Alex and the Oil Spill

Tropical Storm Alex forms off the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula in the warm waters of the Caribbean Sea.

Infrared Satellite, TS Alex, Image: NOAA

The current track takes Alex toward the Yucatan, weakening as it crosses the peninsula. Hurricane forecasters expect it to strengthen once again in the southwestern Gulf of Mexico, moving toward the south Texas coastline before possibly curving toward the west-southwest.

Official Forecast Track, Tropical Storm Alex

Most of the computer models agree on this forecast track. Hurricane specialists from the National Hurricane Center presented their post-season analysis of the 2009 Atlantic Hurricane Season at a meteorological conference in Miami this week. During their presentation, they announced the European Model, or the ECMWF, has delivered the most successful track forecast the past few years. That model takes Alex toward the southwestern Gulf of Mexico toward central Mexico. The ECMWF isn’t plotted on most computer model tracking maps, if you follow those.

You can find the link to the European model in my link to tracking hurricanes, but it’s hard to read for most people. Keep in mind that the hurricane specialists know which models are giving the best performance when they issue their track forecast, so you can be confident that when you are looking at the 5-day forecast from the National Hurricane Center, that is the most accurate information available.

This past week, two of the government models, the HWRF and the GFDL, were taking the disturbance in the Caribbean to the northern Gulf of Mexico. You can’t really follow computer models for tropical disturbances until there is a tropical depression, or a center of circulation. It’s hard to explain, but the mathematical models are set up to take a storm that has already formed and track it. They do a pretty good job of that. But, until a low, or depression has formed, you can’t rely on all those “spaghetti plots”, as they are familiarly called.

I walked up to Bill Read, the Director of the National Hurricane Center, and I said, “Hi, Mr. Read, I’m Dawn Brown from FOX 8 New Orleans. What’s up with the  HWRF?”

Well, he smiled and said, “We initialized the model with a fake storm…, ” to try and give people battling the oil spill an idea of where Alex might go if it formed. Basically, the hurricane specialists had to input some numbers into the storm, such as maximum winds, etc., to run the model, because once again, these models are not designed to work unless there is a storm.

This is why last week, when most of the models were taking the tropical disturbance toward the west, the HWRF and GFDL were headed straight north. Now those two models are more in line with the other computer models and the official track from the National Hurricane Center reflects that.

Does that mean workers near the oil spill need not worry? No. We still have to watch Alex cross the Yucatan and see how it fares in the southwestern Gulf in the beginning of next week.

By the way, I really like Bill Read. Straight shooter, very smart, great communicator.

-Dawn Brown

Baja Prepares for Another Hit

Hurricane Rick Satellite, Image: NOAA

Baja California is preparing for another strike by a hurricane this season. Resort towns near Los Cabos, Mexico are preparing for a direct hit. Visible satellite imagery above shows a weakening Hurricane Rick, although it still packs winds up to 105 miles per hour this Monday afternoon. In September, Hurricane Jimena made landfall north of resort areas near Los Cabos as a category 2 hurricane, quickly weakening as it moved onshore.

Wind Probabilities Hurricane Rick, Image: NOAA

3 Day Track Forecast Hurricane Rick, Image: NOAA

Currently, National Hurricane Center forecasters believe the storm will still be a hurricane when it approaches Los Cabos on Wednesday. Wave action caused by the storms’ high winds is already being blamed for one death in the Los Cabos resort area. The first image above is a product from the National Hurricane Center that shows the probability of tropical storm or hurricane force winds. Currently there is a 70-80% chance of tropical storm force winds affecting Cabo San Lucas on Wednesday.

Large swells from the storms high winds over the last several days will definitely affect the coast of Baja and Mexico. At one point Rick’s maximum sustained winds topped out at 180 miles per hour. Category 5 hurricanes on the Saffir-Simpson scale are 155mph+.

For the latest on Hurricane Rick, please go to my section on Tracking Hurricanes and the MYL Forums.

For the latest on the high swells, check out the forecast from Surfline. Their blog is on the menu bar on the left hand side. Surfline has some great forecasters with the latest information on wind and wave action.

On the East Coast of the United States, it feels like winter! Cold weather advisories are in effect from Georgia to Pennsylvania.

-Dawn Brown