I’ve been watching this awhile, as have many others, and now it looks like we might have some real trouble. Matthew looks to be strengthening – see the satellite loop below.
Besides winds, huge amounts of rain and storm surge will accompany this storm.
Hurricane expert Dr. Ryan Maue says of the animation above:
Pressure at 934 mb in Hurricane Matthew. Improved satellite representation, expansion of cold cloud-tops suggests slightly stronger
He also opines on this series of forecast maps that show Matthew grazing the east coast of Florida:
Margin of error is small as Hurricane Matthew likely will parallel Florida east coast — hopefully well offshore. GFS 18z is too close.
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The story was that a high out in the Atlantic is keeping Matthew on this course. A system moving in from the west could move Matthew east but it won’t be here in time.
Is that right?
I think I can see the Three Stooges (Mann, Schmidt and Hayhoe) standing on the shore egging this thing on to make landfall.
90k wind but a LONG way away from this info
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-89.33,35.27,247/loc=-74.530,18.227
this ones nastier japan /china sea area
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-229.56,50.07,671/loc=150.924,43.963
and the offshore winds above Japan are doing 90k and its not a hurricane or anything..
While not mentioned in the advisories, the high wind field is pretty small. So if the center remains offshore, the coast might only see TS force winds.
Smaller eye spins faster………
Levi at http://www.tropicaltidbits.com/ keeps talking about an eye wall transition where the inner eye wall collapses and a larger one develops. Seems to think that is going to occur sooner or later.
Eyewall replacement cycles are frequent, especially in big storms. I think as the eye wall shrinks and accelerates, eventually the pressure gradient rises away from the eyewall and a new eyewall forms. That starves the old eyewall which weakens and gets sucked up by the new eyewall.
The result is a larger eye and a reduction in wind speed, but the new eye shrinks and speeds up, setting things up for another cycle if the storm remains strong enough.
Roy, that’s a good point. The GFS does not show the inner core wind field expanding very much by the time it reaches the east side of Florida, unlike many hurricanes that expand greatly when reaching middle latitudes. Also, the highest winds are usually to the right of the track, which in this case would be to the east of the eye and that is also what is shown on the GFS. However, as of this writing, the latest Oct 3 18Z GFS track is very close to the east coast of Florida and only a small error of about 50 miles farther west than forecast would make a HUGE difference in the storm effects.
oz4caster
Correct but a little more explanation; the ground speed winds are generally faster where you get to add the wind field to the storm motion and slowed on the opposite side.
I have no idea if it’s effective or not but I eyeball the model paths and then look to the historic tracks as kind of a confidence measure. I’m not sure why but the historics sometime show fairly consistent patterns. Well right now the category 3/4 within 2 degree tracks all over the place so no help there.
Tangential, but it’s time for my yearly weather underground rant with a twist. I still think Jeff Masters understands the modeling and the storms better than anyone that I’ve seen (in a free service). But I never go there until tropical storms because 5 or so years ago the site was rabidly CAGW. Today I quickly searched the blog for the usual suspects global warming, climate change, unprecedented.. et.al. with no hits. I also thought I remembered a climate change tab/faq on the site which (again rapidly) did not find. Anyone follow this closer than me? Makes me wonder if the cagw is getting lower cased and swept under the rug? encouraging?
taz1999, I still see plenty of “featured” CAGW blog posts on the Weather Underground. I ignore them.
Increasing southwesterly wind shear and circulation over land could also be a factors in reducing wind speeds on the west side of Matthew if it stays offshore to the east of Florida.
I can only hope NOAA has botched this forecast as they did for Hermine.
Slow tropical storms are very hard to forecast.
There’s better models than GFS…
GFS has been the farthest east of the models. The UKMET and ECMWF models have had it hugging the coast and impacting between Charleston and Myrtle Beach Saturday to Sunday timeframe.
I am hoping for it to stay off just far enough to prevent surge and wind damage, but give some heavy rainfall for Florida and Georgia – it has been a dry fall so far. It can bend east after that if it wants to, I don’t wish a direct strike on anyone.
