Thursday, October 22, 2020

Hurricane Epsilon: October 21, Update A

Time for a quick update. It'll only take a zeptosecond... ok, maybe it'll take a wee bit longer than that. Continuing on this week's theme of amazing and wondrous sciency things... scientists measured the smallest interval of time ever - a zeptosecond! It is a trillionth of a billionth of a second!! And for those who like numbers that is 0.000 000 000 000 000 000 001 zs! To put that into a mind-boggling perspective... it takes 247 zeptoseconds for photon (a particle of light) to cross a single molecule of hydrogen! Imagine measuring anything to such precision!!! (yes, it's so cool it warrants multiple exclamation marks!).  Too bad we can't measure larger things, like, oh, hurricanes, so precisely yet. ;-)

Speaking of hurricanes... Hurricane Epsilon was indeed stronger yesterday and is now a major hurricane with winds of 115mph, central pressure of 953mb, which makes it a cat 3 storm (cat 3 range: 111 - 129mph). It is now at 30N, 60.6W, heading generally NW at 8mph (it just took a jog to the north since the last advisory). 


It will stay well to the east of Bermuda, although it'll be a bit breezy tomorrow/Friday - perhaps nice for a spot of kite-flying? The waves should be pretty strong though.  


Satellite imagery is showing a beautiful and strong eye - this may actually be closer to 130mph (cat 4) given how persistent that eye structure is. However, there is dry air which is inhibiting it from truly becoming as big as it would otherwise be - that along with relatively cool sea surface temperatures of just over 26 deg C (barely just enough to keep a storm going). 

You can see that the wind shear has died down in the vicinity of the storm, as expected and the storm clouds are in a pretty good looking circular pattern (to the far north the very very extremely distant outer bands are experiencing some wind shear as they stream off to the east). It looks like wind shear will remain very weak for the next day or so - at least until it gets a lot closer to Bermuda. 

In addition to wind shear, the other factor that makes this a robust storm is that the vorticity (circulation) is strong with this one throughout the troposphere - meaning that it has a very good structure. 

More tomorrow my peeps!

Ciao,

J.

Twitter:  jyovianstorm

--------------------------------------
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. 
--------------------------------------

No comments: