Re: Florence...Foe or Fish? Opinions?
Posted by Chris in Tampa on 9/5/2018, 8:12 pm
With the models flip flopping over many days, it's still too far out to guess. If it was closer to land we could get some high altitude sampling around the storm by the NOAA jet. That would allow dropsonde data (which is dropped from the plane and takes readings all the way down to just before it hits the water) to get into the models that could help the models understand the current conditions better and from that the forecast from them would get better. But by the time recon might be tasked by the NHC, things might be clear enough anyway as to whether it will reach the continental North America.

Bermuda needs to be prepared. Sometime around there we should get recon if it is close to the island, which appears likely. (could be directly hit) At that point the models should have better data and it will be less far out so that the models might be doing much better on whether high pressure steers this into the US and/or Canada. But it's still over 5 days away from Bermuda. It's so far out still.

Upper level...

GFS:
https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/models/?model=gfs&region=atl&pkg=z500_mslp

Euro:
https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/models/?model=ecmwf&region=atl&pkg=z500_mslp

You can see how high pressure tries to block the storm's forward progress. In the 18Z GFS and 12Z Euro, they both show the storm actually backing up some. It's too far out to know anything right now, but you can see that both models are picking up on some strong high pressure. If that high pressure actually ends up being setup like that, the storm will not curve before hitting continental North America.

But first it's Bermuda. It could miss continental North America and still not be a fish.

HWRF for example only goes through 5 days:
https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/models/?model=hwrf-p&region=06L&pkg=mslp_wind
(Still not to Bermuda in that period as of posting this.)

The NHC themselves have an average error over the past 5 years where only two thirds of the time does a storm stay within 198 nautical miles of the forecast point at 5 days. ( https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/verification/verify4.shtml ) The storm could still be days away from Bermuda at that point. And then more days from the US potentially. No one on Earth knows, which you know, but I want to emphasize that to others. It's way too far out. We're all guessing, including all the experts.

A good time to remind people to be prepared just in case.

https://www.ready.gov/hurricanes
https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/prepare/ready.php
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Florence...Foe or Fish? Opinions? - AquaRN, 9/5/2018, 5:54 pm
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