In Brevard we’re soaked already and prime for flooding. I lived in Miami through Andrew. I’m hoping I can boogie Thursday. We’ll see
Some detailed possible tracks here:
http://www.tropicaltidbits.com/storminfo/14L_tracks_latest.png
Yeah, I would say they have that one pretty well pegged. Looks like it will not make it to California, but remain in the Atlantic..
g
George–made me laugh. I was wondering what kind of modeling it was that has 15 different paths all over the state. Was wondering if it was just me that sees this as absurd. Thanks for the insight.
Glad My wine was on the table. Great comment! Although I’m in SE Virginia and a little closer than California.
http://www.tropicaltidbits.com/storminfo/14L_tracks_latest.png
Update
Ouch, this is the update, not the earlier one
http://www.tropicaltidbits.com/storminfo/14L_tracks_latest.png
They can’t forecast a hurricane five days out, but they are absolutely sure that we’re going to fry in a hundred years unless we buy twisty lights and live in beehives and drive electric golf-carts they call cars.
It has been about 10 years since the last hurricane, so we might have a miss with this one too.
Yea. Looks like it is time to dig out the hurricane shutters. The last time I saw them was 2005.
Our children don’t know what a hurricane is……
I hope Roy Spencer is correct. The media seem to be talking it up as a Category 4 storm. Did it hit Haiti at that level? I know they have a habit of not telling you the good news so I hope it did not.
It is still south of Haiti, but should be there late tonight early tomorrow with its Cuba approach tomorrow night. It doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to get anywhere.
Hitting western Haiti tonight, full force. Sparsely populated area, but poor. People will likely die. Gonna be catastrophic hurricane conditions there.
The Clinton Foundation will help rebuild…
fixed it for ya
a summer shower can be catastrophic to those permanent victims …
The eye passes about 80 miles from the center of the devastating 2010 earthquake. Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world.
Sad but, most likely true.
+100
The thing is this storm is moving so slowly and the potential steering weather patterns to the north are so complex I really doubt even the European can accurately forecast the track so many days into the future. But the whole eastern seaboard from southern Florida all the way up is certainly in play. With it moving so slowly it sure looks like it will a particularly nasty storm for any land mass it passes over. At this time if I had to bet, the last place I would want to be come Sunday morning would be Cape Hatteras.
One of those models has the eye just barely skipping over into the Gulf and then heading up to Tampa…so maybe that is in play, too!
Check out several of the various model ensembles here: http://www.tropicaltidbits.com/storminfo/
The CMC has the most eastern track. GFS the most western of this sampling.
Some particularly nasty possibilities with this storm.
If it maintains major hurricane status and rides a path just along the coast all the way from Miami to the Carolinas, it could prove to be the most costly storm in the history of the world, wrecking homes and buildings and disrupting commerce in dozens of cities, including a bunch of very large ones.
I sure hope the scenario in the tidbits video that he describes around the 6:30 mark does not come to pass.
Maybe I’m out of date, I haven’t been able to follow events as I normally do, but, isn’t Mathew expected to weaken, to around CAT2, once it gets North of Cuba and Hispaniola?
According to the nullschool wind map, the intensity says about the same for the next 5 days
Expect the mountains to knock it down a bit but if the forecast of the guys at Weatherbell is correct Matthew will strengthen to a Major once again once it gets north of the Bahamas.
I find that earth.nullschool tends to be fairly accurate. this is the projection for October 7th 12:00Z
https://earth.nullschool.net/#2016/10/07/1200Z/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-80.64,27.85,2614
nullschool uses GFS data
For those commenting above with questions about current conditions etc, go here …
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/
…HURRICANE HUNTERS FIND MATTHEW IS STILL A 140-MPH HURRICANE… …LIFE-THREATENING RAIN…WIND…AND STORM SURGE EXPECTED IN PARTS OF HAITI TONIGHT…
The NHC estimates winds speeds using aircraft. There was a NDBC discus buoy that recorded surface sustained winds at 67 knots maximum. Category 1 hurricane threshold is 64 knots. Mathew was barely a category 1 hurricane when it passed directly over buoy number 42058. The NHC has been doing this for years, making wind speed claims greatly in excess of actual recorded surface winds.
bw wrote, “The NHC estimates winds speeds using aircraft.”
