When meteorologists talk about tropical weather we tend to use the phrase, "It's too early to tell," when talking about where a storm might be going. When there are too many or unknown environmental factors at play along with timing, that creates a lot more uncertainty than usual, which makes forecasting much more difficult. But that is what forecasting is all about and being able to use that to come up with the best solution possible. The problem with forecasting tropical cyclones is that they tend to affect people much more seriously than a garden variety shower, storm, or air mass. So the idea is to convey the level of uncertainty along with what we know in order to keep people open to a changing cyclone and a changing forecast. That way the public should be aware that they need to pay more attention to this than ordinary weather. That is still the case with Ida. A lot of uncertainty as to forecast track and intensity, which ultimately means there is not much confidence in knowing where it will make landfall and how strong it will be at that point.
Ida is now a tropical depression but is expected to emerge from the Honduran coast later today, at which point she will be in a position for intensification once again. A general northward movement is expected for a day or two. After that, steering winds may keep it moving north or even northwestward for another day or so before a possible shift in the upper level set-up. This shift would occur in response to an approaching upper-level trough where steering winds out ahead of this trough would tend to develop from the southwest. These southwesterly winds would push Ida in a more easterly direction. Now if you look at the National Hurricane Center's forecast cone, all this is reflected in the large cone that now encompasses most of the state of Florida 5 days from now.
The computer models are not in agreement on the forecast track or intensity, which does not give forecasters as much confidence in their forecasts either. The official NHC forecast keeps Ida's intensity as a tropical storm or as an extra-tropical cyclone, but some of the models do have her gaining enough steam to produce hurricane force winds once again. The NHC's thinking tends to be in the middle in cases like this were they try to blend the model data with historical data and traditional thinking. Their analysis would keep Ida as a storm until it lost some of its tropical characteristics due to the cooler waters in the northern Gulf of Mexico. Additionally, history shows us that this time of year tropical systems in this region tend to make a pretty hard northeasterly turn in response to upper level winds, which may play out in this case. Taking all that into consideration, watch Ida through the weekend and into the first part of next week, because it wil be one for Florida to keep an eye on. As far as South Florida is concerned, most of us are not in the cone at this time, but that is not reason to count this one off. Remember that even a west coast landfall can have a big effect on us. I think it is still part of our short term memory, Hurricane Wilma in 2005. The last November storm for us was Mitch in 1998, which passed thorugh South Florida after dealing Central America a huge blow. Some similarities can be seen in this case. No two storms are exactly alike, and just because I bring up Wilma or Mitch does not mean you are to expect a storm, but it's just a reminder of what could happen and what we ALL need to be prepared for.
I have 2 very good links for you (the same one's I ghave you yesterday), one of them being the National Hurricane Center's website where you can get all of the latest info on Ida http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/graphics_at1.shtml?5-daynl#contents
And this link has tropical storm and hurricane climatology for Florida in November, which tells you about the history and what typical storm paths are http://www.srh.noaa.gov/images/mfl/news/November_SoFLTC.pdf
Comments