Quick Isaac Update

Track has been a little north of what I thought-- and on some levels seems destined to bump into every piece of land possible-- hits Hispaniola, scrapes Cuba, near the southern tip of FL and along the W coast of FL. With all the land obstacles in the near future, the best chance we have of seeing this thing become a STRONGER hurricane is if it can migrate west into GOM away from land. 

Latest NHC Map--

Will update later with latest guidance and more detailed speculation. 

Isaac on the docket...

Isaac formed and is now not far from impacting the Leeward Islands by this time tomorrow. It should hit Hurricane status just past this point.


From here, the speculation is does it stay far enough south and NOT get beat up badly by Hispaniola. There are mountain peaks OVER 10k ft on that island and it would not be the first time a 'Cane never reached it's potential due to land interaction. Guidance has shown some variety-and the NHC has marked this as the most likely track.

It will eventually take a NW jog-- and it depends how quickly.

My guess so far is it takes the south side of the "cone" over the next 24 hours and we will adjust from there. US interest from FL SW into the Gulf should monitor at this point.

Here's a quick loop from the GFDL-- crosses the storm over Hispaniola, emerges into the Bahamas and hits in the vicinity of Miami.
http://raleighwx.americanwx.com/models/gfdl/18zgfdl500mbHGHTPMSLgfdlLoop.html

Cooler and a little rainy pattern on the way..

Cool, rainy Sunday this week with SOME heavier spots were 1-2 inches fell especially to the west of Lynchburg. There was a sinkhole on 81 in between Lexington and Staunton today. I checked the some of the rainfall totals and didn't see anything too extreme so my first guess is this could have just been a long standing issue. However, not having data from this exact spot makes this a big guess.

This pattern will persist for the first few days this week and we will have some chances of showers and thunderstorms through the early part of the week. 

The tropics may be heating up. We do have Gordon taking the rare form and move west to east and should be very close to Portugal in a couple days but likely down to just a tropical depression. After that, a system about 1000 miles west of the Cape Verde Islands looks prime to develop into something very soon. This has  a decent chance of being a "news maker". 

 http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/

Ernesto chase video

As promised-

Josh Morgerman - a hardcore storm chaser and founder of iCyclone has posted his video from Ernesto.

iCylcone


Cool graph of the barometer from his location--

Barometer drop


Link to his FB page--

iCyclone

Friday Storms.

This spring/summer has been above active storm wise for something you would remember--

HUGE hail event in late March that was up to 6 inches deep in places, Derecho event on June 29th that knocked out power to 90% or more of the region.

Friday MAY add to that event. At this point-- the SPC has placed our area under a 30% risk for 25 miles of any specific point. Considering we are 72-90 hours away-- that's a pretty bold call. We've got a stronger cold front moving in, and the deciding factor may end up being how much sun we get Friday. If we keep the cloud cover from the storms Thursday (not likely to be WIDE severe that day) Despite good parameters, we could avoid another significant event.

Tropical Wise, Florence formed and dissipated without much fanfare, as we expected. Ernesto has been all over the place forecast wise, but seems like it will make landfall in the Belize/ Mexico Yucatan region. top winds are around 80 MPH currently and could MAYBE touch 90 before landfall. I've got a friend who is a dedicated chaser and I'll share some of his updated when it gets rolling down there. His website is
http://icyclone.com/

Rainy pattern update--

This should be a cooler and somewhat wetter weak upcoming. I do think the best rain totals and rain coverage is south of our region, but a region wide .5 to 2 inch rain event is likely.

Latest QPF from the HPC shows minor changes--Best chance for rain will be Monday and then more showery and thunderstorm stuff Tuesday into Wednesday.



Earnesto is in trouble-- has not strengthened as much as thought AND is too far south. Landfall maybe Hondorus and or Belieze. Latest NHC plot--

Florence formed as we thought--as it progresses east, likely to NOT become a Hurricane and may just weaken as it goes well north of the Caribbean Islands. I don't see this as much of a threat to anyone. 

Maybe some rain?

Drought has been a "buzz word" in the news recently-- and some parts of the nation are in dire straights. Here in the Commonwealth of VA, it's dry- but not HORRIBLE dry. Parts of the Southeast, and much of the mid west are in HORRIFIC shape the rain wise.

With our "minor" drought conditions here (there was impact from the heat on local crops-- not specific to drought) we will get a nice break of cooler and wetter weather. We've had a ton of showers and thunderstorms but nothing "region" wide. I can think of 2-3 times this summer where the models showed a decent rain and we got NOTHING or very little. I do like how this looks at this point. As a reference, here is the HPC's rainfall total over the next 5 days.

These events tend to be more showery and the gradient won't look anything like that. However, I like how this looks and think we do see a region wide .75 to 2 inch rainfall over the next 5 days. A little more could be in the pipeline AFTER that. 

For those who enjoy tropical events-- Earnesto is fighting it's way through some tougher conditions and should achieve hurricane status later this weekend/early next week. The question is does it run into the Yucatan and just fade out or graze it, end up in the gulf as a more strong threat to the Gulf states region. My take now is I'm hedging more towards the graze into the gulf, but we've got plenty of time.  If you're a map person, the NHC has some good easy to read info on their website.

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_at5+shtml/203848.shtml?tswind120#contents

There was a nice flare up of convection near the Bahamas recently and that has slight potential to form but what I'm really interested is the flair up off the Africa coast-- labeled as LIKELY to become Tropical System in the next 48 hours. We should have Florence by early next week.