Too much Rum for Tomas
Posted by
JAC on 11/1/2010, 6:56 am
For the last 48 hrs Tomas has been suffering from the effects of the strong MCS that was firing to his east and SE Friday and Saturday.
The MCS created a localized lift in the tropopause over it and what that looks like is a shift in the anti-cyclone to Tomas' east and SE.
So, as Tomas moves away from the anti-cyclone, it moves into a region where the tropopause becomes lower in height.
Two effects from that:
1) The PV column gets compressed, and as a result from conservation of momentum, it spins at a lower rate.
2) Convection gets tilted toward the anti-cyclone which then causes a downdraft that affects inflow of moist air in the boundary-layer.
The overall effect is what looks like shear.
What needs to happen is that the anti-cyclone has to get over the LLC; or at least closer to it, for the PV column to begin to expand vertically.
A good way to do that is for very strong convection with high rain-rate to fire near the LLC.
That causes latent heating near the LLC.
Two effects of that:
1) It will cause the tropopasue height "bubble" to move closeer to the LLC, That will look like a shift in the anti-cyclone closer to the LLC.
2) Lookling at the core-temp, there is a very strong boundary layer inversion. It needs to be broken. A higher core temp along with mixing will break that inversion.
So, cloud tops are high, around 60k-ft.
Rain-rate is beginning to increase.
Tomas is moving into higher OHC.
If the inversion gets broken, it will be like one of those massive popup torando-ally supercells and Tomas could explode.
Keep an eye on core-temp and the boundary-layer inversion (convective cap).
I wouldn't be calling Haiti out of the woods yet, not by a long shot.






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In this thread:
Too much Rum for Tomas - JAC, 11/1/2010, 6:56 am- Recon in the air - just in time to watch Tomas kick butt - JAC, 11/1/2010, 1:07 pm
- Re: Too much Rum for Tomas - ArgosyTn, 11/1/2010, 10:12 am
- Re: Too much Rum for Tomas - BobbiStorm, 11/1/2010, 8:46 am
- Running naked - JAC, 11/1/2010, 7:29 am
- Tomas' Pulse - JAC, 11/1/2010, 7:21 am
- Outflow Jet ready for Tomas - JAC, 11/1/2010, 7:07 am
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