Update: The disturbance now has a temporary ID, AL97, and formal model tracking will start soon.
Tropical Cyclones are often about as interesting as watching paint dry. Below the brief update on the situation in the Atlantic is a no-very-brief article on why hitting your refresh key every five minutes during hurricane season is not very productive and hard on your keyboard 😛 ..
Here is what the disturbance in the Atlantic looks like this morning, along with the NHC’s Tropical Weather Outlook as an overlay:
Things have clarified a bit since yesterday. The trends are more southerly, across the Greater Antilles (Puerto Rico/Hispaniola/Cuba) and south Florida, then entering the Gulf before developing. So to be clear, nothing but rain and some squally weather is expected there. The European Model has shifted to be more in line with the GFS scenario, and now has the system as a weak disturbance in the Gulf in a week (Thursday Evening, August 7th at 8pm). Here are charts from the two centers. GFS is quite aggressive, and ultimately shows a pretty significant storm menacing the Mississippi Delta:
But that’s a long way off. The bottom line hasn’t changed: monitor, if you have a hurricane plan, fine, if not, then take this opportunity to make one. It still doesn’t look like anything in the way of a real storm will develop until late this weekend.
What a lot of people either don’t understand (and often in the media don’t care or won’t tell you because they want the clicks) is that things don’t generally change very fast. While we get data on a storm at least every 10 minutes from the GOES satellite, it takes hours to see if scan-to-scan changes are trends or wobbles. Another factor is that the models only run every six hours, at what are known as the “synoptic times”. These are the times when global weather observations and satellite data are compiled in to a comprehensive “snapshot” of what we think the atmosphere looks like. This happens at 0, 6, 12, and 18 GMT (in the Eastern Daylight Time zone, 8pm, 2am, 8am, and 2pm). It takes the models several hours to run, so that is another factor.
Another another factor is that unless you know a specific reason why a model changed, you have to watch and compare several model cycles to see if there are trends in that. In other words, it generally takes a minimum of 6 hours to see if anything changes, and when a storm is offshore, often 12 to 24 hours. This is especially true for when they don’t exist yet – as tropical waves, disturbances, or even invest areas. Although sometimes things develop faster, it takes a day to see if anything is changing.
So when planning your monitoring schedule you should be aware of three schedules. For areas under the watch of the US National Weather Service (the Atlantic, East Pacific, and Central Pacific/Hawai’i), Tropical Weather Outlooks are issued at synoptic times – 8pm, 2am, 8am, and 2pm Eastern Daylight Time. This is when to check the TWO to see if there are any new disturbances. Forecasts are issued three hours later, since it takes time to assimilate new data and come up with the forecast. So forecasts for live storms are issued at 11pm, 5am, 11am, and 5pm EDT. The third schedule to be aware of is when local emergency managers and decision makers issue their evacuation and other guidance. That isn’t on a regular schedule, but often happens one to three hours after the NHC forecasts come out, a delay so they can get briefed by either NHC or their local WSFO (weather service forecast office) and get their act together. Given the need to warn the public, this will usually happen two or three times a day (any overnight changes will either be anticipated at 11pm, or wait until the morning updates). So once a watch is issued for your area, if you check the local news in the AM, the noon update, and after 5 PM you’re probably up to speed.
It is very rare (and we can almost always warn you) if you need to check more often due to a rapidly evolving situation. This is why I almost never bombard you with “urgent updates!” and prompts to check back often because it’s a waste of time and energy.
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Well, phooey. Weather is all the entertainment us old folks have. At least the Orange Blob o’ Doom has a romance novelesque air about it. Maybe we could add a grey mist of oppressive dread to fill the gaps between model runs,
Ever hear of the Hallmark Channel 😛 ?