Major Hurricane! Joaquin! Finally Moving Northward and OTS

I'm going to DC at the end of the week through next week for work. Was looking forward to seeing some museums and monuments, guess I'll see my hotel bar.

If it hits NYC, we will never hear the end of it.

Nor'easter's sucked when I lived in VA.

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Nor'easter's sucked when I lived in VA.

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That was one of my favorite things about living in DC! Except when we were supposed to get snow and got wind blown rain and 35 degrees...

Pretty huge shift W with the 18z GFS bringing inline with the HWRF and a good portion of the ensembles. Still would take this with a grain of salt at this point.

So where did Joaquin come from?



In the loop above you can see a swirl (ULL that cuts off) start spinning to the SW of 30N 60W and then convection starts to bubble in the region. After a period of time you can see it consolidate and then start to drift SW as Joaquin comes to life. Pretty complex tropical transition process that has been very cool to track over the last week. Then if you look back over Texas & Louisiana you can see ULL/trough spin that gave the models such fits and eventually held 99L in check.

That piece of upper level energy will eventually get caught and absorbed by the next trough dropping down



and then that eventually could "capture" Joaquin and sling shot it into the Mid-Atlantic



Then add in the high latitude blocking, the remnants of Ida, and your always present uncertainty and a very complex setup is unfolding. The NHC is basically just saying, "Umm, yeah, it will kind of go that way at some point..."

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pretty amazing how quick this stuff can spin up.

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Yea, I would have to guess that the odds are astronomical of this happening. It festered for over a week before completing tropical transition and then it drifts into the only sweet spot in the whole Atlantic basin.

ETA: If, and a huge if, this were to landfall as a major then it would be the first recorded US landfalling major during an El Nino after September 30th.

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Tropical Storm Joaquin is on the verge of becoming a hurricane, and hurricane watches and warnings have been issued for the Bahamas while we nervously eye its potential to affect the U.S. East Coast.

Tropical Storm Joaquin continues to intensify slowly, as wind shear -- harmful to the intensification of tropical cyclones -- lessens, and it appears likely to become a hurricane just east of the Bahamas before a complicated atmospheric pattern makes its future track – including any potential landfall on the U.S. East Coast – extremely difficult to forecast.

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LINK

I'd think Saturday at Nassau will be fine. However, in northern Virginia I'm fricked.