East wobble...

[Blown Away]

The last satellite clip looked like a slight E wobble??

[Wannabewxman79]

Yeah the last 3 frames in the WV show a little jog but probably not a turn....

[Blown Away]

E component supposed to start later this afternoon?

[vbhoutex]

Wobbles are a normal thing with Hurricanes. Many people make the mistakes of thinkning a wooble East or West in a few frames is the beginning of a new trend of direction. Often that is not the case. Many last night were saying Charley had turned North prematurely when in fact that was not the case and Charley continued wobbling North and North-Northwest across Cuba and is currently dead on the NHC progged track. Always watch quite a few frames of sat pics and/or radar images before making an assumption that a turn has begun. This being said, Charley is expected to begin turning North relatively soon and the last two sets of coordinates do indicate a North movement so the turn may be happening. I still expect the landfall area to be right around the Tampa Bay area of just South of there. NHC has been right on so far with Charley.

[Wannabewxman79]

Yeah, it just looks like a wobble. The stronger hurricanes tend to do this some.

[hial2]

Often that is not the case.

But sometimes it is.. Steering currents were supposed to weaken by 25n..Like last night with the premature north component, there is a likelyhood that the east component has been established prematurely as well

[The Dark Knight]

Can you give us some links....????? and maps....

[Sirocco]

Going south of Tampa, heads up Fort Meyers...on track my arse...LOL

[Aquawind]

Dammit!! I cannot load any loops the servers are so busy..

[Wallcloud]

There is a site plotting the vortex positions and you can see it looks like a turn.

http://net-waves.com/weather/td03.php

[Blown Away]

How long before a wobble becomes a trend/ turn?

[Weatherboy1]

Judging from the last several satellite frames, it appears the trough is really starting to impact the path of Charley. Overall motion is still N, but there have been noticeable "pushes" and jobs to the E. Nothing drastic, though, so this thing is still on track to head toward the Tampa area, in my opinion. But in a clearly bad situation, there is some potentially good news: If we get a few more jogs E, the massive storm surge scenario in Tampa Bay MAY be avoided. That's because the bay would end up being on the W side of the storm if it struck south of metro Tampa. The winds would therefore be out of the NE and N, as opposed to SW and S. We'll see.

[Josephine96]

If the storm makes landfall south of Tampa that will probably give me much worse weather here than is already expected

[mitchell]

wow really impressive loop. Looks like actual path turn rather than wobble

[vbhoutex]

How long before a wobble becomes a trend/ turn?

There is not set amount of time or number of frames. IMO a good rule of thumb is to watch the sat loops(visible during the day)and take at least 15 frames(that is about 2.5 hours if I remember correctly) to try and establish a trend. With radar it is difficult to do since most doppler images are new every six minutes and do not run for long lengths of time.

In this case if the images keep showing the eye further East than it was after each wobble(and there will be many)then you have a trend established.

[The Dark Knight]

Thanks for the info vbhoutex!!!