Hurricane Earl strengthening

Best of luck & my sympathies to Puerto Rico. Been there (and I’m not speaking of the tourist catch basins, one of which is found at San Juan) and they’ll be on quite a wild ride for the next day or so.
Now that Danielle has scooted out of the way, Earl’s turned into quite the bad boy. Meanwhile, the area of disturbed weather following fast on Earl’s heels has been found to have tropical storm force winds. TS Fiona might just emerge directly without first becoming a TD, maybe by 5 PM EDT. And as for Danielle, it looks like its track will be most interesting; after veering just before hitting Bermuda, it looks like it’ll veer again before smacking Ireland and turn its attentions to Greenland by the weekend.

There’s a huge batch of dry air off the east coast right now as seen in the water vapor loops. If it gets to land, and that’s a big if, it will probably be a shell of it’s former self.

Good point, Mike.
Here’s a loop showing the dry air you were talking about. It will be interesting to see if this helps to defy all the model forecasts for continued strengthening.
I hope you are right, and the dry air brings the bastard to his knees.
http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/east/nwatl/flash-wv.html
Because right now, the storm is as strong as Hugo, Cat 4, 135 MPH winds.
Chris
Nervous in Norfolk, VA, USA

La Nina = Small (er) storms moving up the East Coast.
Well, at least it’s not a Category 5.
… Why does the La Nina rule work so often ? ? ?

The forecast track keeps getting inched farther and farther west. If the trof is slow, then it may not get there in time to turn the storm. Several models also indicate an increase in intensity to Cat 5. Should at least be a close call for portions of the US East Coast. See satellite loops, spaghetti models, etc. here: http://wp.me/pduTk-2Vf

…and let me add, that radar from St. Maarten, and the 85-GHz microwave imagery available elsewhere makes me wonder if an eyewall replacement cycle is about to start.

http://www.wunderground.com/tropical/tracking/at201007_radar.html#a_topad
OK….dry air or eyewall replacement as Scott has said.
UGH.
Keep this bastard offshore, please.
Chris

Scott says:
August 30, 2010 at 8:14 pm
Re: Water vapor. Keep in mind WV imagery from the GOES Imager shows mid-tropospheric water vapor and that the atmosphere could be quite moist in low levels. Total Precipitable water from microwave sensors (http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/tropic/real-time/tpw2/natl/main.html) doesn’t paint quite so dry an atmosphere in advance of Earl.
_____________________Reply;
From Tallblokes pages:
Richard Holle says:
August 30, 2010 at 1:26 pm
“”Been watching the decay of Danielle as she ingested that large mass of cool, dry, deionized air, and she was just gutted, stopped the rapid precipitation trend dead.
http://img842.imageshack.us/img842/138/36170009.gif
I think this might be a mass of recharge effects from the earth passing Neptune, and Mercury getting ready to pass the earth, shifting the [HPGP] “homopolar generator potential” charge from pole to equator, from a discharge pattern back to a recharge pattern, it will stop, prevent, or slow the growth of Fiona, as it tries to push more +ions back into the atmosphere.
Earl might just get killed, the same way, as Danielle did, as he runs into the frontal boundary as it pushes off of the EC of the USA. Normally the NHC does not see these HPGP charge shifts, [we seldom have rapid multiple outer planet conjunctions] so they will expect to see inertia control the path and growth of Earl and Fiona (still not a TS).
I think there is a possibility that Earl will just fail to grow and wither and die when it meets this out wash of deionized cool dry air, that i think will just dilute the precipitation driven trend by the ion flux, that makes these storms grow, shift to a pattern of wither and just die.
So what if Earl just quits like Bonnie and Colin did as they faltered and did not develop?
NHC, NOAA do not foresee that as a possibility, from their forecasts they will continue on up the eastern seaboard, spreading death and destruction. IF this recharge withering of these storms occurs then the intensity comes back post September 21st, I would want to find the trail of evidence that leads back to the electromagnetic mechanism that drives the process.
IF I am wrong and no stalling of energy flow occurs as Earl runs into the front, well I need to do more thinking.””
Current thoughts; When the moon passes over head tonight the 15+ degree circle of lunar tidal bulge will be over head Earl and the dry air mass to it’s NWest, I fully expect to see a combination of the two forced by this method. Watch it here;
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~ovens/loops/wxloop.cgi?wv_east_enhanced+12
If it shreds the strength out of Earl instead of producing a surge of RI like it has the last three nights, we may get out of this OK? I did not want to post this too soon because IF I am wrong, I did not want to slow up those who have much traffic in their evacuation route, and need to go now or soon IF I am way wrong…..
Hell if you do/or you don’t kinda thing……Richard Holle,
Stay safe, stock up anyway.

