Tropical Atlantic Wide View (floater) from NHC
Update: Monday, August 22: Hurricane Irene will likely rapidly intensify at some point over the next couple days becoming a major hurricane (maximum probably Category 4). It is a large-storm with a massive wind field that will likely expand further as it moves north. Irene has the potential to be a climate weather disaster of historical proportions. A couple most recent (12z) mesoscale forecast model tracks put either Miami or South Carolina under threat of a Category 4, 5 landfall. Yet, with any 5-day forecast, the track skill is on the order of 250 mi, which could mean Irene misses land all together.
NCEP HWRF August 22, 2011 12Z "maximum wind speed swath" of the inner nest
Princeton GFDL Mesoscale Model Maximum Wind Speed Swath (August 22, 2011 12Z run)
As of Saturday night, Irene is a tropical storm centered east of the Lesser Antilles. But, where will the storm be in 5-days (on Thursday)? The National Hurricane Center officially prognosticates a tropical storm in the Florida Straits as of the 11 PM AST advisory on 08.20.11. Can you do better? In the comments, feel free to pontificate about the track, intensity, and potential landfall location of Irene — and go “On the Record”. It’s okay to include image links in your comments in order to make your case.
The early Sunday morning Mesoscale model guidance show “doomcasts” of Category 5 hurricanes undergoing quite different tracks. At such an early stage of development of the storm, GFDL and HWRF are not going to be your best model to look at. That would be the best numerical weather prediction (NWP) global deterministic model run by the USA European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting. Current ECMWF North Atlantic Wind Speed and MSLP forecast at my FSU-COAPS weather website. The August 21, 2011 00Z run puts a Category 2 hurricane “east” of Florida with landfall in the Carolinas in 6-days. And, for fun: binary typhoon interaction in the Western Pacific (Fujiwhara effect).
NCEP HWRF August 21, 2011 00Z "maximum wind speed swath" of the inner nest
Princeton GFDL Mesoscale Model Maximum Wind Speed Swath (August 21, 2011 00Z run)
