A scientifically predictable sort of day today. Another positive case from the Supreme Spreader event (coined by The Hubby) in DC right on target and according to the laws of biology, and Hurricane Delta intensified in the Caribbean, right on target and according to the laws of physics. Science is great! (now if only it was as easily applicable to predicting the winning lottery numbers... ;-)).
He's at 19.5N, 85.1W heading WNW at 16mph and currently looks like a northern Gulf landfall on Friday evening...
As usual, I will defer to the NHC on the track as they have much better information than I do.
His winds are 130mph, central pressure is 960mb, which means he's officially a cat 4 storm - although barely as the cat 4 range is 130-156mph. As I said yesterday, there isn't much that was going to keep him from intensifying, however I think they have over-estimated his intensity. He has a tremendous amount of convection because he is over some extremely deep warm water where the upper 100-125m is warmer than 26 deg C, which means that as he churns he has more warm water underneath to feed him:
He's also in an area of low wind shear, which is why he is not too bad looking for a storm... but I don't see a very well defined eye, which I would expect to see in a cat 3 or higher storm:
There was an eye in the infrared imagery earlier (see below), so I can see that he may have reached the lofty heights of a cat 3 storm briefly (although they said he was a cat 4 - I don't see it in the satellite imagery), but I would say he's in the cat 2/3 range now (somewhere around 110mph) at the most as the eye is not very robust, but there is something there...
The circulation today is better than it was yesterday - definitely the vorticity signature of a hurricane throughout the troposphere.
He may get a little stronger again as he gets closer to the Yucatan because the warm water gets deeper again (as you can see from the map of the depths of the 26 deg C isotherm), but he is also getting closer to a little higher wind shear and starting to interact with land, so it may be enough to cancel that out.
Regardless, he'll be at least a cat 2 hurricane I think on landfall in Mexico tomorrow (and the NHC are thinking he'll still be a cat 4 - but they thought he'd be almost a cat 5 by now and that he is not). This area of Mexico just got many buckets of rain from TS Gamma, so I'm sure it's a soppy mess there and I don't expect his transition will create too much of a dent and he'll still be a hurricane as he emerges back into the Gulf tomorrow evening, just not a major one in my humble opinion.
Beyond that, I'll see tomorrow. The NHC have him as a major hurricane (cat 3 or higher) from now all the way to landfall in the northern Gulf coast. I would get ready for that, but let's see what his transition across the peninsula does tomorrow first.
Must run but I'll be back tomorrow.
Toodle pip!
J.
Twitter: jyovianstorm
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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