Hurricane Harbor: Landfalling Gordon Strengthening Moving Towards GOM Beaches

I've often explained I like the map presentation of the Canadian Hurricane Center especially when there are multiple systems in the Atlantic. You can see them both and time stamps for both time and forecast wind speed at that time. Note how in the long term the remnants of Gordon bend to the right towards Florence that is forecast to most likely find a weakness in the Ridge and move to the North away from the East Coast. The EURO model has consistently seen a strong ridge with Florence moving closer to the US coast than the GFS that took it whoosh out to sea until today when they flip flopped and the stubborn EURO showed an opening in the ridge for Florence and immediately the GFS showed Florence moving slower getting trapped under the ridge. You can't make this up and that's why many don't pay attention to the long term models as much as they used to as they never seem to come to a consensus. The NHC blends them and usually extrapolates the movement of the storm over the next five days giving weight to both extremes. You can read how they do this in their better than average discussion today trying to explain the many contradictory signs and models for Florence.

Generally if you keep extrapolating the track day by day.

Adjusting in real time for minor changes.

You get a pretty accurate track.

If Florence feels that weakness and takes the doorway North..

Bermuda will be lucky.

Because other wise Bermuda may have to worry on Florence.

As always it's a wait and see...

Long term models are kind of for entertainment at this point.

What do I think? People ask me. I can see the logic for the various possibilities. But each of those possibilities have to do with several things happening that have not happened yet. Each possible track relies on variables and if the variable doesn't pan out the model is as old as stale white bread left out on the table too long.

Florence can find the weakness in the ridge that has been slowly moistening up as the convection I have previously mentioned NE of PR moved up into the Central Atlantic interacting with an Upper Level feature that is slowly eroding the Western edge of the previously strong ridge.

This is the area I am speaking about.

Out in front of Florence on the right.

Loop the loop below.

See for yourself.

http://weather.unisys.com/current-weather?source=1&plot=149&region=at&inv=0&t=cur

If Florence does not take that developing weakness she could get further West and be a problem for Bermuda and if she gets way further West at the least she can bump up the surf at the beaches and make people along the East Coast more than concerned what she will do next. I can see her slowing down, battling the negative conditions that the NHC has outlined in their discussion she will soon be encountering; she could stall, loop and even intensify over warmer water closer in into a Major Hurricane briefly. That part of the Atlantic is ripe for supporting a strong hurricane this year. Most likely you can put money on Florence finding another weakness or a system coming off of the US down the road that picks her up and takes her out to sea. That's a bet you can rarely lose money on but if you do you lose big and the East Coast has more to lose than a small bet between meteorologists. It's just really too soon to tell. It's a good two days away from knowing what condition Florence will be in and by then we will see if the EURO takes the last model run and runs with it or it flips back to a weaker version of it's horror story run from the other night. Stay tuned.

Image above from yesterday where Florence looked like a Hurricane.

It's from yesterday's blog.

Today's discussion from the NHC mentions ...

...what I spoke about yesterday.

As a side note I believe Florence has been a hurricane for a while, but as the NHC has been busy with Gordon it seems to have been either ignored or more so a sense of lets see how she is in another few hours as she is so far out at sea it doesn't matter. I posted on this yesterday pretty much insisting Florence as at near Hurricane Strength but the NHC is the bottom line.

As for Gordon... we are watching him finally pull together again and look like the storm that lashed Miami and Key Biscayne with quite a punch out of no where. She closed her center off again and she's looking the best she has been and just on top as this is what the models have agreed on for days. Again I said "AGREED" as most models have agreed on the end game for Gordon.

There isn't much to add as much as to just watch it play out with Gordon, a very one sided system with most of it's convection from about 11 AM to 6 PM with the NE and East side being very strong. It's almost like a shield of strong Tropical Storm force conditions moving towards the coast and it will push a storm surge (not a huge one) onto low lying roads, beaches and places really used to this sort of set up.