Up the East Coast or Down Our Throats, Don’t You Wish You Knew For Sure?
Joy. Rapture. Here is what Jeff Masters on Weather Underground has to say about Tropical Storm Fay:
South Carolina? New Orleans? Where will Fay go next?
The computer models continue to show an unusual amount of disagreement about the longer term path of Fay. The official NHC forecast follows the GFDL and HWRF models, which takes Fay northwards through the Florida Peninsula. However, the latest runs of these models now predict Fay will emerge off the east coast of Florida, restrengthen a bit to a 60-70 mph tropical storm, then make landfall Wednesday along the Georgia/South Carolina coast. This solution assumes that the trough of low pressure turning Fay northward will be strong and enough and be moving slow enough to pull Fay all the way northwards into the U.S.A weaker trough is predicted by the rest of the models, which foresee that Fay will stall over central Florida or the adjacent Atlantic Ocean on Wednesday. A ridge of high pressure will then build in, forcing Fay westward across the northern Gulf of Mexico. A second landfall in the Florida Panhandle or in Louisiana near New Orleans is then a possibility. Since more and more of the models are trending this way, I believe this solution has an equal chance of being correct. “The Joker” may be around to trouble us for another full week or longer.
This is only a smattering of the coverage, including more of Masters’ commentary located here. [Hat tip to SophMom]
Damn.
-Loki, HumidCity Founder
August 18th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Jeff Masters is the guy to listen to. He doesn’t jump to conclusions, sound fase alarms, or bullshit. He ways all the options and presents the whole picture.
So yeah, this is worrisome.
August 19th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Joker still a wild card. So sez Jeff Masters:
Where will Fay go next?
The computer models continue to disagree on the long-term path of Fay. Most of the models now agree that the trough of low pressure pulling the storm to the north will not be strong enough to finish the job. Fay will probably be left behind by the trough, and forced westward by a ridge of high pressure expected to build in. The official NHC forecast keeps Fay over Florida and turns the storm to the west over southern Georgia. However, most of the models expect this turn to occur further south, and have been trending further south in recent runs. I give Fay a 60% chance surviving its traverse over Florida, then turning back to the west over the northern Gulf of Mexico by Saturday. This would allow the storm to regenerate, before potentially making landfall again along the northern Gulf Coast between New Orleans and the Florida Panhandle early next week. The GFDL has the rather unnerving solution of pushing Fay out into the Atlantic Wednesday, intensifying it to a strong Category 2 hurricane that then hits the Georgia/Florida border region Friday night. The HWRF is similar, but foresees that Fay will only be a 50-55 mph tropical storm when it hits Georgia. Given the rather high levels of wind shear (15-20 knots) predicted to be over Fay late this week, plus Fay’s recent inability to build an eyewall in the 24 hours it had over the Florida Straits, I am discounting the GFDL model’s solution of a hurricane hitting Georgia. However, Fay may push out to into the Atlantic far enough to regenerate some on Thursday or Friday, before it is forced back west again over northern Florida or southern Georgia.