08 September 2012

As Leslie and Michael head north, new disturbance brews off Africa


 Leslie remains a strong tropical storm, but appears to be on an upward swing today.  It has finally started moving, and is now roughly 250 miles southeast of Bermuda and heading north at 7kts.


With the increased forward speed, it also finally crept into better radar range from Bermuda.  I have a long radar loop available that will continue to add frames as the storm approaches and passes about 160 miles east of the island midday on Sunday (click here). The outer rainbands are already in range, and the developing eyewall should be in range shortly.

After passing by Bermuda tomorrow, it has a 3-day journey to get up to Newfoundland for its next close encounter, then could potentially interact with Michael prior to becoming an extratropical cyclone over the cold northern Atlantic Ocean.  A tropical storm warning is in effect for Bermuda.

Michael has made a bit of a comeback in its satellite presentation today, and remains a 90kt Category 2 hurricane.  Yesterday, the eye filled, the outflow was more asymmetric, and the circulation appeared more elliptical rather than circular, but today it looks a bit healthier... temporarily.


Hurricane Michael is 1100 miles southeast of Newfoundland, and is forecast to gradually weaken as it heads N-NW toward Newfoundland over the next few days.  Again, it will be interesting to see if any sort of binary vortex interaction (Fujiwhara effect) takes place with Leslie and Michael, but it would be on Tuesday-Wednesday, so we have time to keep an eye on that. 

And finally, to the disturbance off the coast of Africa that I mentioned the past couple of days.  The wave has an embedded 1008mb Low centered over the southern Cape Verde islands.  Models continue to be very bullish on this system, bringing it up to a hurricane in 4-5 days.  That may be a little too aggressive, but at any rate, models also agree on it recurving by the time it reaches 50-55W... far from affecting land.  The biggest factor working against it now is the dry Saharan Air Layer to its north, which you can see on this image as the milky air streaming off the continent (you're actually seeing tons of suspended fine dust acting as tracers in the dry air).  The next name on the list is Nadine.


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