Alex may head north to Texas or Louisiana
Tropical Depression Alex has held together fairly well during its passage over Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, and stands poised to re-intensify back into a tropical storm once it emerges from the coast tonight. Alex brought heavy rains to northern Honduras, Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, and Belize over the weekend. It was not a good beach day in Cozumel yesterday, as 9.25" of rain fell. Cancun received 2.05" over the weekend, and Belize City received 4.57". Satellite loops show that Alex's heavy thunderstorms are mostly gone near the center, though there are some impressive bands of precipitation well away from the center. There is an upper-level high pressure system a few hundred miles west of Alex, and the clockwise flow air around this high is bringing upper-level winds out of the northwest of about 5 knots over the storm, contributing to the 5 knots of wind shear observed in this afternoon's wind shear analysis from the University of Wisconsin's CIMSS group. Sea Surface Temperatures are very warm, 29 - 30°C, and dry air is currently not a problem for Alex.
Figure 1. Afternoon satellite image of Alex.
Forecast for Alex: which model should you trust?
While the track forecast for Alex today through Monday is fairly well-assured, the longer range forecast has become highly uncertain. An increasing number of our reliable models are now indicating Alex may take a more northerly track beginning on Tuesday, with possible landfall on the Texas coast near Galveston on Friday (according to the 8am run of the GFS model) or into western Louisiana on Wednesday (the 8am run of the Canadian model.) The key question remains how Alex will react to the trough of low pressure expected to swing down over the Eastern U.S. on Monday and Tuesday. Most of the models were predicting that the trough would not be strong enough to swing Alex to the north, and several of them continue to predict this. The 8am runs of the NOGAPS and ECMWF models, for example, take Alex into the Gulf coast of Mexico 150 miles south of Texas, on Wednesday. The GFDL and HWRF models split the difference, with the GFDL predicting a Thursday landfall in southern Texas near Brownsville, and the HWRF predicting a Thursday landfall near Corpus Christi. Morris Bender of the GFDL group has just provided me the track forecast from an improved experimental version of the GFDL that shows landfall between Corpus Christi and Galveston. So which model should you trust? Last year, the best performing models at the 3 - 4 day forecast range were the GFS and the Canadian, and these are the models that are currently calling for the more northerly track towards the upper Texas coast and Louisiana. Residents of those areas should review their hurricane preparedness plans and anticipate that Alex could make landfall as early as Wednesday in their vicinity. Residents of the Mexican coast south of Brownsville should make similar plans, as Alex could just as easily hit there.
Re-intensification of Alex is likely once the center of Alex moves offshore, though this will initially be slow due to the current disorganized state of the storm and the relatively low total ocean heat content in the 100-mile-wide stretch of water on the west side of the Yucatan Peninsula. Once Alex moves more than 100 miles from the Yucatan, total heat content of the ocean increases substantially, and Alex will have the opportunity to intensify significantly. A longer time spent over water will give Alex more of a chance to strengthen, and it is possible Alex could intensify into a major hurricane if landfall is delayed until Thursday or Friday. However, Alex's intensification may be limited the farther north it gets, as water vapor satellite images show plenty of dry air over Texas that might interfere with development. Wind shear might also be an issue for Alex if it pushes far enough north, and a slow-moving storm tends to pull up cold water from the depths, limiting intensification. In short, Alex has the potential to intensify into a major hurricane, but there are plenty of roadblocks that make this only a 10% probability in my estimation.
Figure 2. Skill of computer model forecasts for Atlantic named storms during 2009. OFCL=Official NHC forecast; GFS=Global Forecast System model; GFDL=Geophysical Fluid Dynamic Laboratory model; HWRF=Hurricane Weather Research Forecasting model; NOGAPS=Navy Operational Global Prediction System model; UKMET+United Kingdom Met Office model; ECMWF=European Center for Medium Range Weather Forecasting model; CMC=Canadian GEM model; TVCN=one of the consensus models that lends together all (or most) of the above models; BAMM=Beta and Advection Model (Medium Layer.) Image credit: National Hurricane Center 2009 verification report.
Elsewhere in the tropics
A tropical wave (Invest 94L) a few hundred miles north of the northernmost Lesser Antilles Islands has been pretty much torn apart, and is no longer a threat to develop.
Next post
Wunderground's severe weather expert Dr. Rob Carver will likely be posting an update on Alex late tonight. My next update will be Monday by 10am EDT.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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He was moving WNW this morning.
Now he looks almost stationary.
we this did
Tell me about it, the bubble prevailed today, as the storms from c'ville tracked SE it fizzled when it got close to richmond.
Oil was bad here till a Tstorm rolled thru .
That particular reading was flagged as questionable, but the 39kt one before that wasn't, and there have been plenty of uncontaminated readings supporting TS-force winds.
OOPS!! So sorry!! Don't wanna go POOF! Ok back on Alex...Has Alex shifted more NNW????
They're in there for the next 5 and a half hours. We'll get plenty more passes.
Not a coffee drinker, rather go for an ice cold coke instead.
URNT12 KNHC 261919
VORTEX DATA MESSAGE AL012010
A. 26/19:08:30Z
B. 17 deg 19 min N
087 deg 28 min W
C. 925 mb 655 m
D. 56 kt
E. 182 deg 29 nm
F. 237 deg 52 kt
G. 181 deg 26 nm
H. EXTRAP 996 mb
I. 19 C / 755 m
J. 24 C / 764 m
K. 22 C / NA
L. NA
M. NA
N. 1345 / 9
O. 0.02 / 4 nm
P. AF302 0301A ALEX OB 09
MAX FL WIND 52 KT S QUAD 18:59:50Z
SLP EXTRAP FROM 925 MB
is this new?
No....look at the time.
LOL.
according to Dr. Masters, those models are not to be written off and there remains a possibility for a Texas, or even a SW La. landfall. i'm new on here...don't know who to believe. i've heard you are good, i've heard Dr. Masters is good and StormW.
no that is the last vortex message before landfall
oh ok
Its a battle between the Vortex getting going again to the North of the Old one.
Tonight it may separate from that Coastline some and every mile it does ,..well puts it closer to Warmers SST's.
NOAA satellite overlay....to be honest I can't remember the source for it and it's not shown in the layer properties. You may be able to find it in some bundled weather kmz files for Google Earth.
Tropical storm again
Hermaine from 03 maybe..wasnt much
Indeed, which is amazing and definitely shocked a lot of the bloggers here, myself included. Do you have any clue as to why it remained so structurally sound, even improving it's sturcture with it's Yucatan trek? We all know that Fay was helped by the warm marshlands it went over, but what can the Yucatan provide? Maybe it was because he could easily tap waters and the energy on both sides of the Yucatan due to his size?
No Taz its from 2pm CDT :O)!!
that was Bill from 2003
ok i no now guys thanks
Officially Tropical Storm Alex. Pressure's amazing though.
AL, 01, 2010062800, , BEST, 0, 192N, 911W, 35, 991, TS,
Hermine wasn't used that year, it was henri.
looks like where back too a TS
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