Erika dumping heavy rain on the Lesser Antilles
Tropical Storm Erika is hanging together despite strong wind shear, and is bringing high winds and much-needed heavy rain to the Lesser Antilles Islands. Winds on the south shore of Dominica Island were sustained at 37 mph this morning, and 8.03" of rain have been measured at the airport over the past two days. Winds and rain at nearby islands have been less, according to our wundermap for the region. The Hurricane Hunters are in the storm now, and have generally encountered top winds of 40 - 45 mph at the surface. They did find one spot of 50 - 65 mph winds, but that was likely due to outflow from a strong thunderstorm, and is not representative of Erika's wind field.
Figure 1. Radar image of Tropical Storm Erika at 9:15am EDT 9/3/09. Image credit: Meteo France.
Erika has improved in organization a bit since last night, but remains weak and disorganized, thanks to about 20 knots of shear at the 200 mb level, as seen on last night's Guadeloupe upper air sounding. Radar animations out of Martinique show plenty of heavy rain moving through the Lesser Antilles, but little organization of the echoes. Satellite imagery shows no low-level spiral bands and little upper-level outflow. Long range radar out of Puerto Rico is beginning to show rain echoes from Erika approaching the island.
The forecast for Erika
The computer models have come into better agreement about the track of Erika, taking the storm west-northwest over Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. This track will take Erika into a band of significantly higher wind shear of 25 - 35 knots, Friday through Saturday. Considering that Erika is barely maintaining itself as a tropical storm with 20 knots of shear, the combined effects of the higher shear and the encounter with the high mountains of Hispaniola and Puerto Rico should be enough to cause Erika to dissipate by Sunday. Erika's remains will still be capable of dumping very heavy rains of 3 - 5 inches over the Dominican Republic and 1 - 3 inches over Haiti and the Southeast Bahamas, due to the slow motion of the storm. By Monday, when the remains of Erika should be over the Bahamas, the storm will have penetrated through the band of high wind shear over the Greater Antilles, and shear may fall low enough for redevelopment of the storm. This is a scenario offered by the NOGAPS model, which then takes Erika northward towards North Carolina. The other models predict quite a bit more shear in the region than the NOGAPS, and any redevelopment of Erika early next week remains an iffy proposition. The GFDL and HWRF models continue to insist that Erika will brush off the high shear this weekend, avoid Hispaniola, and intensify into a Category 2 hurricane five days from now. These models have not been giving enough emphasis to how the current shear is affecting Erika, and are being discounted at this time.
McAfee virus alert messages
A number of wunderground users with the McAfee virus protection software installed were alerted yesterday that a possible Trojan virus existed on our web pages. After an investigation of the issue, we have determined that this is a false alarm. It appears McAfee updated their virus files yesterday, and included in their list of suspected viruses JavaScript web pages that are compressed using the packer compression system used by wunderground. We've changed the compression technique used on our web pages, and hopefully this will eliminate the bogus McAfee alert messages.
Elsewhere in the Atlantic
A large, strong tropical wave with plenty of spin emerged from the coast of Africa this morning. The wave is not yet generating much in the way of heavy thunderstorms, but has the potential to gradually develop into a tropical depression by early next week. NHC is giving this wave a low (less than 30% chance) of developing into a tropical depression by Saturday. The GFS model has been consistently developing this wave in its runs over the past few days.
I'll have an update this afternoon.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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You missed further arguments on whether Erika will strengthen/weaken, move WSW, W, WNW or NW, arguments on the efficacy of the models currently used for forecasting, a brief lesson in Latin (where I showed how badly I misspent my youth) and Orcasystems unintentional blinding of himself...did I miss anything, guys?
I've got a question for those of you in emergency management/disaster response. Can you tell me where to find information on career opportunities in the field? I'm kind of looking for a career change, and I think it's an area that I'd enjoy.
TIA!
Poor Erika has had a hard life. However, I bet she keeps TS status for at least one more update. No matter what, I bet they're not going to want to cancel the watches for PR after they've already told people to prepare.
