Hurricane Jose: September 12, Update A

The name 'Irma' will definitely be retired this year as well (like Harvey) and replaced by another woman's name beginning with 'I'... but I couldn't find one amongst the Game of Thrones characters. Any suggestions?

Hurricane Jose

He is officially clinging on as a very weak cat 1 hurricane with 75 mph winds, central pressure of 985mb (cat 1 range: 74-95mph). I’ll give them this one though because there is circulation throughout the troposphere, including in the upper troposphere, which does indicate a pretty good structure and a hurricane structure at that. There is some wind shear which you can see in his infrared satellite imagery as the clouds are streaming off to the northeast: 

But because he has a good structure, he is a big beastie and despite the wind shear, he is covering a large area with a lot of thunderstorms and torrential rain.

He is still on his little loop-a-rama in the Atlantic and is at 26.5N, 66.4W and now heading SE at 9mph. He is scheduled to complete this little swirl on Thursday/Friday and then will start to head generally northward:

The question is where will he go from there? I saw a bit of concern today that the 'European model' (which everyone considers to be the best one at the moment) is showing a track to Florida, but most other models take him north. It may be a surprise to some but Europe, being a large geographical area with quite a few people in it, has more than one model! ;-) The 'European model' going to Florida is the UKMET model (currently the outlier) and although it is generally very good, the one that is being referred to as 'the best European model' these days is the ECMWF (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts) model. I can understand the confusion because they are both run out of different locations in the UK, which is in Europe (for now, anyway ;-)). The ECMWF is showing a northward turn, so I would go with the NHC overall track which takes all the model forecasts into proper consideration (and don't focus on the center - the entire cone is up for grabs).  

Dear Bermuda, as we discussed a few days ago (well, some of us did), it is looking more and more like he wants to visit you on Sunday. They think he will be a Tropical Storm by then because of wind shear. There is certainly some hefty shear between him and Bermuda at the moment, so I can see this is quite likely. But please can you make sure the ice trays are full – I think there may be some Dark & Stormy beverages in our future. 

I have a few travel days ahead but will check in when I can. 

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.