Invest96L Spinning West Towards the Name Danny. Model Discussion & Thoughts on Hurricane Donna. Just Keep Reading..

NHC says 70% chance in the 5 Day

(keep that track in mind when reading up on Hurricane Donna)

Up Close:

As Mike says. "he got some spin"

https://www.facebook.com/TropicalUpdates?fref=nf

(great conversation on Facebook...)

Can the spin win out over the dry air is the question?

What this does have going for it is a lack of strong shear there.

Still it needs to get to warmer waters.

You can find these links on www.spaghettimodels.com

Again staying weak longer keeps it lower and healthier for later ...

...when he is near the islands as a projected Hurricane.

Random thoughts.

The NHC tends to low ball Invests and go conservative. A sort of "prove it to me" attitude vs "Wow! I can see the possibilities!!!" whereas models sometimes grab onto the same Invest and start implying a Cat 2 Hurricane. The NHC, the bottom like for responsibility on forecasting and protecting our lives, errs on the side of caution and continuity in both track and strength forecasting. It's not an easy walk, sort of like trying to walk the balance beam being dizzy from numerous models singing you songs from different genres. You just have to keep walking and ignore the clamor, keep your eye on the end game and do your best. Generally, they do an amazing job. It's a forecast and that's a weather prediction based on hard scientific data and sometimes it's wrong. It's not a post game analysis it's a pre-season discussion. How often does the team highlighted on the cover of Sports Illustrated as the team to win the Super Bowl at the start of the season... win the Super Bowl? By those standards, the NHC does a great job!

Currently models imply that Invest 96L will ... could... can ... become a strong hurricane, possibly even a Category 3. Hey, I didn't imply that I'm telling you what some models have implied. Models are not people, they do not explain their thoughts. We look at the models, then we look at the satellite images, the isobars, the flow on the water vapor loop, the highs, the lows and assume (bad word) why such and such model implied what it did.

Also in agreement with much of what Jim Williams says on his new Tropical Update on www.hurricanecity.com.

Today is a day of building and working his (his for Danny) way through the dry air and showing us what he's got. If the lead wave without any low pressure attached and lacking spin can do it I don't know see why Invest 96L can't do it. It will keep him weaker longer and that make him less likely to a fish storm and more of a threat to someone in the islands, Florida, Carolina or ?? down the tropical line.

Today on TWC  (yes I still watch) Jim Cantore talked on this.

Jim Cantore did not have a dream that said:

"Wow, Invest 96L could be a Cat 3!!!"

He just gave over information models have delivered.

The same models the NHC is looking at ....

...while watching the Invest itself.

But, it's a quiet year you sing..

 Don't Worry, Be Happy!!!

You want to scream:

El Nino, El Nino... 

Godzilla El Nino is here today!!

Sadly it doesn't work that way.

Numbers will be down.

We will not reach Wanda the Fish this year.

But, on any given week we could have an Intense Hurricane.

Could Invest 96L be that storm?

The one to go down into history?

Don't know yet.. 

Only time will tell.

Til then we forecast and discuss the possibilities.

Let's discuss Invest 96L

Before he becomes most likely Tropical Storm Danny

The above IMAGE is from last night.

Invest 96L looked like it had everything going for it.

The star of the Monsoon Trough aka ITCZ

This morning this is what we see.

Where did he go? 

He lost some of his mojo :(

And, yet the models love him...

To his West the previous wave flared up.

NOTE..it flared up punching into dry air..

and flared up at the same time.

Reminds me of a teenager speeding up into a sharp dangerous turn.

Behind Invest 96L are a series of tropical waves.

If Invest 96L does not become "THE HURRICANE" of the year.

One of them might....

Note where the NOAA symbol is where Invest 96L is hiding.

The moisture in front of it is a previous wave.

Above and in front of the islands is Dry Air.

It's worth noting shear is lighter than usual.

But, there is still dry air and the water is warm but not hot.

The old wave near PR got wrapped up with an ULL circled in blue.

There is no reason to believe Invest 96L will not ...

....end up where previous waves went.

If Invest 96L becomes Major Hurricane Danny...

It would be able to make it's own environment...

The stronger a hurricane is ... the further north it pulls.

The weaker a hurricane is... the lower it goes.

This is as basic as saying.

Hurricanes move towards Low Pressure.

Hurricanes move away from or around High Pressure.

Basic but still true.

Models get better.

Satellite imagery is able to slice and dice an Invest.

But the basics remain the same.

For example last night I was studying the Invest shown above.

Shear, wind flow, dry air, etc, etc, etc.

