share, for telling your family, friends, neighbours, pets and garden plants about this, and really making this what it is! Summing up the last 10 years in my own eloquent words: Crikey! 

Toodle Pip!
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.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Congratulations! Brilliant!