Dorian Struggling West.. A Sign of An Active EARLY CV HURRICANE SEASON... Be Prepared

Wide View:

The one thing that does bother me is that they keep saying he is moving FAST and yet the Cone moves slowly west.. well to me anyway. 

Wondering if it he is going to ridge the Straits of Florida into the Gulf at this point, though that doorway north could happen. 

Dorian is a very unusual storm in that he should not be on the tropicals maps at all. He is not just a little too early, he is approximately a month early on the scene and when you arrive to the party too early you often stand around waiting for people to put out the food and drinks. And, you can see by the loop above he's having problems getting tropical nutrition to give himself enough energy to get across the Ocean to our side of the world. 

To put this into perspective, I have a tracking map that I told myself I was going to use this year the way I used to just for fun and well... to see if I remember how to track by hand! I have a have an old friend who has been around a long time and is an interesting blend of Old School and New Age and he always says if you are not progging the storm by hand on a map you miss it's not the same. Point by point, dot by dot, advisory by advisory...graphing it... progging it on a real hurricane map. He said you just lose the feel for it online when the storm's position automatically upgrades. Trust me he is APPED out and is tracking it on every media ability to him... but it's I suppose like virtual sex vs real sex. Sometimes, one can be better than the other but usually people prefer body to body, face to face... and the thought here being that the tactual joy of tracking and putting a new dot on a map grid and seeing the real difference between a difference of .3 N or .7 north really makes a difference when you are doing it by hand. Just my example...   For a soldier on the other side of the Earth he or she is really thrilled to see the love of their life on their iPhone or online .. it's not the same as rushing into their arms.

So, the point of this is that many of your basic old fashioned grocery store maps don't even start until 55.0W or 50.0W or you may get lucky and find one that starts at 45.0W. The old ones that unwound on thin paper from the National Hurricane Center in the days of Neil Frank started over the Cape Verde Islands and Africa... Publix was not as generous. Tropical Storm Dorian is at 41.5 this morning headed west at 20 mph forward speed and still way off the map I'm using.

That is how far West he is still, even though his 5 Day Cone stretches far to the Eastern Tip of Cuba and the Bahamas. The illusion begins to take on a life of it's own when you keep looking at the Cone and come on we ALL look at the Cone.  Start looking at the beginning point of the Cone more and the end part less. Remember those stupid wall plaques that would read "it's the journey not the destination" and enjoy the process.

As for Miami.. this is a storm to watch. Maybe Bermuda needs to watch it and I'm sure the islands do and far away in Galveston there are people watching it. Hey we watch the Kardashdians - - - why not watch this storm? Until he falls apart and his pulse is totally flat for two days.. remember to check the tropics.

This morning Dorian is having a very hard time, after a very difficult night, and he is basically fighting for his life. Up until yesterday he was cruising along in the relative safety of a monsoonal trough that goes by many names along the ITZ. He was previously getting fed baby food moisture and riding with training wheels. Yesterday the training wheels came off and he is on his own.. attempting to do what few storms before him have ever done... cross the Atlantic and make landfall somewhere the way Bertha did in 1996.  We use Bertha as an example because it's one of the few storms that managed that feat so early on from so far away.  We don't mention the ones that died along the way forgotten in the history books and statistics that few really study any more. The models know CLIMO it's figured into their equations. Most meteorologists today run the models. People like Jeff Masters and I know "Hurricane History" really well and can see the ghosts of other storms above and below the tracks of the current storms. We know where that one went N or another one gained strength or this one looked like it was going to die and ended up a Category 3 and we remember well the ones that never did.  The really historically famous ones find a way to hang on until somewhere in their journey they get their groove going again and explode somewhere down the line after we thought they were gone. The others were lost on the tropical cutting room floor.

Plain and simple.

John.. Jack.. whatever his name is Beven wrote one beautiful, honest discussion this morning at 5 AM. I knew who it was before I got the bottom and knew who it wasn't.

There are two sets of models. One set keeps it alive, the other set kill it off on the north coast of Haiti or Cuba..or maybe before it ever smells the scent of Bacardi in San Juan. For the duration of Dorian (however long he  is here) I'd follow the models that got him right and go with those models in the future....if there is a future and from the way he  looks this morning there may be a future. He actually looks a lot better this morning than he did last night.

So... to be clear.

The GFS, NAVGEM  and HWRF don't have any faith in Dorian and keep him weak near Haiti and maybe wave he washes ashore on the beaches of the Florida Keys and South Florida like those over exhausted mating manatees.

The ECMWF, UKMET and Canadian take the North road here and have him in the Bahamas in 5 days.

Both keep the high strong for the short term and him underneath the high westbound.

The problem with the northernmost solution is that some models have indicated if the steering currents bomb out in the Bahamas and Dorian is in the Bahamas he stays for a few days and reintensifies over very warm water ...which could be a big problem. Obviously bigger than him raining himself on some tropical beach in a Tropical Depression... as in tropical depression and need Prozac.

