Jim Rockford

quote:

---

Just for clarification: rds, duke and legend...

---

quote:

---

Meteorologist Nick Mikulas

17 minutes ago ·
Invest 92L is an interesting one for sure. The track and strength forecast will surely give meteorologists along the Gulf Coast headaches for the next several days. I'll do my best to simplify this and break things down for you in what won't necessarily be a forecast, but a discussion of options on what this thing may do. Here are two of the main scenarios I'm seeing as of now.
Scenario 1.... Strong storm and weaker upper level trough over Texas.
We see this thing ramp up quickly and become a hurricane over the Central Gulf. This would give us a consolidated envelope of moisture around the center, and a system that would respond to deep layer steering currents. A large ridge blocks the eastern escape route across Florida, and the weak trough over Texas helps funnel the storm to the north. As the storm strengthens it would move eastward toward the Central Gulf, then move straight north toward a landfall somewhere between Venice Louisiana and Destin Florida.
Scenario 2.... A weaker storm with a stronger Texas trough.
This is what the GFS and to an extent, the Euro model is showing this morning on the operational runs. The ensembles aren't as on board with this scenario, so I'll say scenario 2 is less likely, though I'm seeing a bit of a trend toward this potential. The interesting thing on this scenario is that a weaker system and stronger trough would pull more moisture toward the northwest, and possibly even pull the track of this system to the northwest as it approaches the coast. In this scenario we could actually see some beneficial rain across the area, but as of now, I think the chance of this is a bit lower.
If I'm putting chances, I'd go 50% on scenario 1, and 30% on scenario 2, with a 20% chance of something different like a much slower moving system, or wind shear just crushing it as it moves northward. Clearly, I'm in the stage where I don't know exact impacts. The good thing I see locally is that in either of the two main possibilities, I don't see us catching a crazy hurricane in our area. A stronger storm would likely go further east, and a weaker storm would likely just bring us the rain we need. DO NOT PLAN ON BENEFICIAL RAIN YET. But I am watching with more interest than I had yesterday. This would likely be a late Friday into Saturday issue wherever things happen. That's not terribly far off. I'll do my best to give more definitive details as we get closer, but as you know, I like to keep things as honest as I can. As soon as I see a significant trend in any direction, I'll be posting about it. See less

---