Yes they do and they work hard to do so accurately. Here is the latest …
Shortly after the release of the previous advisory, the Air
Force Reserve Hurricane Hunter aircraft measured a peak 700-mb
flight level wind of 142 kt, and SFMR winds of 127 kt in the
northeast quadrant. During the final passage through the eye a
little before 0500 UTC, the aircraft reported a minimum pressure of
934 mb. These data still support an initial intensity of 125 kt.
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/text/refresh/MIATCDAT4+shtml/040853.shtml
For some interesting information on how this is done …
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/projects/22/
Been Tracking Mattew every 4 hours since days. Two reasons. 1. Father was a Pacific Typhoon hunter, 409th off Guam, flying instrumented B29s into those things back then. Worst trip was so violent over 24 hours that the plane landed with his rudder bent 17 degrees out of true, and so was scrapped. Plus, I survived a SS 5 Guam hit. So much for dinner table conversations.
2.Live now on Fort Lauderdale beach about 50 meters from Atlantic ocean and potential storm surge. Go Bag is ready. But we probably will not go. Last hit was Cat 3 Wilma, dirty side, 2005, and we survived nicely. Stupid to get on exposed highway versus hardened Cat 5 new construction. Only 4 days of Wilma power down except for building emergency gensets. ( It did take 18 months to repair our pool deck.) We have 7 days rations and bottled water in the go bag plus multilple gallon collapsed storage containers, fillable in 15 minutes, for flushing toilets. Not to mention the guest room sealable (ducktape) bathtub. Woild not rely on our 4WD Hybrid SUV to escape via roads. The problem is not us, it is everybody else.
Boy Scouts are always prepared.
Keep a weapon, or two, close to hand… Just incase some folks forget how to act in a civilized manner during an emergency.
I was in the hurricane hunters back when they were at Keesler AFB flying WC-130E/H airframes (53WRS). I got to sit on the ground and fix whatever they broke going through the eye-wall when they got back. There were occasional pieces missing, but they usually came through well. Those planes were always better during hurricane season because we were flying them every day. When they would sit for a few days was when they would suddenly break everything on board. Every year we sent a team out to the west Pac to fly the typhoons out of Guam. Shortly after I left Keesler, the AF turned it all over to the Air Force Reserve (403 WRS) to handle and moved it all out of Biloxi.
This former SF soldier can’t count the times his own precious ass was given to the hold of a C-130. Flew in B through H models. 55 jumps from C-130s, both doors and ramp. The Herc gets my vote.
ristvan, I am a little North of you in Merritt Island. Getting ready to put up the shutters and set up the safe room. will probably stay, but if it is a cat-3 or more, coming off the ocean, going to St. Cloud.
Glad I sold my house in Cocoa Beach last month.
Keep your head down.
Rud,
Leave too late, and You’ll spend the night on the I-95 parking lot with 100,000 new friends.
Light-hearted but somewhat serious question. My son is supposed to fly down to Fort Meyers on Wednesday afternoon for a baseball tournament. Been through several hurricanes and near-misses in SE VA and I’m not too worried about severe conditions on the west coast, mostly wind and rain. any thoughts on what the weather in FM is projected to be on Thursday-Friday-Saturday?
Thanks if you see this and respond.
Official forecast at this point is breezy and some rain.
Menicholas,
Thanks, being several hundred miles away, that’s kind of what I thought. would suck, though, to send the kid to FLA for a few days so he could watch it rain. I did that in my back yard a couple weeks ago.
I was in a Pacific Typhoon aboard ship, DLGN-25, in ’66. My bunk was forward and Would rise/fall 3 or 4 ft every few seconds. My Dad’s ship AOG27 was destroyed (beached) in a typhoon in WW2.
Fun stuff – if you live through it. I had my sea legs and was eating hearty from the open mess while most of the rest of the crew was throwing up. The mess was open (bread cheese, cold cuts) because people might get hungry at other than meal times.
