thetruesms wrote:Actually, I think the fairly strange placement of the center (which I think has slightly more to do with surface obs than satellite imagery) is not a reluctance to move Barbara over, but rather to keep her.
Pretty simply, I don't see anything at the surface at all right now, especially when you consider surface obs. But - there might be in the future with some luck since there's still some midlevel spin and obviously some low level convergence over the water where convection is flaring. So, for continuity's sake, they'll keep Barbara around for one more advisory and see what happens. This is nothing new from NHC.
But that introduces a problem - where do you put her? There's not really anything to pin it to. So, do you move her to the Atlantic in case she beats the odds and pulls something together in the Bay of Campeche? You could, but it's probably a whole lot of work, and if you don't really think it's going to pull together over water, kind of pointless. Or since you're picking a conservative route to begin with, do you stay conservative, and keep her in the EPac over land and see what happens? It looks like they used some surface obs (namely an "apparent land breeze" where there should be a sea breeze) to pick something over land to the west of where a new center over water might form.
I don't think either is technically right; for that you'd probably call the circulation opened, declare Barbara done, and start up Andrea if something comes back together at the surface. And that's also precisely what you'd do if you didn't want to shift Barbara to the Atlantic. The fact that she's still around says more to me of their willingness, rather than reluctance to open the Atlantic season with a B storm.
Thank you so much for this detailed post! This should answer most questions out there.