Sep 30, 2011

DAY 122

Hurricane Ophelia has defied her forecast and decided to become a major hurricane. At 956 mb with maximum sustained winds of 120 mph, she is our 3rd major hurricane of the season. And she's not showing any signs of slowing down yet either. 

(Hurricane Ophelia)
Ophelia is a very nice looking cane. Her eye is not clear, but it is maintaining a perfect circle now. The main ring of thunderstorms that create her eye-wall are thick and tall all the way around. A little further out on her west side, you can see that some of the the thunderstorms out there are encountering some dry air and collapsing before they can be of full benefit to Ophelia's strength. But none of that dry air has been able to penetrate the eye-wall today.

(Hurricane Ophelia)

The National Hurricane Center has not changed their track except for the 5th day. They have now moved her away from Newfoundland. They did adjust their intensity forecast to keep Ophelia as a major hurricane for another day. They are only giving her a 5% chance of becoming a Cat 4 over the next 24 hours. But we all know that Ophelia is a storm that does whatever she wants, and she's
 only 11 mph from Cat 4 status. I don't think she will defy her track forecast though, and make a surprise visit to Bermuda. As Ophelia passes to the east of the island, they will get brushed by that western edge of Ophelia. Which is the side that is being effected by dry air. The NHC is giving a Bermuda a less than 50% chance of receiving tropical storm force winds and a near 0% chance of hurricane force winds.



Tropical Storm Philippe is holding his own out there. He looks much better than he did yesterday. Despite some strong northwesterly shear, Philippe is staying together and creating quite a bit of convection. He is forecast to move northwest into a batch of even higher shear, so his chances of become a hurricane in the next 5 days are extremely low. Philippe's eventual turn to the north is become more evident tonight. Then NHC is forecasting that turn to begin on Tuesday. He may then have a slight chance of regaining strength like all the other storms did when they turned north.


(Tropical Storm Philippe)
The first real cold front of the season is about to stretch its way down the Florida Peninsula tonight. That is usually the horn signally the last month for tropical development. Even though November is part of the hurricane season, storms that develop in that month are usually weak and uninteresting. October is usually an interesting month because we get development in the Caribbean. We've even had the strongest hurricane ever recorded occur in the month of October. With instability forecast to return soon, this October is likely to be an active one. It's gonna be tough to get through the rest of the alphabet though. We would have to get 5 storms for that to happen. 5 or more storms have formed in the month of October only 4 times since 1950. (1990,2000,2005,2010)

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