Hurricane Douglas and the Atlantic Blob: July 26, Update A

Anyone else go to free virtual Comic Con online this weekend? :-) 

(Image from 'A Damn Fine Cup of Culture' blog, who may have got it from IMDB)

Hurricane Douglas

He has weakened a little to a mid-sized cat 1 storm with winds of 85mph, central pressure of 989mb. This seems about right to me. He still has quite a lot of convection, which we can see from the satellite imagery:

This is because he is over warm water. Although he is slowly weakening, it looks like the islands got a lot of rain and perhaps some strong thundery weather today. In addition to the convection, he still has some circulation throughout the troposphere, but it's much weaker in the upper troposphere now compared to a few days ago which backs up his cat 1 status. 

He's at 22N, 157.3W, heading WNW at 16mph and he'll continue moving past the island chain tomorrow before heading west:

Stay safe out there!

Atlantic Blob

Our Atlantic Blob now officially has a 80% chance of developing according to the NHC. I would say that he is currently somewhere around 11N, 38W, heading WNW at 15-20mph. You can see him as a large mass of disjointed clouds swirling in the Atlantic:

He has some circulation in the lower half of the troposphere, but it isn't very well developed at the moment and he certainly doesn't have a lot of convection - especially on his northern side: 

The lack of convection is because he's having a lovely chat with the Saharan Air Layer over a nice cup of tea:

They may name him tomorrow, but until he finished his jaffa cakes (with his tea of course) and moves along, he'll be restricted in growing - just like we saw with Gonzalo. 

At the moment, I think he'll continue on his generally westward track, maybe heading due W or a little southward. If he heads a little southward, he'll have a chance of getting stronger, but if he continues W or WNW, then the SAL between him and the Caribbean will play into keeping him weak. 

That's it for this weekend. 

Toodle pip, 

J. 

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. 
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