IE7 has the fix (that was started by FF) of automatically sizing images to fit.
IE6 will do it also, but only when you open the image by itself. If it is embedded via HTML, it displays in its full blog-stretching glory.
pretty much same topics as a month ago!!1
E Pluribus Unum my friend!
Let's burn a wheel!
isnt that a yoga bear aflac commercial..LOL
Link
I had too much contact with the oustide world... The cold showers were not as annoying as the incessant HEAT as A/C doesn't work too well without power. I don't know how you had computers working without power. Driving is hectic/dangerous as no traffic lights work...
Yes fun times for all. Looking forward to never doing it again. All other perils were as you described...
431. what is it when you're at work but not *working*? LOL
It means you work for me...
Ahhh, I see...not a bad education, it's an unwillingness to learn...LOL
Bacca pro sus...
463. you need some new workhands! LOL
agree completely....but i do think the 2 they will spend most time with will be the swirl their at now and the apparent newer coc in the islands...we will see what they find...
I also see another swirl with convection near 16N and 62W.
whos around the corner? the boogie man!!
LOL. At least you had the physical structures of traffic lights. Down here, Wilma stripped almost every single light in the county off of their wires. Boy those things are BIG close up!
Just saw that a low is shown on the 24 hour surface forecast but then just a wave on the 48 hour surface forecast. On the 48 hour you can see a low moving into the graphic.
People confessing they were posting/blogging from work, lol. And sharing of OS's and browser configurations.
I still got tape backup and 8" floppies. Need any extras? I keep them next to my manual calculator.
Hey Flood, do you still have the compass galileo gave you?
Another thing: you can stand next to a 60' coastal pine and never realize how tall it really is until you see it laying across the neighbor's house...
She just keeps on shedding her skin. Same as yesterday afternoon. This may mean we are going to begin to see the NHC go ahead and shift the official forecast positions more west yet. She is just staying too low for the typical steering forces to move her like the models think they will.
Any take on here...? :)
Indeed I do...use it daily...GPS indeed...
True. The neighbor across the street had one come down and break through his patio hurricane shutters. (He lives on a canal and there were a row of those pines. What Frances and Jeanne didn't finish off, Wilma did.) No more big pines.
You could have saved your self a lot of typing by putting "same ol same ol" LOL (except Orcasystems blinding himself, that one was new)
LOL. hey flood you write latin very well... Did you live in rome during the crusades?
Ice becoming a commodity people fight strangers over, and nights so eerily quiet you can hear a pin drop in areas where otherwise noise polution would have been deafening.
...I still remember clearly what Georges did to Jayuya and Ponce...as exhiliarating as it was for me as a youngster aspiring to be a meteorologist...I wouldn't wish it upon any island.
No, but as a Saracen I did get to interview a great many priests
**SIGH**
The old days
i would never wish a hurricane on anyone for rain because there are other ways that you can get rain eg. a cold front. but they do produce rain despite their devastation.
Bermuda could use some rain... last month we only got 3.32in. usually we get 5.64in. despite Bills outer bands, and since august of 2008 we are in a deficit of 8+inches. and high pressures seems to have set in...
But everything on this island is built to withstand winds up to 110mph. or is built better, so i have never experienced losing everything i have or having schools completely destroyed, not many here have. It is common, though, to be cut off from the rest of the world as the singular airport is closed or ships aren't allowed in, and to have no power for up to a month after a storm. On top of that everything is very expensive.
That could come under same same also.. I am normally good for at least one stupid thing a day. If you have doubts.. ask SWMBO'ed.
heck we are up to 48% post Ike occupancy here at the corner of Shoreacres & La Porte now (adjusted for those homes torn down already). Who knows maybe I will quit seeing demo trucks in another year or so.
LPSS Did you go to LPHS? If so what year for grad?
dodo???
shes definitely taken on a much better cyclonic look over the last few hours with the banding...
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