Hurricane expert Dr. Ryan Maue says today:
Eye continues to warm now +20°C … if convection flares or clouds cool (more pink) then Hurricane
#Irma should reach 200 mph.
190 mph is the record in the Atlantic, for Hurricane Allen in 1980:
Allen is the only hurricane in the recorded history of the Atlantic basin to achieve sustained winds of 190 mph (305 km/h),[nb 1] thus making it the strongest Atlantic hurricane by wind speed. Until Hurricane Patricia in 2015, this was also the highest sustained winds in the entire Western Hemisphere.
NOAA bouy 41041 looks to be in the path
Irma is far past buoy 41041….Jose is headed that way
Be fantastic to seed Irma suddenly swing north, head out to open sea, and dissipate…
There is always hope.
http://flhurricane.com/modelanimator.php?storm=11&year=2017&title=11
“Be fantastic to [see] Irma suddenly swing north [east]”… Fish storm
Interesting idea “seed” to collapse the eyewall when it’s out in the Atlantic. I’m completely against the idea of hacking weather systems yet isn’t a hurricane off the coast of Africa a great opportunity to test the ability to collapse a potentially deadly weather event?
Hurricanes are low pressure systems feeding on water vapor from sea surface conditions?
Starve the fever or feed the cold?
Sorry, Sharknado comment yet interesting idea.
I am glad all i have to worry about is some record cold tonight and tomorrow night.
I’m surprised that no one has really mentioned that Irma looked like she was an annular hurricane today, which is unusual in and of itself, but particularly interesting given the atmospheric and oceanic conditions. The white papers I’ve read hinted that annular hurricanes typically form with colder air aloft and cooler sea surface temperatures than Irma is experiencing.
Thanks Navarre, not good info though…
“Annular cyclones can maintain their respective peak intensities for extended periods of time unlike their asymmetric counterparts. Following peak intensity, such systems will tend to gradually taper off. This unusual intensity persistence makes their future intensities difficult to forecast and often results in large forecast errors. In an analysis of hurricanes in the East Pacific and North Atlantic between 1995 and 1999, Knaff and Kossin observed that the National Hurricane Center underestimated the intensity of annular hurricanes 72 hours out by 18.9 kn (35.0 km, 21.7 mph).[1]”
That sounds like one of the papers I read. However, I’m not sure how anything I’ve said contradicts the quotation. The quotation also states that annular hurricanes ‘can’ maintain peak intensity for extended periods of time, not that they ‘will’ maintain peak intensity.
Sorry, by not good information I meant the possibility of it maintaining greater then expected strength. Accurate info, just not good news, to clarify.
Stay safe Rud and others in the area.
I live on the south coast of England and our current sea temperature is only 17 Degrees C. Seems unlikely that would ever feed a hurricane, so having a very moderate climate (no snow in winter and usual max around 24C in summer) does have its advantages
tonyb
Thanks, Tonyb. We will survive even though the weathef outcomes are yet to be dermined. No matter what, we were already prepared for the worst of all possible weather scenarios. Something most here learned before hit Cat 3 Willma 2005. As we did.
This is pretty neat. A top-down video of the eye. If it doesn’t show here you might have to click on the link
https://twitter.com/NOAASatellitePA/status/905173786223398914
With Irma”s eye roughly 85 mi from Barbuda, NOAA station BARA9 shows wind speed 19 kts, gusts to 31.1 kts. Should be interesting to watch as Irma is projected to go right over the station
There are a lot of people monitoring these stations. Word is getting out.
The jig may be up for NOAA.
Something interesting about BARA9, they show wind speed at 10M and 20M.
But the picture and details show only one anemometer at 9.7M.
http://weather.gc.ca/data/hurricane_images/track.png
Try again
http://weather.gc.ca/data/hurricane_images/track.png
OK, so no.
http://weather.gc.ca/hurricane/track_e.html
Sorry, Anthony. This is your house and I am being profane in it, my apologies. I have to get my sh*t together and go south.
https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/saint-kitts-and-nevis/basseterre
Some people aren’t too worried.
