Hurricane Irma and "Hashtag": September 1, Update A

I’m still on the Planet of Dragon Con, where I have seen Time Lords chatting with the Kings of Westeros, Silent Bobs standing against walls watching the Klingons, elves, hobbits, and dwarfs go by, and Cinderellas having their photo taken with The Guardians of the Galaxy. J  

Hurricane Irma

Well she’s still out there, so that part hasn’t changed. Ho hum.

She is currently at 19.1N, 40.5W, heading W at 14mph. Her track is still projected to take her on a slight southward turn before she turns back to the northwest again…

She took a more northerly route than they were expecting, so the entire cone has shifted slightly northwards. Alas, the data I have access to isn’t very good over the ocean and so I don’t have the best pressure field data and will have to rely on the NHC for that just like everyone else.

She was downgraded to a cat 2 (cat 2 range: 96-110 mph) earlier today, but is back to officially being a weak cat 3 with winds of 115mph (cat 3 range: 111-129 mph). Central pressure is estimated to be 967mb. I would have actually agreed with the NHC on this oscillation between cat 2/3 earlier today given that her eye has been between being a little bleary-eyed and then crystal clear (stronger storm) throughout the day. However, over the last few hours it looks like she has weakened further and no longer has an eye, which suggests to me that she is a weak-to-mid strength cat 1 hurricane (I would still say she was a hurricane because she still has a vorticity signal in the upper troposphere), so I would put her winds at around 75-90 mph:

There isn’t too much to talk of regarding wind shear however she is moving over slightly warm ocean water which would be enough to sustain her (but not make her grow too quickly). But a bigger influencer than that I think is that she is also running into the last bastion of dry and dusty Saharan Air Layer between her and the western Atlantic (see the Technical Alert in here for an explanation of the SAL):

This should really take her down a notch or two and so I am not too surprised that she has weakened and will continue to weaken in the next few hours until she gets through this layer. This is not what the NHC are thinking at the moment – they think she will steadily get stronger from the 115mph, and in about 24 hours will have a wind speed of around 120mph. We'll see what happens... but the satellites are showing a weaker storm, as are the vorticity (circulation) maps. 

That’s it for Irma for today... but as they say in Monty Python: And Now for Something Completely Different. :-) 

I want to share what I do in my spare spare time (apparently I have some) when I’m not talking about storms, eating ice cream, drinking wine, eating cheese, having a cup of tea, or working… now that I live in LA, I am, of course, in the movies! Fortunately for all your sakes, I am not in front of the camera (phew)!! But I am the producer of a film called Hashtag - set in the near future, this is a thought provoking short science fiction drama that examines a future where social media dominates our lives and the ultimate top-line celebrity finds out the true cost of her popularity. I’m thrilled to say that this is a milestone moment for us because tomorrow we have our first panel and will also premiere the trailer! (which will be available for public consumption on Sunday – I’ll share it with you if you are all good ;-)). If you are at Dragon Con, please join us tomorrow (Sat) at 7pm, in the Hyatt International Ballroom North! J

 I’ll be back tomorrow post-panel for Irma of course!

Toodle pip!

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.