Updated 11 PM. Questions Tonight That Will Be Answered Tomorrow.Marco Sings to Laura... Come on and Meet Me in the Middle As He Heads Towards Jamalaya Country.

11 PM Sunday Evening

https://t.co/vZ3Rogvgxa Sweet #tropical dreams everyone made this to put in the #blog then going to sleep. Hopefully tomorrow brings answers regarding #Marco 1st & #Laura down the road. Again ⁦⁦@NWSKeyWest⁩ is good to follow along w ⁦@NHC_Atlantic⁩ pic.twitter.com/QNOgCS3RSV

— BobbiStorm (@BobbiStorm) August 23, 2020

A bit of advice on the ever changing models.

A good water vapor loop shows you the story.

And follow not just the NHC but your local NWS.

My favorite being NWS Key West.

Trust me they are watching both these systems.

The  image above shows more details for now...

...than models that have flip flopped often.

Marco as seen in the right image is there.

To the North of Marco is a flat line...

...with strong winds = shear.

The image to the left shows convection ...

...being sheared away and dry air to the NW.

While Marco moves one way...

...it is possible strong weather moves towards W FL.

Time will tell.

Sunday Night and Monday should be windy.

Wet and windy but they are not IN the Cone.

Justs weather impacts but there so stay in port.

I'll post a loop to show this better.

But the Water Vapor Image below shows it also.

Marco seeming to move faster than planned.

That's convection far from it's center.

Question is will the center catch up to that convection.

I have seen that happen before in this area.

Sometimes movement is stairstep vs fluid.

Dry air to the W and WNW of it.

The moisture flow is evident.

How strong is Marco tomorrow.

And will it's center have shifted?

Laura to the right...

Big strong moist evenvelope but...

where is the real center?

Still developing storms in ways.

Models below.

One of my best friends Stuart who lived in Key West and was the President of the Orchid Society and a business man there taught me to always think Short Term and then Long Term.  I miss Stuart, he passed away too young but he knew Key West and he knew the facts of life very well. So short term is Marco, a tropical storm moving over warm water but also dealing with shear from the approaching trof. The discussion from the NHC is excellent tonight and I urge you to read it as the forecast with Marco is difficult still due to the shear, the trof and it's ability as a smaller storm to pulse up in intensity and just as easily fall apart, where and when it pulses up it important. Also again a weaker storm pulls more to the left and a stronger storm pulls more to the right. Aren't tropical systems amazingly complex and hard fo forecast even in a day and age when we know so much. For now the Northern Gulf of Mexico coast is due to have nasty weather and which way it veers later depends on many factors. Cones are great but the thought process behind the forecast is in the discussion and available to you on every advisory.

https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/text/refresh/MIATCDAT4+shtml/230245.shtml

Next we look at Laura, our long term prospect and wonder on what it can do if it pulls it's center together ever and gets into the Gulf of Mexico with the islands in the rear view mirror. While the Islands can take a big bite out of a Major Hurricane ... oddly they can sometimes maintain their existence acting more like a strong tropical wave and going with the flow until they find a sweet spot to flare up and then it's more like game on and where are they going? One thing I will say that I learned form someone I won't name is it's true the way they look early on shows you what they could look like down the road should they intensify. Where Marco has always been small - -  the envelope for Laura has been big and strong even when it's center seemed lacking in structure. 

Yes, it does show Laura going over Cuba.

Where, when is my question.

Laura has the answers.

I want to show you two storms that did this.

One was very strong early on... 

...the other was strong later in the NE GOM.

That's Frederic 1979

Below is Georges in 1998

Note Frederick found it's groove in the N GOM.

Georges had it earlier, lost it.

But still made impacted Key West..

...and the GOM coast as a good storm.

Similar track history ...

similar to Laura now.

Each storm is different.

When I talk on Camille regarding Marco...

...talking track, not intensity.

Laura is still such a question.

Sunday morning will bring some answers.

Tomorrow morning the sun is gonna rise in Key West.

on my beach a block from my fav place to get cafecito...

Can't tell you how many sunrises I watched there...

...sipping cafecito or cortadito.

My Great Grandparents watched that same sunrise... 

...they lived on Whitehead Street.

So this is all personal for me.

But every hurricane is personal for me.

As it's all Hurricane History.

