Tropical Storm Nicole: October 10, Update A

Super quick update on Tropical Storm Nicole, who is still a Tropical Storm.

She is officially at 26.8N, 65.5W and has picked up speed (as in forward motion, not the street drug!! ;-)) and is moving northward at gentle 6mph now. Her general forecast track strategy is to aim for Bermuda...

... haven't I already told you guys to turn off that Hurricane-magnet device?

We are looking at her passing over Bermuda overnight on Wednesday (her track forecast sped up since yesterday) - 2 days away and the current intensity forecast is that she will be a hurricane. At the moment her winds are slight weaker than 24 hours ago, at 60mph, and her central pressure is 992mb. This makes her a mid-sized Tropical Storm (range: 39-73mph). 

Her vorticity (circulation) is still good in the lower half of the troposphere, but the upper tropospheric circulation is still connected to a front and is not that circular pattern we expect from a tropical system. Here is the vorticity at 200mb for Nicole now, and below that is the vorticity at 200mb for Matthew from a few days ago as an example of what a hurricane should look like that high up... 

See the nice confined circular-ish pattern that is Matthew, the Hurricane? 

The satellite imagery shows that she is still struggling with wind shear, with most of the convection still streaming out over a large area to the south and east of her center of circulation:

(She's the yellow/blue blobette in more-or-less the middle of the image above).

It does look like wind shear is diminishing, so that should change soon, although she still has that dry air I mentioned yesterday to her north to deal with:

We'll know in a few hours whether the dry air is a larger player than the wind shear - if her convection doesn't close around her center of circulation, then the dry air wins... if it does, then the wind shear was a bigger factor. 

Must run but more tomorrow. Get ready with the dark'n'stormies (yum yum) Bermuda!
Ciao,
J.

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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.