Busy day today all over the place! Well, maybe not in Florida, but everywhere else I'm sure. ;-) Ok ok, I know you have been very busy over yonder, preparing today, boarding up, and getting supplies so you are well stocked up (or have evacuated)... but hands up, who's also been doing this...
(Image Credit: unknown from the internet, but The Simpsons are great!)
Hurricane Idalia
She is currently at 27.4N, 84.6 W heading N at a very fast 18mph. She is on track to make landfall in the Florida Big Bend area tomorrow morning at around 8 or 9am.
She is tracking slightly west of the official center but still towards Apalachee Bay (luckily not a very populated area, except by wildlife) and within that cone. Although the track shows that she will cross S. Carolina and southern N. Carolina and enter the Atlantic, that far end is because I think the models are picking up Franklin... however, as Franklin will be moving northwards, I think that track may straighten out a bit so she may be over N. Carolina a little more than is currently shown - she may cross some of the outer banks before heading into the Atlantic.
For those of you on the east side of the storm in Florida, you will experience storm surge as I mentioned yesterday - and there's a SuperMoon tomorrow, which means that your normal High Tide will be higher than normal as well! ever wondered how you can find out the storm surge in your area? Well, today's your lucky day...
<Technical Alert!> How to look up Storm Surge: Go to NOAA's website, tidesandcurrents (https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/).
If you click on this link, you will see an ugly cartoonish bad-suntan coloured map of the US (in shades of orange to represent the land - which, with the heat waves of recent times may just be the colour of land anyway these days!). Click on the state that you are interested in e.g. Florida. This will show you a much nicer colour map with a bunch of pins. These are the general locations of the stations monitoring the water levels along the coast. You can either locate the nearest station by entering the area you are interested in, or click on the station nearest to the location of interest, which will zoom into the map. So by clicking on the icon over Tampa Bay (which has the number 17), the stations along the south west coast of Florida come into focus.
Now clicking on the specific station of interest, and in the lower left is a button that says 'plot'. Click that on and it will show you a plot of the expected water level (in red) and the actual measured water level (in blue). Just watch out though (if you are on a Mac especially) because the map is not static so you can accidentally scroll around and end up in the middle of the Atlantic, and then will have to zoom out until the map you want re-appears and then zoom back in.
Here is the plot from Ft. Myers for example:
You can see that the actual water level in red has been higher than the predicted levels since yesterday and that gap is widening as the storm is passing by offshore. By scrolling your mouse over the plot, the numbers appear showing the actual values (and then you have to do some complicated maths to get to the difference between the two). In this case, you can see that the water levels currently about 1.5-2 ft above normal.
Moving a little father up the coast to St. Petersburg, the water level is also about 2ft above normal
If you want to see the corresponding winds, air pressure and other handy-dandy data, you can scroll down. So here, for example, is the pressure field which is decreasing as the storm gets closer.
And the winds: which are given in knots (1 knot = 1.15 mph) which means the winds here are approaching 20mph.
<End Technical Alert!>
She is definitely a hurricane. In addition to having strong circulation at all levels of the troposphere, she has a good looking eye now:
But clearly the rain bands are already over the peninsula and reaching Georgia. Winds are 110mph, central pressure 960mb, which makes her a strong cat 2 storm/borderline cat 3 (Cat 2 range: 96-110mph).
As for her intensity over the next few hours - there are glimmers that she may not grow into the very strong cat 3 (125mph is the forecast!) that is currently forecast (although she will definitely be a hurricane at landfall) because:
1. it does look like the wind shear is increasing in front of her so hopefully that will at least stop her from growing - and we can see that because the bands are streaming off to the northeast.
2. the dry air to her west is also inhibiting her a little - we can see that from the ragged looking outer bands to the west side and the drier part to the south.
3. she is now moving over water where only the upper 50m or so is warmer than 26 deg... although she is moving quickly, so she may not churn up as much cooler water as one would hope so this may not be as big of an effect.
Stay safe out there! Don't jump around in puddles after the storm has gone until you are sure there are no downed power lines. Good luck!
Hurricane Franklin
Meanwhile, in the Atlantic, not too much has changed. Franklin is still a major cat 3 hurricane with winds of 125mph, central pressure 947 mb (cat 3 range: 111 - 129mph). He is at 31.9N, 69.4W, heading NE at 12mph:
And my, what a big eye he has! You could fit 10 Bermuda's into that eye!
Although he looks huge, his convection isn't as bad as it could be and he is going to pass by Bermuda tomorrow with only the outer bands passing overhead. I do believe surf's up there - and along the US Eastern Seaboard!
That's all for today. I know there's another blobette out there (Tropical Depression 11) but I'm ignoring her for now.
Toodle pip!
J. --------------------------------------
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.
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