Stability for Dean; Another one's coming
I missed a day on reporting Dean and other tropical weather. Something decisive happened on 2007 August 16 06Z, or about 6 days before the storm strikes. After the 00Z run showed a Type 2 Rita strike, all of the strikes of this system are in northern Mexico and southernmost Texas, or perhaps farther south. Further, the other models all point to this as well. Further, the storm has transmogrified from Invest 90L to Tropical Depression 4 to Tropical Storm Dean to its present appellation, Hurricane Dean, with 100 mph winds. It is expected to reach Category 4 by early next week, enough to cause a disaster somewhere. I think it may have minimal impact on Gulf oil rigs and refineries, unless it turns unexpectedly north.
Dean's GFS string is now
174979932645100000168651220000000
Why GFS went haywire and reported the 16865122, I have no idea.
But yet there's another one coming. The GFS has now been consistently showing a storm to strike the US or Mexico on or about September 1. The latest run of this has it missing Hatteras and heading to the Canadian maritimes. Past runs of this storm have come perilously close to the Hatteras coast. Since yesterday's 00Z run, the GFS string of this storm, which has no official name since it does not exist yet, is
56966548
To me there are too many 6s in the string, and the average value of the strike is 6. Does this mean we have a hurricane coming up the Carolinas or Virginia on September 1? Perhaps, but look at Dean's string. It went all over the place at first before settling on a Type 0 run. GFS forecasts are apt to go kerphluey until they are about 6 days before the event. Even then, they can goof; Ernesto last year was supposed to strike the Gulf about 4-5 days before landfall, but instead it came up Florida to Virginia.
In the meantime there is some mean weather going on right now in central Virginia. After the temperature hit 100 degrees today, a cold front produced a line of showers pushing through the Richmond area. The storms were severe. A check of area police reports at 8 pm showed trees down and traffic light malfunctions all over the place, and Virginia Power reported 33,000 customers without electricity. A check of Google weather stations revealed winds up to 29 mph, but in places the wind must have been 50 mph or greater to have knocked down all those trees, one of which piled onto two lanes of I-95 without causing a single red warning blip on the web edition of Virginia 511. Further, with trees down all over the place and power outages galore, WWBT-TV's web site had the gall to say that the top story right now is President Bush's daughters upcoming wedding. Another case of celebrity culture, this time under the purview of one of the worst Presidents in US history, and a case of gross misplacement of priorities.
Dean's GFS string is now
174979932645100000168651220000000
Why GFS went haywire and reported the 16865122, I have no idea.
But yet there's another one coming. The GFS has now been consistently showing a storm to strike the US or Mexico on or about September 1. The latest run of this has it missing Hatteras and heading to the Canadian maritimes. Past runs of this storm have come perilously close to the Hatteras coast. Since yesterday's 00Z run, the GFS string of this storm, which has no official name since it does not exist yet, is
56966548
To me there are too many 6s in the string, and the average value of the strike is 6. Does this mean we have a hurricane coming up the Carolinas or Virginia on September 1? Perhaps, but look at Dean's string. It went all over the place at first before settling on a Type 0 run. GFS forecasts are apt to go kerphluey until they are about 6 days before the event. Even then, they can goof; Ernesto last year was supposed to strike the Gulf about 4-5 days before landfall, but instead it came up Florida to Virginia.
In the meantime there is some mean weather going on right now in central Virginia. After the temperature hit 100 degrees today, a cold front produced a line of showers pushing through the Richmond area. The storms were severe. A check of area police reports at 8 pm showed trees down and traffic light malfunctions all over the place, and Virginia Power reported 33,000 customers without electricity. A check of Google weather stations revealed winds up to 29 mph, but in places the wind must have been 50 mph or greater to have knocked down all those trees, one of which piled onto two lanes of I-95 without causing a single red warning blip on the web edition of Virginia 511. Further, with trees down all over the place and power outages galore, WWBT-TV's web site had the gall to say that the top story right now is President Bush's daughters upcoming wedding. Another case of celebrity culture, this time under the purview of one of the worst Presidents in US history, and a case of gross misplacement of priorities.
posted by Jim at 6:40 PM
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