Oil continues impacting Louisiana coast; storms for Caribbean and SE U.S. waters?
Light southeast to east winds are expected to blow over the northern Gulf of Mexico today through Sunday, resulting in potential oiling of Louisiana shorelines from the mouth of the Mississippi River westward 150 miles, according to the latest trajectory forecasts from NOAA. Clouds over the Gulf of Mexico have cleared, and we should get a good view late this afternoon on how far south the oil spill has penetrated into the Loop Current. Statements from NOAA and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite data imply that most of the oil that was pulled southwards to the northern boundary of the Loop Current is now caught in a counter-clockwise rotating eddy just to the north of the Loop Current. Some oil has escaped this eddy and is on its way south towards the Florida Keys. This tongue of oil consists of "numerous light sheens with some emulsified patties and streams," according to NOAA. I wish they'd provide more information about what the sensitivity of various ecosystems may be to oil at these concentrations. It would also be good to have more information about what the concentration of the toxic dispersants are in the surface waters of the spill, but I expect no one knows. The oil will grow more dilute as it travels the 500 miles to the Florida Keys. My present expectation is that the oil entering the Loop Current this week will cause only minor problems in the Keys next week. However, there is a lot of uncertainty about what the oil may do to the fragile Keys ecosystem. SAR imagery from last night and this morning continue to show a large plume of oil being drawn southeastward from the oil spill location into the northern boundary of the Loop Current. With winds expected to remain light over the coming week, I expect oil will continue to be drawn southwards into the Loop Current and the counter-clockwise rotating eddy just to its north. Much of the oil caught in this eddy may circulate around the eddy in 3 or so days, and potentially enter the Loop Current early next week. As I discussed in my post Wednesday, the Loop Current is very unstable right now, and is moving chaotically 10+ miles in a single day, making prediction difficult.
Figure 1. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) image of the oil spill taken at 7:56am EDT May 20, 2010, by the Canadian Space Agency’s (CSA) RadarSat-1 satellite. Image credit: Center for Southeastern Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing, University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. SAR images have a resolution of 8 - 50 meters, and can be taken through clouds and precipitation.
Figure 2. Latest oil trajectory forecast from NOAA for this Saturday.
Oil spill resources
My post Wednesday with answers to some of the common questions I get about the spill
My post on the Southwest Florida "Forbidden Zone" where surface oil will rarely go
My post on what oil might do to a hurricane
NOAA trajectory forecasts
Deepwater Horizon Unified Command web site
Oil Spill Academic Task Force
University of South Florida Ocean Circulation Group oil spill forecasts
ROFFS Deepwater Horizon page
Surface current forecasts from NOAA's HYCOM model
HYCOM ocean current forecasts from LSU
Potential serious rainfall threat to Haiti next week
Long-range forecasts from the NOGAPS model, and to a lesser extent, the ECMWF and GFS models, continue to predict an increase in moisture and decrease in wind shear over the Western Caribbean 4 - 6 days from now, leading to development of a tropical disturbance with heavy rains in the Western Caribbean early next week. A strong subtropical jet stream over the southern Gulf of Mexico will steer the disturbance to the north and east, and the potential exists for heavy rains of 3 - 6 inches to affect eastern Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic in the Tuesday - Thursday time frame next week. It is possible that a tropical depression could form from this tropical disturbance, though most of the models indicate that high levels of wind shear will make this improbable.
Southeast U.S. coastal storm next week could become subtropical
A region of cloudiness and showers just east of the Bahama Islands will develop into a strong extratropical storm over the weekend. This storm is expected to move slowly northwestward towards the Southeast U.S. coast Sunday and Monday, and could bring 20 - 30 mph winds and heavy rain to the coast of North Carolina by Tuesday. While the storm will initially form in a region of high wind shear and be entirely extratropical, it will move into a region of lower wind shear in a gap between the polar jet stream to the north and the subtropical jet stream to its south early next week. At that time, the low will be positioned near the warm waters of the Gulf Stream, and will have the opportunity to develop a shallow warm core and transition to a subtropical storm. The models are divided on whether the storm will eventually make landfall on the Southeast U.S. coast 6 - 7 days from now, and it is too early to offer odds on this occurring. The counter-clockwise flow of air around this low will probably lead to northeasterly winds over the oil spill region Monday through Wednesday, keeping oil away from the coasts of Alabama and the Florida Panhandle, but pushing oil westwards towards Texas. Wunderblogger Weather456 has a more detailed discussion of the potential development of this system in his blog this morning.
Tornadoes and large hail pound Oklahoma
A significant severe weather outbreak occurred last night over Oklahoma and surrounding states, with 25 tornado reports, 8 reports of damaging winds, and 23 hail reports. Severe weather wunderblogger Dr. Rob Carver has the details in his wunderblog this morning. The Vortex2 field project had a perfect opportunity to intercept these tornadoes, since they were slow moving and occurred over relatively unpopulated regions. The University of Michigan students writing our Vortex2 featured blog will have an update when their schedule allows.
Figure 3. Baseball-sized hail pounds a suburban Oklahoma City swimming pool, making huge splashes, in this remarkable video. The action gets really intense about 90 seconds into the video.
I'll be back with a new post Friday.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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It's all on my blog....