And, yes if it's a strengthening tropical storm becoming a hurricane in the Bahamas West of Miami and the High builds in again.. OH SNAP.. that could be bad. And, has happened over and over again in history though I am NOT saying it could. Just trying to share with you some knowledge of hurricanes and history and possibilities and to really understand the many intangibles there are in trying to lay out a 5 or 7 day forecast with a multitude of models and many plausible solutions.

At 11 AM the discussion stays consistent and conservative and chooses to maintain Dorian as a most, minimal tropical storm period. The shear is not THAT high, the water is only getting warmer in his path and they explain it much like I did. Either it lives and stays weak and goes west looking for warmer waters and moister pastures or it dies out and goes flat as an open wave. Of course..they didn't say it as colorful or creative as I did ... but we are both saying the same thing.

"

TROPICAL STORM DORIAN DISCUSSION NUMBER  10
NWS NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL       AL042013
1100 AM AST FRI JUL 26 2013

VISIBLE SATELLITE IMAGES SHOW THAT THE CLOUD PATTERN OF DORIAN IS
RATHER DISORGANIZED...WITH LITTLE OR NO EVIDENCE OF BANDING
FEATURES.  THE CURRENT INTENSITY ESTIMATE IS HELD AT 45 KT IN
AGREEMENT WITH A DVORAK ESTIMATE FROM TAFB AND A RECENT ASCAT
OVERPASS.  WATER VAPOR IMAGERY AND TOTAL PRECIPITABLE WATER DATA
INDICATE THAT DORIAN WILL BE ENCOUNTERING DRY AIR OVER THE NEXT DAY
OR SO AND THIS...ALONG WITH MODERATE WEST-SOUTHWESTERLY
SHEAR...SHOULD CAUSE SOME WEAKENING OF THE TROPICAL CYCLONE.  LATER
IN THE FORECAST PERIOD...THE DYNAMICAL GUIDANCE SHOW ONLY A SLIGHT
DECREASE IN SHEAR.  THE OFFICIAL INTENSITY FORECAST IS SIMILAR TO
THE PREVIOUS ONE AND IS ONLY A LITTLE BELOW THE STATISTICAL-
DYNAMICAL GUIDANCE.  AN ALTERNATIVE SCENARIO...WHICH IS CERTAINLY
POSSIBLE...IS THAT DORIAN COULD DEGENERATE INTO A TROPICAL WAVE
WITHIN THE NEXT COUPLE OF DAYS.

THE STORM CONTINUES TO MOVE RAPIDLY WEST-NORTHWESTWARD IN THE FLOW
SOUTH OF A STRONG MID- TO LOW-LEVEL HIGH PRESSURE AREA.  THE GLOBAL
MODELS CONTINUE TO FORECAST THE RIDGE TO BUILD WESTWARD TO THE
NORTH OF DORIAN...WHICH SHOULD CAUSE THE TROPICAL CYCLONE TO MOVE
GENERALLY TOWARD THE WEST OR SLIGHTLY NORTH OF WEST THROUGH THE
FORECAST PERIOD.  THE OFFICIAL TRACK FORECAST IS SIMILAR TO THE
PREVIOUS NHC TRACK AND LEANS TOWARD THE GFS AND HWRF SOLUTIONS. 
THIS IS ALSO CLOSE TO...BUT A LITTLE SLOWER THAN...THE FLORIDA
STATE UNIVERSITY SUPERENSEMBLE."

Keep watching. To me and many others it is the best Reality Show on Earth.... a REAL SHOW and better than any fake survival show on some fake island with a team of producers, cameramen and carefully chosen actors. The Kardashdians may have a nicer suite at the Eden Roc on Miami Beach... but then again maybe Dorian is trying to find his way to their beach ... my beach... Miami Beach.

Who knows really??

Best loop I can show is this one and it shows how he ramped up... sucked in moisture from the south... weakened, fought his way back... lost the training wheels and he is sucking in dry air as he is trying to get to the warmer oranges out ahead of him.  Not an easy job for a July Tropical Storm.

Keep watching.

He should be doing a little better. Not much and again...AGAIN...the GFS used to lose him all the time on old model runs.. maybe it was right.

Either way...Dorian is in a sink or swim situation right now and although he is still being fed tropical moisture he is cut off from the better moisture feeds he had surrounded by a sea of high air with a seemingly strong will to live.

Besos Bobbi

Ps .. Stay tuned.. and wrote this offline OLD SCHOOL HAHA while the Cable Guy tried to find a "good box" in his truck. Makes you wonder where his truck is from if his boxes don't work. Maybe they work better as props than real boxes... but... where there is a will there is a way and I wrote this offline on some old Word Program... yep, that's me.. if there is a way I'll find it! Cable fixed... a bit...seems water got into the wires from all the rain and they are going to run a new wire... the cable guy thinks all the trees will come down in a big Cane... he seems worried. 

Meanwhile it was 58 degrees this morning and birds were chirping and this is meteorologically more like late August than Late July with an early, strong winter being predicted. You get tropical systems (later after this one) moving across the ocean with big fronts dipping and you get the chance for landfalling storms.