BTW for me the first 3 days at sea was queasy stomach time. After that I was good for most anything.
Well we can hope for the best for those in the path 140 doesn’t sound nice to me.
But I go by the rule: Two clocks are not better than one clock.
Obviously one of the two is wrong but now you know it is wrong, but you don’t know which one is wrong.
So what is with the cat-o-nine tails path predictions ? Maybe just people filing their report in expectation of a new grant extension.
g
Models, each with different assumptions. NHC usually take the ‘best fit’ and maybe edge it one way or the other depending on their assumptions.
No, it’s people taking advantage of all the information available to them. In general, when most models agree, they have a pretty good idea of what is about to happen (and sometimes all the models are wrong). When the models don’t agree, then a good forecast is nigh on impossible. Good forecasts don’t include lucky forecasts.
And all the models are wrong, but some are more useful than others. If you don’t like the spaghetti plots, just use the NHC’s forecast and discussion. It’s usually fairly close to the models’ consensus, but they explain why they favor some models over others.
These sprites were photographed by Frankie Lucena above the hurricane
http://0e33611cb8e6da737d5c-e13b5a910e105e07f9070866adaae10b.r15.cf1.rackcdn.com/Frankie-Lucena-hurricane_mathew_red_sprite1_1200dpi_1475353328_fpthumb.jpg
http://0e33611cb8e6da737d5c-e13b5a910e105e07f9070866adaae10b.r15.cf1.rackcdn.com/Frankie-Lucena-hurricane_mathew_red_sprite2_1200dpi_1475353328_fpthumb.jpg
http://spaceweathergallery.com/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=129751 (large photos)
Is that energy going out of the storm, or into it?
Water vapour venting out the top.
Sprites are formed from lightening strikes. I belive from cloud to ground strikes only when charged particules interact with atmospheric gases high above the storm.
Great comments, especially Dr. Spencer. Here on the grand strand we are preparing for the worst. That means evacuation or just no golf Saturday. The latter is the best we can hope for.
The precipitable water looks weak. 3.5 inches is nothing for FL. Am I reading it wrong?
That’s what I was wondering. We got 21/2″ last night. Is that per hour?
Makes me think of Joe Bastardi’s forecast back in 2006.
That we would soon return to the weather patterns of the 1950s.
East coast tropical storms.
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/07/17/joe-bastardi-show-parallels-to-the-1950s-and-tells-us-what-to-expect-looking-forward/
https://twitter.com/MJVentrice/status/782942174421934081
http://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ct2RRNVWIAA42R7.jpg
I find it difficult to doubt Ryan Maue and Joe Bastardi; but usually cat 4 storms are well organized with strong outflows.
Matthew looks unbalanced and has not been outflowing well to the west.
Of course, losing the higher resolution GOES satellite and using a lower resolution GOES satellite without moving the satellite to a better position; does make the storm less detailed.
Nor would it be the first storm over the last few years that the Hurricane center insists has lower pressure than is obvious.
Oscillating eyewalls, stunted outflow to the west, fluctuating eye; looks more like a cat 3 storm having difficulty maintaining wind speeds.
I go with Joe Bastardi’s earlier prediction that the storm will strengthen once it is over the Bahamas.
The reason for that is the stroms NW quadrant has been up against a dry air mass. That is changing though.
Not that dry the last couple of days, counting today.
Whatever, the storm isn’t breathing well to the West.
With the outer winds already interacting with Jamaica, the combination is causing the storm to careen somewhat.
Matthew slapping Guantanamo around before moving over the Bahamas then gaining strength, as Bastardi predicted; let us hope that a cat 4-5 storm doesn’t hit the Key’s or Florida for that matter.
I was living in New Orleans when Andrew leveled a path from East to West across Florida; then watched as Andrew decided to come visit us in New Orleans.
Bob Breck, the weather forecaster in New Orleans nailed the path when he predicted Andrew was going to hit to our West.
Not as powerful as when Andrew visited Florida, it was still a dangerous storm, but small with limited eyewall reach.