There’s a fairly serious drought here in western MD, even tho it’s somewhat localized (stretching in an arc here down southeastward thru Richmond, Va). Sometimes the only thing that can disrupt the perpetual high-pressure overhead is a tropical system throwing a “monkey wrench” into the works.
Even if Earl only skirts the mid-Atlantic coast, that track can sometimes pull alot of cooler air southward on the west side of it, and “mix” things up enough to get the jet-stream pattern back to a more average position (and provide more reliable frontal rain).
I hope so. All corn has already had to be cut here, what little was left of it.

From Forecaster Avila at the NHC 11 AM Advisory Discussion:
“the eye has become obscured on visible images and this is reflected
in a decrease in the Dvorak numbers and in an increase in the
pressure to 939 mb. This apparent weakening is most likely related
to an ongoing eyewall replacement cycle ”
===================================
Way to cover your rear, Avila! Is this the best the NHC can do??
No mention of the HUGE blob of VERY dry air at the mid and high levels sitting in Earl’s path.
http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/east/nwatl/flash-wv.html
Earl ingesting this will be hazardous to his health…and so there may be something more than an eyewall replacement going on.
How many times does the eye become completely obscured during a major hurricane, especially cat 4 or higher? Almost never.
There is something else going on here….
Its the dry air.
Choke baby, CHOKE!
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

It senses the dry air, and is trying to avoid it….

Earl, being the much stronger of the two, could suck the moisture and energy right out of Fiona.
This could counteract some of the negative effects the dry air to the north and west is currently having on Earl and give him another boost of tropical moisture. Hope not.
And I hope the big beast stays offshore.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

Arwww thanks Caleb.
Yeah we are pretty vulnerable here.
With 1.7 million people in the metropolitan area….the largest directly on the Atlantic Ocean between greater New York and greater Miami -Ft. Lauderdale…we are definitely sitting ducks.
And rather important to the security of the nation, and the free world, sitting ducks, no doubt.
As for your planned hurricane [lol I don’t blame you] there are plenty of good people in DC and Boston who shouldn’t have to take one for the team, so to speak.
A better “disaster” than such a storm….is to vote these bastards out of power!
Cheers,
[And still nervous]
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

I am amazed at how the NHC, Accuweather, and others how downplayed the significance of the dry air intrusion as just an “eyewall replacement cycle”.
Eyewall replacement cycles don’t usually take 36 hours to complete.
Bastardi [I am an Accuweather Pro subscriber] was quoted a few hours ago: “An eye is forming. Its going on a true northwest course.”
Well, Joe, where is the eye? And isn’t this course a little more north than northwest [eye wobble adjusted].
The HUGE dry air blob to the northwest has been indirectly influencing Earl, for as long, and is now directly influencing him now.
He is about to gulp in a huge amount of it, and, as evidenced by the CLEAR AIR slot [is this possible in a CAT 4 storm] advecting in from the southwest.
http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/east/tatl/flash-wv.html
Keep gulping, Earl.
I’d love to watch you die.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
PS…here is the original post which accurately predicted this:
Mike Ford says:
August 30, 2010 at 12:50 pm
There’s a huge batch of dry air off the east coast right now as seen in the water vapor loops. If it gets to land, and that’s a big if, it will probably be a shell of it’s former self.