Top-Down Redevelopment of Ex-TD 5
Posted by JAC on 8/16/2010, 12:43 pm
There are two basic mechanism for genesis of a TC:

Bottom-up and Top-Down.

Bottom-up is usually associated with African Easterly Waves and what is talked about nearly 90% of the time when looking at blobs.

Top-down is what we are looking at here for TD5; which usually involves the tail end of fronts.

In this scenario, the thing to look at is how a mid-level vortex moves into an expanding troposphere.

If it moves to an area where the tropopause has an elevated height, the vortex becomes stretched which then can work it way to the surface.

Because of the law of conservation of angular momentum, the stretched vortex will naturally spin faster - the old spinning skater and outstretched arms.

So, the first image below shows a pocket of high tropopause height off shore of LA.

Second graph shows a potential vorticity maximum on the FL-Panhandle shore.

If the two align, then we should see a ramp up of TD5.







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Top-Down Redevelopment of Ex-TD 5 - JAC, 8/16/2010, 12:43 pm
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