Watching Noel

There is a lot of intense interest out there in watching TS Noel to see if this disorganized system turns into a Hurricane when it hits the warmer waters of the Gulf Stream. Click on the image for an animated version.

Then, place your bets.

The image is from my company, IntelliWeather, and updates every half hour.

UPDATE: Noel did in fact become a hurricane, and now has 80 mph sustained winds, but it appears to be headed out to sea, and into cooler waters where it will likely dissipate.

from NHC advisory 22: …HURRICANE NOEL EXPECTED TO BECOME A LARGE AND POWERFUL EXTRATROPICAL STORM OVER THE OPEN ATLANTIC ON FRIDAY… NOEL IS MOVING TOWARD THE NORTH-NORTHEAST NEAR 20 MPH…32 KM/HR…AND THIS MOTION IS EXPECTED TO CONTINUE DURING THE NEXT 24 HOURS. ON THIS TRACK…NOEL WILL CONTINUE TO MOVE AWAY FROM THE BAHAMAS.

[Image of 3-day forecast, and coastal areas under a warning or a watch]

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Jeff
October 30, 2007 8:30 am

You know, I left the East Coast so I wouldn’t have to worry about these things any more 😉

Brian
October 30, 2007 9:25 am

I can’t wait for the 10 cat 5 hurricanes I’m sure the GW advocates are expecting this year. I guess this business of predicting weather is a lot harder than it looks.

M. Jeff
October 30, 2007 9:27 am

Off topic, but the post by Kenneth Fritsch, October 30th, 2007 at 9:14 am in the USHCN #3 thread at http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2201#comment-153967 gives an interesting opinion as to what is currently known as a result of station quality research.

papertiger
October 30, 2007 4:09 pm

I’ll put five dollars on “not”.

SteveSadlov
October 31, 2007 1:21 pm

Is it even a tropical cyclone at all?
Let me share my West Coast perspective. We get Tonapah (cut off) Lows that retrograde out over the semi tropical to tropical Pacific, then come back on shore as rain makers. We’ve had a few teasers this fall along these lines. None are ever named. Why are systems like this names in NATL? Sreiously. How can one justify different op defs in different basins regarding what even constitutes a “tropical cyclone?” I know this seems a bit over the top from the NATL perspective, force of habit and all that (e.g. the “home grown” storm idea). But it needs to be questioned if people are going to count storms as evidence of “something.”

Steven Mosher
October 31, 2007 1:43 pm

Anthony,
Have a look at the stuff I posted.
1. on CRN5 versus everything else.
2. MMTS versus LIG
Another thing for your readers. My analysis of the Sites visited versus the sites
NOT YET VISITED, indcates that there is some substantial warming in the 800 or so sites that we havent surveyed.

M. Jeff
November 1, 2007 8:34 am

Re: Steven Mosher (13:43:11). The Steven Mosher posts at climateaudit.org that follow the Kenneth Fritsch post mentioned above are important. Hopefully Fritsch or others will update their summaries as needed to incorporate the results of these new analyses.
Has the analysis of the “Sites visited versus the sites
NOT YET VISITED” been posted yet?

SteveSadlov
November 1, 2007 12:35 pm
Clayton B
November 1, 2007 5:41 pm

I have been in Central Dominican Republic since Tuesday on business.
Noel dumped alot of rain in a little time period here!

Evan Jones
Editor
November 2, 2007 2:14 pm

I hate to be a cold shower on the predictability thing. I hear all the time the argument that we can’t predict the weather 5 days from now, so how can we do so in 100 years?
Well, yeah, I do NOT believe we can predict the climate in 100 years. But I do not believe in the basis for this argument either.
It is September 17, 1944. After the huge gains of August, the whole line has stabilized. Monty has failed to clear the Scheldte. Patton is stalled before Metz. Market Graden is just underway.
No one can predict what the next 5 days of war will bring. (Horrible news for the allies on the Western Front, as it turns out!) But can one predict who will win the war?
You bet.
By 1944, the Germans were toast, and had been since at least the previous July, if not 6 months earlier. The outcome of, say, WWI, was undeterminable until near the very end. Yet Axis chances of winning WWII a year before its end were approaching zero. And that was fairly obvious to even the most hardbitten Victory Skeptics at the time.
Likewise, I can (and do) predict with a great degree reliability that when the next orbital eccentricity cycle clicks in the world will endure another ice age. But can I predict the weather in the next 5 days?
Therefore, it is quite clear to me that it is illogical to conflate inability to predict a given matter in the short term with either ability or inability to predict long-term. They are often unrelated intellectual problems.
This can even be true if the base factors are the same: If I toss 1000 “equal” coins, I can predict with reasonable reliability that roughly 500 or so will come up heads. (With a hat-tip to the base concept of oversampling.) But can I predict what the next 5 flips will yield? Not on your nellie!
We must abandon the 5-day Vs 100-year volitility argument. It doesn’t hold water. it doesn’t feed the bulldog. It is in fact a false argument.
I don’t care HOW effect propaganda it makes–to indulge thus is to bring the debate down to the level of the worst of our opponents, and will surely return to bite us in the ass–mark my words.
NO, I DO NOT think we can predict climate a century down the road! But that has nothing, nothing, NOTHING to do with our ability or inability to predict the weather 5 days ahead.