Cog

Sooo... what are the odds on hurricane Iota forming and becoming the most powerful on record...

Looks like an attempted EWRC cycle earlier today disrupted the structure a bit, not helped along by front edge being over land, but in the past hour the convection has actually picked back up again and the eye is starting to show a bit of definition even now as it's just about making landfall.

So have I misunderstood things, or did tropical storm atsani form directly out of the wake of Goni before it made landfall? Edit: ah nevermind, looked in more detail and the low that spawned Atsani crossed very close behind Goni

An eye is trying to open up on the visible satellite bands as it's approaching landfall. Really surprising just how rapidly this one has intensified, faster than the forecasts could keep up with, and hot on the trail of Delta. Those cloud tops are still looking super cold too, it can't be too long until the land interaction starts slowing it down but it still seems to have a window to keep intensifying for a while yet.

Just popping in out of lurk mode to share some of the satellite imagery of this typhoon.

BBC forecasts are bought from the lowest bidders now.

Really starting to pick up here in the Stoke area, looking like there's a squall line coming through here soon.

The problem as I understand it is that although the raw GFS data is released for free (see https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/model-data/model-datasets/global-forcast-system-gfs), it costs money and takes a lot of effort to run a webserver converting this data into something that us common folk can access at home. The datasets are quite huge and unwieldy so for most companies there's really no good business model to produce global charts for us. There are a few options, https://www.metcheck.com/WEATHER/gfscharts.asp# is decent but quite low resolution and low quality compared to netweather. https://www.windy.com/ is a super fun website for this sort of thing, but it's dummed down and without much detail.

Adding to the list of complaints about the BBC: They're using the exact same photograph next to the stories about Barrow AFC and the football club in Ireland getting their roofs blown off.

I wonder how much it would cost for a seat on that plane. Looks like a fun ride. Eyes gone again. Masses of convection on the west half of the hurriance, but the east half is stubbornly inactive.

Pressure has dropped a little since yesterday, now down to 952, winds at 126mph. Looks a lot more symmetrical than it was yesterday, and the eyes cleared out too. She's completed the turn towards North, and travelling out into open sea. (Image http://tropicalatlantic.com/recon/recon.cgi?basin=al&mapping=cesium)

Looks like it might be finally starting to re-intensify properly. Some strong convection on the North side, and an eye is starting to reform unless that's just a momentary blip.

Not much of an eye left, and recon is having trouble finding the centre. The latest dropsonde is in, readings at 959hPa. Still no signs of intensification, every now and then there's a burst of strong convection, but it looks like with the colder waters to the North and the landmass to the South the driving forces just aren't consistent enough.

Whatever it's doing, it's definitely shrinking now. And for no reason at all, here's a nice desktop background.

She's really struggling to hold together. Looking really lopsided, seems to be plenty of heat input from the south, but with the land interaction and less heat coming from the North it doesn't want to form up. Pressure is still around 960.

Very strong convection showing again. It's not so bad now, the hottest waters waters were to the south of Puerto Rico. There's still some quite hot waters ahead for Maria, but it depends how far west she tracks.

I think the eye might be getting ready to reform, and convection is starting to pick back up on the east side now that it's cleared land.

Mike Theiss is hunkered down. He even has a "safe room" in his hotel.

I guess dropping dropsondes over land is frowned upon too. Also, teeny weeny little pinhole eye?

It looks to be about half an hour or so from passing directly over San Juan. The eye is closing up as it passes over land but recon found nearly 100mph winds just off the cost of the city an hour ago.

My guess is that they're getting extra data on the conditions ahead of the hurricane so they can make more accurate forecasts of the path. Latest observations from flight 7 are 912hPa, looks to be weakening now as the NW part is passing over Puerto Rico. My untrained eye thinks it might see an ERC ready to start too. Hurricanes are driven by hot air rising. Stronger signals in the infra-red satellite images means stronger convection, and that can mean the hurricane is getting stronger, or at least maintaining a high strength.

And 153kts winds seen too.

There was a magnitude 8 earthquake off the coast of mexico last week, the one today was most likely related to that one and the aftershocks. There has been some correlation between hurricanes and earthquakes noted in the past, but there's barely any noticeable correlation at all.

Did the pilot just have a brown trouser moment there?

160mph surface winds in the eye wall just now? I'm eagerly awaiting the next pressure reading. If it's 930 I might go out and buy a lottery ticket.