Has Maue and Weatherbell stopped the Accumulated Cyclone Energy page? I’ve been getting a 404 Not Found error since Sunday.
The Integrated Kinetic Energy of Hurricane Irma is tracked at https://twitter.com/hwind
Currently the IKE has dropped from 90TJ to 79Tj as of September 6 as islands are being approached. This is still about twice the energy of Harvey.
The readers at http://www.freerepublic.com are most often political observers and comentors, but they are tracking Irma on this link:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3583121/posts?page=1
The plethora of models are tracked on this link:
https://my.sfwmd.gov/sfwmd/common/images/weather/plots/storm_11
Note that, despite the millions of words from the experts, the majority of those tracks now are beginning to ease more easterwardly into the Atlantic off of the coast of Florida, rather than up through the middle of FL or up its eastern coast. Which is a good thing for wind damage, but it passes the hurricane’s strong winds and waves to the west after a long open ocean fetch. Which can increase waves and storm surge.
“entire Western Hemisphere.”??
Northern???
you can draw lines anyway you want. The WH is anything with a longitude that has a W in it 😉
Jose next??
Measured wind on Barbuda only Cat3 (103kts, gusts 135kts). Nowhere near proclaimed Cat5. Another lie by NOAA.
The jet stream over the US pushes southeast. Thunderstorms over Houston.
Puerto Rico is a US territory and is next on IRMA’s hit list. Odd that no one in the US seems to be in the slightest bit interested.
Guam is a US territory and we never stop hearing at the non-existent risk of a fat man launching an empty missile to splash into the ocean somewhere in that area.
Despite Puertoricans getting a US citizenship , apparently they don’t really count.
…. perhaps something to do with President Eisenhower’s farewell address to the nation.
Apparently people think that missiles with nuclear warheads in the hands of a madman are a somewhat greater concern than a few people losing their homes in some tropical island.
Typhoon Haiyan in the Pacific ocean was stronger with 235 mph winds. It destroyed Tacloban city and killed over 6,000 people. Hopefully Irma will not be as destructive and deadly
http://img.gagdaily.com/uploads/posts/sad/2013/00010e87_big.jpg
Good luck to Rud, Tom and Latitude plus any others in FL. Thinking of you.
I just saw the projected wind speeds of Irma as it comes ashore in Miami – 145MPH, which
would be a Cat 4. Halfway up Florida, it looks to be 125 MPH and probably by the time it reaches the Carolinas it will be a Cat 2 or low Cat 3, barely achieving status of a major hurricane. It’s not even remotely close to the power of Camile 1969 (175MPH at landfall, gusts to 200MPH and pressure of 900MB.). Killed over 500 Americans.
Since records have been kept, only 3 made landfall in the U.S. as Cat 5 storms. Irwin will not join that group – it would have to have sustained winds of 157MPH to do so, and even that would make it a minimal Cat 5. storm. But, at least it is making landfall in the traditional way – hitting Florida.
They do call the University of Miami football team the Hurricanes, don’t they?
I guess I’m missing something. Was just looking at the NDBC sites closest to where Irma is now …. sustained speeds no greater than 55 knots, gust up to 78 knots …… none of which is anywhere near 185 mph according to the knots mph calculator. Storm at 2 pm AST … 18.5N 64.7w …. station at 18.34n 64.9.. which is only about 10 miles from the center of the storm.
Appears the eye is passing along north coast of PR, which isn’t really going to spare them much. Ground reports are oddly lower speed wind than NOAA and NWS, we have seen that with hurricanes before, though.
Puerto Rico lucked out. It went north of them. The bad part is in the NE quadrant…they are in the southern quadrant. Some Islands in the Bahamas are going to be hit really hard – those in the NE quadrant.
Let’s hope that it stays off the east coast of FL.
I’ll stick with my landfall “prediction” of just south of Charleston, SC.