I also think it will be atleast an invest with a moderate chance of becoming STS Alex.
I'd say that's a TD, maybe a weak TS
I have been using Doc's cummulus method to spot the outskirts and it is really helping to see the enourmus size of this slick. Basically looking at the "area of uncertanty" lines is where the actual slick is in the NOAA charts. Just by the outline of the clouds.
I will be down in FL soon and spending some quality time there so hopefully I will be posting more with my feet in the sugar sand and a cold maragarita in my hand =) hehehe and finally clearing my mind. So as usual keep an eye on the horizon, the storms follow me LOL
As simple as that question looks, its tough for me to answer. The reason why, is that a designation of an invest is subjective rather than objective.
The best way to answer that question is to tell you when I feel it should be an invest rather than tell you when the NHC will designate it one (which is impossible to know from here).
I think it should be an invest sometime this weekend, the NHC may or may not agree, hence, subjectivity.
Looks like the area in the SW Caribbean has been discounted by most models. Looks like our primary focus now is the subtropical system east of the Bahamas. I think we might have an invest by early tomorrow morning if the system can organize more.
Blog Update
Low pressure system develops east of the Bahamas; No change to Caribbean potential
and sea surface temps are high.
This could be a real bad year
and there's several reasons why.
Nino is gone and Nina comes
we all know what that means,
Or in case you dont, check the sums
it means stock your shelves with beans.
And what about that BA high
controlling tracks and stuff?
Looks like Westward Ho! to me
this season could be rough.
And adding oil upon the waters?
not going to work this time,
someboddy made a boo-boo
and the Gulf is filled with slime.
The fish dont like it, it's really bad,
and every day there's more,
There's not a single reason to be glad
but I guess we can blame Al Gore.
Bravo! lol
ECMWF 00z 144 Hours
By Eliot Kleinberg Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Updated: 4:43 p.m. Thursday, May 20, 2010
Posted: 4:34 p.m. Thursday, May 20, 2010
Oh, and by the way.
There's a chance - right now, just a chance - that a subtropical or tropical storm will form north of Hispaniola late this weekend or early next week.
It would get the first name on the 2010 list: Alex.
Jim Lushine, retired warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service's Miami office, said today in an email he believes it's "likely" the storm will form. He also believes it will move northwest toward the Florida-Georgia state line "but directly will do little but stir up some waves at the beaches."
National Hurricane Center spokesman Dennis Feltgen was more guarded.
"Some of the models are trying to spin up an area of low pressure. Whether it's tropical, subtropical or no tropical we don't know yet," he said.
"It's not unusual at all, especially in that part of the world," Feltgen said.
"It's not like somebody throws a switch on June 1," Feltgen said. That date, which marks the official start of the season, is just a week and a half away.
Tropical Storm Arthur formed May 31, 2008. The last one before that was Arlene, which formed off Cuba May 6, 1981.
Subtropical Storm Andrea formed off the North Florida coast on May 9, and subtropical storm Ana looped about in the Atlantic 200 miles south of Bermuda for nine days in April 2003. April!
Of 1,354 tropical storms recorded in the Atlantic Ocean between 1851 and 2007, only 18 formed in May, and only four became hurricanes. None struck land. Between 1966 and 2007 only four formed in May and one became a hurricane.
(Eliot Kleinberg is a highly respected local historian and author of the book, "Black Cloud", about the 1928 Lake Okeechobee Hurricane).
Because those images are under subscriptions at weathertap, those persons who are not signed up with them can not see the images if you hotlink them. I can see them because I have an account with them but if you would log out of weathertap and view the blog you wouldn't see anything.
The best thing to do is save them to your computer and upload them to a image hosting website like imageshack.
530 AM EDT FRI MAY 21 2010
.SYNOPSIS...DEVELOPING LOW PRESSURE NEAR 25N74W WILL MOVE N OVER
THE WATERS BETWEEN 69W AND 73W THROUGH TUE WHILE TRAILING A
BROAD TROUGH S TO HISPANIOLA.
fal902010.dat ( 05/21/2010 12:19:00 PM)
This is from the TPC ftp site but I'm not a 100% sure as yet.
BEGIN
NHC_ATCF
invest_al902010.invest
FSTDA
R
U
040
010
0000
201005211219
NONE
NOTIFY=ATRP
END
INVEST, AL, L, , , , , 90, 2010, DB, O, 2010052112, 9999999999, , , , , , METWATCH, , AL902010
AL, 90, 2010052012, , BEST, 0, 270N, 718W, 15, 1015, DB, 0, , 0, 0, 0, 0,
AL, 90, 2010052018, , BEST, 0, 272N, 717W, 15, 1015, DB, 0, , 0, 0, 0, 0,
AL, 90, 2010052100, , BEST, 0, 274N, 717W, 15, 1015, DB, 0, , 0, 0, 0, 0,
AL, 90, 2010052106, , BEST, 0, 276N, 720W, 20, 1014, DB, 0, , 0, 0, 0, 0,
AL, 90, 2010052112, , BEST, 0, 275N, 723W, 25, 1013, DB, 34, NEQ, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1015, 80, 40, 0, 0, L, 0, , 0, 0, INVEST, S,
invest_al902010.invest
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