Whoops, typed too quickly. Joe went and left a slight revision on twitter:
The Caribbean dance of the seven veils. Even with hurricane winds from the North, Guantanamo Bay will still get slapped around. All of those barracks and buildings with sheet metal roofs.
The storm action has gradually hydrated that quadrant but it has had an impact on the storm for most of it’s life as a hurricane. Levi believes that now it’s going through an “eye wall replacement”.
What in the world are you talking about? GOES-13 is about as exactly ‘over it’ as you can get for a geostationary satellite.
You are correct JKrob. The image went out a couple of nights ago, while I was watching the Caribbean.
There was an outage mentioned in a twitter feed, so I went and searched on GOES outages.
Then I wrongly assumed the GOES 13 outage message I read was current.
After reading your comment, I double checked the satellite messages an discovered I was reading an old message (May, I believe).
My apologies for the incorrect assumption and statements.
GOES-13 did undergo some minor changes in programming, but not an outage.
See, Alarmers! Assumptions are not good science!
http://derecho.math.uwm.edu/models/al142016_analogs.png
http://i.flhurricane.com/images/2016/Hazel-liketracksDavidRoth.jpg
NHC projected track
http://weather.gc.ca/data/hurricane_images/track.png
After hitting Haiti and Cuba, I think it will downgrade to a cat 2. But it could strengthen after the Bahamas. I don’t think the eye will cross the US coast. It will dance up the US coastline, but the outer banks could see hurricane force winds. These storms (from past experience) tend to stay just off the Atlantic coast…I hope.
Just from tracking these storms since the mid 50’s…
Looks pretty nasty though from the first animation by NOAA – look at all that black stuff…
Past experience? It had been so long since a bad east coast storm that a noted “hurricane expert” of the 1930’s stated “hurricanes never hit New England unless greatly weakened,” right up until the day the 1938 monster completely changed our landscape. It was accelerating north so fast (50 mph) that the core passed through many areas in only an hour, but many of the big trees on Main Streets were leveled. Ocean surge was unreal, and Connecticut River reached record levels. Carol was only a minor version, in 1954. Since then, nothing comparable….few are old enough to remember…..so of course, if it happens, Bill McKibben will call it “unprecedented.”
https://sunriseswansong.wordpress.com/2016/10/01/hurricane-matthew-hoopla-alert/.
Global Human Climate Sharknado Apocalypse at its best.
Next we might see M. Mann in a video from his office at PSU recorded on a GoPro held by J. Cook.
Mann, “We are experiencing a Zuminsky Z-10 Planet Killer Event! [John shakes the GoPro for effect.]
Mann, “We will continue recording data as best we can.” [John tilts the GoPro left 90-degrees then cuts the feed.]
Ha ha
Every rise of 1C increases the ocean area that could spawn tropical cyclones by 15%. I guess I should add that any decrease reduces the area too.
What are you nattering-on about?
clipe,
I think he just said a 5° increase will induce tropical cyclones in the center of Antarctica, or something. Either it doesn’t make sense or I’ve had too much wine.
Either it doesn’t make sense or I’ve had too much wine.
Well, you apparently can still do math, so too much wine doesn’t seem to be the issue…
bw
Matthew has had a very compact eye and hurricane force wind field. I truly believe that Matthew is a monster.
Having said that, I agree that NOAA and the NHC have been overstating hurricane strength. I monitored Hermine as it approached the Florida coast through landfall and never saw a single buoy or land station which recorded anything close to the 74 mph wind speed sustained for 1 minute as is supposedly required for a storm to be classified a hurricane. And yet to this day they still say it was a CAT I when it came ashore. They have apparently also grossly overstated the power of several typhoons over the last couple of years also.
Is this a result of the ever advancing ability to see into the storms better? Or is it bias? I believe the former is enhancing their ability to have the later.
Buoy Station 42058 had a direct encounter with Mathew. The wind data from that buoy barely reached hurricane force winds. This was mentioned in one of the NHC forecast discussions here http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2016/al14/al142016.discus.021.shtml?