Yet, I still love the old black and white water vapor loop.

The lead wave is blocking for Invest 96L as it's bucking its way head first into the dry wall in the Atlantic. This is how tropical waves work. It's nonstop, ongoing, one wave after the other until the ocean becomes moistened enough for one to get through. Like a child in the back seat asking "Are we there yet?" and no matter how many times you tell them "NO! And, don't ask again I'll tell you when..." and 3 minutes later they ask "Are we there yet??"  Eventually, you get there and often you lose your temper, but no matter what the child keeps asking.

That's the way of the world in the tropics this time of year. Mother Nature doesn't read the news reports about Godzilla in the Pacific. Some years less viable waves roll off of Africa, other years hurricanes form as they roll off the coast of Senegal. By the time they have hit the Cape Verde Islands they have tasted blood.

Elsewhere in the tropics I'm getting curious about the area of convection that just blew up off the coast of the Carolinas. My wave north of PR devoured by the ULL is something I'm still watching. Never good if Upper Level Lows work their way down to the surface with moisture from a tropical wave they ate for a late night snack. Happens. Still watching the area as 'Home Grown' storms have been the rule so far this year.

Noticed Crown Weather highlighted this on Twitter this morning as well.

https://twitter.com/crownweather

My brother loves www.crownweather.com.

I get text messages from him telling me this or that he read.

Obviously, my baby brother doesn't read my blog... 

...but okay, he does take my son to Marlins games in Chicago..

Brothers...got to love em...

(he's hoping to come home to a hurricane headed towards FL...)

For Hurricane History buffs I've included discussion on Hurricane Donna.

I'll update the blog as the situation changes in real time.

So keep checking back. 

History is always important.

Why Hurricane Donna? 

Read on....

Let's look back at 1960. Not a very busy year in strength of the numbers of hurricanes. But, what it lacked in quantity it made up for in quality. This happens often. One reason meteorologists who don't buy the hype keep watching even in slow years to see which tropical wave makes it past the negative factors known as shear, dry air, SAL and moderate water temps.

6 Named Storms.

Just 6.

1960 a famous year in Hurricane History.

Hurricane Donna the Star player.

If this was the OSCARS ....

Donna would have won:

Best Picture

Best Actor

Best Director/Producer

Best Special Effects...

Donna traveled from Africa to America across an ocean that obviously did not host any other Cape Verde storms that year and kept going all the way to Canada. It took down a plane in the Cape Verde Islands, left its mark on the Virgin Islands and went up over the islands crashing into the Florida Keys with Miami on it's vigorous NE Quadrant. It then doubled back over Florida, refusing to take the Florida to Louisiana track and back tracked across Florida. Gained strength out over the Gulf Stream, lashed beaches along the coastline and barreled into Long Island the same way it hit the Florida Keys. Donna continued taking apart people's lives and property in New England, Maine and into Canada. (Note West Coast of FL got hit in a "quiet" year)

Donna made records for longest track, most landfalls and other records on personal levels that few hurricanes have ever managed to come near. Know some nice lady who is about 54 years old named Donna? Donna was a real common girl's name if you lived on the East Coast in the way South Florida has a whole lot of cute mid 20 year old guys named Andrew running around South Beach.

Or perhaps they loved the song Donna by Ritchie Valens? What is in a name time wise?

The links on Donna are endless and you can find them online. Google any town in it's path and Hurricane Donna.

They knew nothing about El Nino.

They knew "September Remember"

There were only 6 named storms in 1960. Slow year in the Atlantic Tropical Basin if you go just by the quantity of numbers. Good meteorologists who know hurricane history not just how to read an El Nino model; they know slow years can bring big hurricane headaches.

It's all about energy being transferred from the equator to the poles on the most simplistic level. And, Mother Nature is sometimes tested to do her job any way she can. Mother Nature's job is to keep shooting off tropical waves to juice up the atmosphere to dry up the dry air and keep moving things along up and around Planet Earth. The atmosphere just keeps moving....

Besos Bobbi

Ps. Leaving you some links about the movie Godzilla. One of my degrees is in literature. I had a great class in film, history and literature. Godzilla may bring up cute images of a giant lizard like monster scaring people through a city in black and white breathing fire that is best scene on enhanced IR imagery or technicolor. The movie was not a "fun" movie but a deep movie on the power of nuclear bombs to destroy a land, a people much in the way a Category 5 Hurricane can take out a coastal city.

http://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1395&context=thesesdissertations

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/14/japans-long-nuclear-disaster-film/?_r=0