Tropical Storm Paulette, Tropical Storm Rene, and the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico Blobettes and Blob: September 10, Update A

Must be a Thursday.... Again. The art classes at the NHC continue - hmm, today the storms are in straight lines, I think it must be Cubism... 

Not much time to dilly dally today, alas (because it's Thursday of course). So, the two yellow blobs only have a 10% chance of development, so we'll postpone talking about those until tomorrow (and then we'll decide if they are worthy). 

The orange blobette is now Out of Africa and has a 60% chance of becoming something. It's generally moving westward. 

Tropical Storm Paulette

She's currently at 22.7N, 50.9W, heading NW at 10mph. She's taken that turn to the NW as expected after a more WNW track for most of today. 

The mid-level circulation has actually deteriorated since yesterday because of the wind shear, so she's not looking very circular at the moment and we continue to see clouds streaming off to the northeast... 

I think she's perhaps weakened a little today from that shear, although the NHC have increased her intensity from 60mph to 65 mph winds and central pressure is estimated to be 991mb. This makes her a strong Tropical Storm (TS range: 39-73mph). They don't anticipate any strengthening tomorrow. I think she may weaken a bit more tomorrow.

She'll continue to go through that area of wind shear tomorrow, but she is about to move over water that's 28-29 deg C, so that will keep her fed to some extent (with water over 26 deg C in the upper ~75-100m). She also has some dry air to the west and north of her, so that will work against her. 

Bermuda - best get ready for a hurricane just in case. Dust off the umbrellas, get the rum ready...

Tropical Storm Rene

He has strengthened a little today and is now still a weak TS with winds of 45mph, central pressure of 1002mb. I still think that they have underestimated this one, but not by much - you can see his vorticity (circulation) is stronger in the mid-levels of the troposphere than Paulette's: 

But there isn't anything in the upper levels, so he's definitely only a Tropical Storm. I'd say he would be a mid-level storm - somewhere around 50-55mph winds. But he'll get there one day, I'm sure. From the satellite vantage point, his convection is a little wishy washy (if one can say that about a rain event :-)) so he isn't a strong storm by any means. 

He's currently at 19.3N, 37.6W, heading WNW at 12mph. 

And with that, I'm off to have a short nap before Friday shows up (oh, it just turned midnight... too late :-)). 

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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