Rather curious that surface winds were described as “light” when the all the other information was in catastrophic terms.
From the National Hurricane Center …
HURRICANE MATTHEW DISCUSSION NUMBER 21
NWS NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL AL142016
500 AM EDT MON OCT 03 2016
The Air Force Reserve reconnaissance mission that ended shortly
before 0600 UTC did not find flight-level or surface winds as high
as reported during the previous flight yesterday afternoon. It is
not clear from microwave imagery if the reduction in winds is the
result of an eyewall replacement. There was no evidence of a double
wind maximum in the aircraft data, but the crew reported that the
eyewall was open to the southwest. Using a blend of the aircraft
data and recent satellite intensity estimates, the initial intensity
has been reduced to 115 kt for this advisory. The center of Matthew
has recently passed over NOAA buoy 42058 in the central Caribbean
Sea, which reported a minimum pressure of 943 mb and light winds
around 0650 UTC.
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2016/al14/al142016.discus.021.shtml
It’s complicated.
5.8.4.1. Eyewall Module. While executing a standard alpha pattern to satisfy a fix requirement, one sounding will be taken during each inbound and outbound passage through the eyewall (except as noted below), for a total of four soundings. The releases should be made at or just inward (within 12 km) of the flight-level radius of maximum wind (RMW). If the radar presentation is suitable, the inner edge of the radar eyewall may be used to identify the release point. If possible, and when resources and safety permit, two dropwindsondes, spaced less than 30 seconds apart, should be deployed on the inbound leg on the side of the storm believed to have the highest surface winds (normally the right-hand side). In this case, the outer of the two releases should be made at the RMW, with the second release following as soon as possible. Typically, the eyewall module will be tasked within 48 hours of a forecasted hurricane landfall.
http://www.ofcm.gov/nhop/16/pdf/05-chp5Change1.pdf
http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/show_plot.php?station=42058&meas=wdpr&uom=E&time_diff=-5&time_label=EST
The Saffir-Simpson scale was created to define how much ground damage can be expected from defined sustained winds measured at 10 meters above the ground. How those winds should be measured is defined by the creators of the scale. It’s simple, you have the measure the wind speed at 10 meters above the ground to say how much damage occurs to structures located on the ground. Mechanical anemometers are the only consistently reliable instruments to determine those speeds, which is why they are used today. A hurricane is defined in the US as sustained surface winds at for one minute. Some agencies use a 10 minute average. If the anemometer is recording 64 knot wind speed for one minute, then you have a category one storm for that minute.
The anemometer for NOAA buoy 42058 recorded winds at 5 meters height, so there may be higher winds at 10 meters, but there is no indication of any problem with that instrument.
Aircraft do not use anemometers, they make wind estimates using entirely different instruments. If the aircraft estimate of ground winds say 125 knots when the surface anemometer says 65 knots then the aircraft estimate needs to be examined as to why it does not agree with the surface measurement.
Over the past several years at least, the “official” NHC claims for winds in storms have been 10 to 20 knots higher than actual winds measured at the surface. Observed surface damage due to winds after the storm passes always confirm the recorded surface anemometers, and not the aircraft based estimates. Mathew is the first storm I’ve seen where the aircraft estimate was 60 knots higher than the surface anemometer.
I think that Mr. Mann needs to be right out on the western tip of Haiti standing on the shore reporting on this hurricane.
Mathew moved directly over NDBC station 42058 earlier October 3rd. Recorded sustained winds reached 34.5 meters per second on the approach. That’s barely Hurricane force, about 67 knots. Then about one hour of eye, then the trailing side of the storm reached 33.6 meters per second. This while the NHC was claiming 145 mph winds, which is 126 knots. Hurricane wind threshold is 33 meters per second or 64 knots.
Wind speeds recorded by the buoy are at
http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=42058
Mathew is barely a Category 1. The NHC has been hyping tropical cyclone winds for years.
Wow
How can the adjust that data to suit is going to be a big problem
Wondering why there are no buoys located around Bahamas. And why there are 200 by the Keys.