Friday, September 14, 2012

Tropical Storm Nadine: September 13, Update A

September 13, 1999… anyone know what happened? (Big Clue: fictional). Answer at the end. J

Tropical Storm Nadine has, apparently (said with sarcasm), had consistent winds of 70mph (central pressure now estimated to be 989mb) for over 24 hours which means she’s officially still a Tropical Storm by a difference of 4 mph (cat 1 range: 74-95mph). Seems a little (British understatement) unlikely to me that she’s not a hurricane… the circulation is good throughout the troposphere and the structure of the storm has improved - you can see the good outflow in all directions (except east) in this satellite image (remember divergence and ‘outflow’… those jagged clouds that surround a storm?):

Convection is really strong in the center and has grown in areal extent since yesterday. Has someone somewhere forgotten that weak cat 1 hurricanes do not necessarily have a clear eye? (I think this is what they are waiting for). This year I (and others) have noticed that the NHC have consistently underestimated the intensity of a storm until they get data from a plane (I think I commented on this earlier in the season as well). I am not sure if they are sending a plane into Nadine, but I would say she is a weak cat 1 hurricane at the moment!

Oh, and the reason why the clouds are a bit squiggly (‘technical term’ ;-)) to the east are because of the wind shear I mentioned yesterday. The wind shear will get stronger so she shouldn’t really get very intense – and if they don’t upgrade soon, she may not officially become a hurricane at all!

But at least we still agree on location and direction… at the last advisory she was at 25N, 53.7W, heading NNW at 15mph. The forecast track still has her heading north at around this longitude. It’s difficult to tell from the satellite images because it’s night now but, as I said yesterday, I think she may go a little further west before turning fully north. Regardless of point of turn, she will be east of Bermuda.

Answer to my question: September 13, 1999 was the fictional date that the Moon was knocked out of Earth’s orbit in Space 1999. It was a fabulous British sci-fi TV series that I used to watch as a kid. I just never figured out one thing (the rest of it made perfect sense of course)…  regardless of how many spacecraft (Eagle) were destroyed, they seemed to have an endless supply of them stashed away (surely the Moon could only have had a finite storage area and supply of materials)… to this day it remains one of the great unsolved mysteries of the universe. ;-)

Ciao for now,
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 the National 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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