re: Laura - President Trump visits Lake Charles, Louisiana for Hurricane Response Update

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06z Euro EPS - doesn't do much with 14 and the members that strengthen 13 have it take more of a westward track.

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Levi Cowan
@TropicalTidbits
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31m
#TD14 appears to have a tight little center north of Honduras that is smaller in size than earlier. This could prove important later if thunderstorms develop over it, since small circulations intensify easier than large ones, for various reasons.

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I would almost rather go back a few hundred years and just be caught by surprise...

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We know Laura is gonna go west. NHC just toying with our emotions trying to show the panhandle.

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headed for the Gulf of Mexico.

TD 14…

LOCATION...16.2N 84.2W
ABOUT 160 MI...255 KM E OF ISLA ROATAN HONDURAS
MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS...35 MPH...55 KM/H
PRESENT MOVEMENT...WNW OR 300 DEGREES AT 12 MPH...19 KM/H
MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE...1008 MB...29.77 INCHES

It looks like 14 will stay off the coast of Honduras, and remain over water until it interacts with the Yucatan. The scattered thunderstorms continued overnight, but didn’t explode during that overnight convective maximum I mentioned yesterday. It appears there are multiple low level centers rotating around a common center, which isn’t out of the ordinary. It isn’t the sign of a strong system, but I do think the favorable conditions allow this to become a tropical storm over the next day. Recon is investigating it right now, and we will have more information after that mission is finished, and we get another run of the models. For now, there is a pretty tight cluster of track models between Lafayette and Houston, which is the general idea of where I think it’ll go. Strength is a much more complex forecast, and has a wide range of outcomes. I’ll dig more into that this afternoon.

Tropical Storm Laura…

LOCATION...17.0N 59.8W
ABOUT 230 MI...375 KM ESE OF THE NORTHERN LEEWARD ISLANDS
MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS...45 MPH...75 KM/H
PRESENT MOVEMENT...W OR 280 DEGREES AT 21 MPH...33 KM/H
MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE...1008 MB...29.77 INCHES

Laura is the one further out in the Atlantic. Laura has looked pretty ragged and weak over the last day. Thunderstorms have been firing consistently over the last several hours, and Recon just found enough evidence to classify this as a tropical storm. Assuming this maintains strength, and is allowed to tap into the future environment that will be favorable for strengthening, it looks like this will be another Gulf system, and potentially a hurricane. Again, strength forecasting is tough, and another half day to look at this will help tell the story. The current track guidance is fairly clustered on a Florida panhandle landfall for the Gulf landfall, though that’s not set in stone.

So we have two potential Gulf storms, along with fancy terms like Fujiwhara, and binary interaction being thrown around. While this complicates the forecast, it’s more complicating to the track forecast. The interaction of two storms isn’t the most common thing, but it happens. It doesn’t usually happen as they are approaching our area of course, but here we are. In simplest terms, the interaction could cause the storms to rotate around one another. If one is much stronger than the other, it could absorb the weaker storm. This won’t create some mutant, 2020, superstorm, fiasco. It may serve to make the winning storm larger in size were it to happen, but it’s not like the storm would instantly be injected with an espresso and steroids. I still lean toward these remaining two separate entities, with the potential for two Gulf of Mexico landfalls in the span of a day. I’ll update things this afternoon. If this is the short one, imagine that word festival.

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