Invest 92, a large early season tropical wave in the eastern Atlantic Ocean, continues to get organized and looks better than it did yesterday on the early morning satellite imagery. Convection is more centralized and expansive with colder cloud tops. The latest NHC outlook gives the system a 60% chance of being classified a tropical cyclone in the next 48 hours http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/ . I think that if the convection holds for another 6-12 hours this will be upgraded to a tropical depression.
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I have attached below the latest IR and Visible satellite image and you can see the increased organization of the storm that has occurred overnight. There is a twisting in the visible satellite imagery on the southern and southeastern edge of the convection. However this tropical season we will be without the aid of Quickscat satellite imagery which was very useful in determining if a closed circulation had formed, but will rely on the less useful ASCAT data, which can be found here http://manati.orbit.nesdis.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/ascat_cur_25km.pl The latest pass did not have a good luck at this system. The latest microwave imagery does show a nice curved convective band on the northern side of the system.
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The 12z NHC models have come in and they appear to zero in on the northern Windward Islands in 3-5 days as a possible impact zone. However, they are not very excited about the potential intensity of this system. Only a few take the storm to weak tropical storm status, with most keeping the system a depression or below depression strength. There is strong shear just to the northwest of the system, and most of the global models do not weaken this shear in the next few days. Therefore, as of now I think this system has about 24-48 hours to become a depression or storm, and then it may get sheared apart.
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However, take a look at the big satellite shot of Africa and into the tropical Atlantic. There is another strong wave behind Invest 92, that we will have to watch, and the wave train already seems to be shaping up across Africa. Is this mid June or mid August?
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Comments
Allan - Could you give me the link of model #6 - where it has the force of the hurricane (in wind speed knots) to hours away. I looked all over the internet but I can't find the exact link. Thanks!!
Hi Charleston. I am not sure what you mean by model #6. The weather model site I run, has the tropical models and their intensity forecast you can find that here. raleighwx.easternuswx.com/models/atcf.html
Do you know how an invest gets its number? I can't find that anywhere.
Hi sorry I havent responded to comments lately. Examiner changed the way they do their reporting and I didnt even realize I had some comments! I know that the invests are numbered 90-99 but I am not sure why they decided on that system.
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