September 21, Update A: Hurricane Fiona and Tropical Storm Gaston

Travel day today so not too much time to chat, however the fun thing about being in a new place is that you never know when you will find an ice cream store as you walk to the hotel. :-) But I digress...

Hurricane Fiona

Fiona is at 26.6N, 71.2 W, heading N at 10mph. Her outer bands have reached Bermuda, but her center is still on a track that means she will pass to the west of the island tomorrow on her way to Canada:

However, there will still be some rather wet weather over the next few days as she moves by:

Officially she is now a borderline cat 3/cat 4 storm with winds of 130mph (cat 4 range: 130 - 156mph), central pressure 934mb. I think she's more in the strong cat 3 arena than cat 4 - the convection is definitely less than that of a cat 4 and we can continue to see that drier air coming in from the west. Also, although there is circulation through the entire troposphere it looks like a little wind shear has offset the upper level circulation from the middle level so the overall structure is a bit weaker. I would put her as a cat 3 storm with winds somewhere around 120 - 125mph - still a major storm of course. Be safe on Bermuda - hope you have your dark and stormy ingredients ready! 

Tropical Storm Gaston

He is at 39.6N, 38.0W, heading ENE at 17mph. He is still planning a quick weekend away in the Azores... 

He's a mid-sized Tropical Storm with winds of 65mph, central pressure of 1000mb. There is very little convection so it'll be cloudy, rather breezy, with a few drops of rain over there...

And that's about it from me on this one. 

You may have noticed that they found the crayons at the NHC this week... 

There hasn't been much change in the Atlantic blobette (the red cross) since yesterday, and the others aren't much to talk about at the moment so I'll save those for a rainy day on Bermuda (or in the Azores) and in the meantime, I'll keep an eye out for surprising ice cream shops popping up when you least expect them. ;-) 

Toodles, 

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 local weather service announcements. This is not an official forecast. If I "run away, run away" (Monty Python), I'll let you know.