And we are watching history in the making.

Enjoy my thoughts from 9 PM below.

The graphic above it a bit more useful now than the Cone.

Everyone shows the cone.

This is where they come together.

The exact place of landfall yet to be determined.

But it's definitely somewhere on the bayou.

Bayou country, low lying.

Prone to flooding.

That's why the Cajun Navy is so good at what they do.

And with this much rain and storm surge coming in..

...the Cajun Navy will be busy this week.

Meeting in the middle ups the ante for rain, flooding.

Wiind damage, storm surge.

Structured weakened by the first storm...

...can fall apart in the second storm.

If the current scenario plays out.

That's a lot of rain and don't forget the wind.

And I do believe the intensity forecasts are underdone.

Expect a much stronger hurricane.

Unless shear pops up fast and furious. 

And SHEAR has been dogging it for days.

So shear may save the day intensity wise.

Again refer to water vapor loop video above.

What could change?

If anything the cones could move a bit to the right.

But for now going with this scenario.

If so I'll start singing Bama Breeze.

Much depends on how strong Marco gets first.

Then what happens with Laura.

Long time readers of my blog know that when I put up a song it usually has something to do with the forecast and the track, unless I say otherwise. I've been hearing Jambalaya in my head for days ever since it became apparent that TD14 was not dead and was going to thread the Yucatan Channel, get into the very warm Gulf of Mexico and be someone's problem. And, according to satellite imagery and forecasted movement of upper air features it was more likely to be a problem down on the bayou than near the Texas/Mexican border and IF Marco did everything just right (and so far it has) then Laura would follow along slowed down by friction of land as she visits various island ports and meets Marco in the middle as the other song I showed on Friday often implied.

As I said prevously here and on Twitter, storms rarely make landfall in tandem at the same time. While it makes for a great weather novel and wonderful graphics on TWC it rarely happens for a reason. Usually one storm becomes stronger than the other or moves faster than the other and as kids do so often one storm plays follow the leader. And NOW the models have met in the middle of the Northern Gulf of Mexico and down on the bayou they are declaring a State of Emergency and getting themselves into gear to prepare for not one but possibly two landfalling hurricanes. As I also said people will drive inland towards the Ozarks or find a shelter in the store during a pandemic that creates levels of complexity onto this disaster.

And yes Laura is going to travel across land.
Land usually, but not always, slows them down.
But Georges traveled over land and kept going.
So don't buy into how the Islands will kill it off.
The track of Georges over the islands it traveled.

What could change? Oh pretty much everything, but I do think this is most likey how it will play out and we should know by tomorrow afternoon as Marco begins to feel the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico energizing him compounded by other features that will either shear him or enhance his outflow and this is why I have been showing Camille and insisting Laura was not an Andrew scenario but people should look out for more of a Camille scenario though no models show a hurricane of that intensity, but track wise this is kind of classic. The often ignored tropical wave floundering through the Caribbean, pulls it together as it nears the Yucatan and finds it's stride in the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico.  Laura, stubborn as TD13 always was continues battling negative conditions and depending on where she comes off of which particular island in the Greater Antilles it could present a huge problem for Key West; hopefully not as it's one of my favored ports of call and the "Old Country" for my family that lived there in the 1800s. It's a Georges sort of scenario without the intensity of Georges thankfully. I hate when people assume Hispanoila or a trek over the mountains of Cuba will kill off a storm as I have been hit too many times by a storm that came over the  mountains and found hot water, hurricane fuel in the Florida Straits and intenify into a very strong hurricane.

So now we have to watch and see what Marco does, if any negative conditions appear on it's fast track towards landfall and how that could mitigate the forecast, because as Marco goes so many Laura go and if something changes, the models change so stay tuned and follow the updated advisories from the NHC and their forecast Cones and keep reading my blog. Please read back through Thurday and Friday where i did talk extensively more on Camille (track wise) versus than buying the early models showing it flopping into the Tex Mex area, again the map shows Camille started South of Cuba but Camille was an African Tropical Wave that finally found it's groove near the Yucatan.




Besos BobbiStorm
@bobbistorm on Twitter and Instagram

Ps there's a wave off of Africa but we can talk on that later - oh and another wave coming off sooner rather than later. One reason I like that old school loop I show as it shows the whole basin beautifully.