Gulf Of Mexico Disturbance (RECON SET)

[smw1981]

I am confused...for the people that live on the GOM, does it not storm pretty much every afternoon in the summer? I have lived in Mobile my whole life (but I just moved to Birmingham, AL last week), and we have/had pretty good thunderstorms almost every afternoon for as long as I can remember. Is that not the norm, since everyone is saying "we are having strong storms this afternoon, etc."? Just wondered!

[PTrackerLA]

Typically in June and July along the gulf coasts you have a 30-40% chance of rain each day, at least in Louisiana. This summer it seems to have rained, or be raining close by, nearly every day but that's relatively normal. Rainfall is about normal for the year yet people will say "it's been raining so much" etc. My theory is that the past few summers have seen droughts and below normal rainfall...people just forgot what a normal summer is like! Today was a little excessive here though, almost 3" of rain.

[Steve]

>>Rainfall is about normal for the year yet people will say "it's been raining so much" etc. My theory is that the past few summers have seen droughts and below normal rainfall...people just forgot what a normal summer is like! Today was a little excessive here though, almost 3" of rain.

It's some of that for the casual observers. But for those of us who follow weather, we pretty much know that the source regions for the rainfall and the triggering mechanisms were anything but normal for July. As discussed in a previous thread, we (talking SE LA here even though I now live in South Central LA), with a normal southeasterly flow, would typically get seabreeze fronts before the noon hour (obviously depending on atmospheric caps and such) and often thunderstorms later in the afternoon after the sun comes back out for a while to heat things up and help create more instability.

This year, almost all of the July rainfall has come from upper boundaries that settled over the area from the north and provided triggering mechanisms for days on end. Typically those fronts would wash out after a day or two to be replaced by weather out of the east or southeast. But this year, it's been more from the north even as troughs "in the means" (and I'm talking prior to this one that settled down into Florida) were much farther west.

So the timing of the rainfall has been different - a lot of morning rains that weren't associated with seabreeze (land heating faster than the water providing a lift) and spotty showers often throughout the day. Thats what I've noticed anyway.

Steve

[tailgater]

Typically in June and July along the gulf coasts you have a 30-40% chance of rain each day, at least in Louisiana. This summer it seems to have rained, or be raining close by, nearly every day but that's relatively normal. Rainfall is about normal for the year yet people will say "it's been raining so much" etc. My theory is that the past few summers have seen droughts and below normal rainfall...people just forgot what a normal summer is like! Today was a little excessive here though, almost 3" of rain.

I bushhog a few tracts of land around here and have done so for about six years, this is the first time I've put off cutting due to the ground being to wet. It feels like winter, cause the soil is so spongy. Usally in the summer a heavy shower @ 1 pm you can still cut your yard in the evening. I guess next month we'll have a drought and I be praying for rain. (B&M)(B&M).

[KatDaddy]

From this mornings Houston-Galveston AFD:

THROUGH THE PERIOD.
POTENTIAL NORTHERN GULF OF MEXICO TROPICAL DEVELOPMENT DURING THE
NEXT TWO TO THREE DAYS COULD BRING SOME RATHER SIGNIFICANT
CHANGES...AND MARINERS ARE URGED TO CLOSELY MONITOR UPCOMING
FORECASTS.

[KatDaddy]

From the San Antonio AFD

AT THE SAME TIME...BOTH THE 00Z AND
06Z NAM12 SOLUTIONS SHOW A TROPICAL DEPRESSION DEVELOPING IN THE
NORTHERN GULF OF MEXICO. THE 00Z GFS40 SHOWS A SIMILAR PATTERN...
BUT WITH THE CLOSED SURFACE LOW MUCH FURTHER EAST. WILL NEED TO
WATCH THIS CLOSELY AS OUR FORECAST HAS SOUTH TEXAS IN A DEEP
EASTERLY FLOW BY FRIDAY WITH AN UPPER HIGH BUILDING OVER THE
SOUTHERN/CENTRAL PLAINS AND BECOMING DOMINANT. THIS SCENARIO
WOULD BRING THE MOISTURE ASSOCIATED WITH THE TROPICAL FEATURE OVER
OUR AREA BEGINNING LATE FRIDAY INTO SATURDAY. WE`RE NOT
FORECASTING THIS SCENARIO AT THIS TIME...BUT WANT TO DRAW
ATTENTION TO THE POSSIBILITY OF A WEEKEND RAIN EVENT

[KatDaddy]

From the Lake Charles AFD:

WILL HAVE TO WATCH THE NORTH CENTRAL AND NORTHEAST
GULF OF MEXICO CLOSELY FOR SIGNS OF TROPICAL DEVELOPMENT...AS
DECAYING FRONTAL BOUNDARIES CAN SERVE AS BREEDING GROUNDS FOR
THIS. MSAS ANALYSIS ALREADY SHOWS A BIT OF A BROAD SFC LOW OVER
THE NE GULF...AND UPPER LEVEL WINDS WILL BECOME A BIT MORE
FAVORABLE OVER THE NEXT 48 HRS OR SO

[perk]

Katdaddy you got my attention. My local news cast mentioned this last night, thanks for the post.

[caneman]

This stsyem has brought some rough weather on he West coast of Florida. Lots of lighyning and rain. 2 houses hit by lightning overnight here in Pinellas county.

[HeeBGBz]

I am confused...for the people that live on the GOM, does it not storm pretty much every afternoon in the summer? I have lived in Mobile my whole life (but I just moved to Birmingham, AL last week), and we have/had pretty good thunderstorms almost every afternoon for as long as I can remember. Is that not the norm, since everyone is saying "we are having strong storms this afternoon, etc."? Just wondered!

The normal afternoon showers usually blow through and are gone in about 20 minutes time.

[Sabanic]

Back!! Used to be Tidefreak59, but changed name. Hope everyone is well. Wanted to get any Pro Mets thoughts on low forming in Northern GOM, and possibly developing further.

Thanks

[TreasureIslandFLGal]

This stsyem has brought some rough weather on he West coast of Florida. Lots of lighyning and rain. 2 houses hit by lightning overnight here in Pinellas county.

Wow! Chrissy told me that she couldn't sleep last night due to the thunder boomers but, I of course, slept right through the action! Could be all of the pain meds that I have to take but, I'm sad that I missed out on the excitement!

I hope that no one was hurt by the lightning strikes though!

[baygirl_1]

The Mobile NWS is mentioning this in this morning's forecast discussion:

000
FXUS64 KMOB 010939
AFDMOB

AREA FORECAST DISCUSSION
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE MOBILE AL
436 AM CDT WED AUG 1 2007
...MARINE: A WEAK AREA OF LOW PRESSURE IS EXPECTED TO DEVELOP ALONG A
STALLED FRONT ACROSS SOUTHEAST LOUISIANA ON THURSDAY. THE MOTION OF
THE LOW AFTER THAT IS WHERE THE DISAGREEMENT LIES. THE GFS TAKES THE
LOW TO THE NORTH ACROSS SOUTHWEST ALABAMA. THE NAM DEVELOPS THE LOW
ACROSS SOUTH CENTRAL LOUISIANA AND DRIFTS IS WEST NORTHWEST. BOTH
THE UKMET AND ECMWF SUPPORT THE GFS. THUS HAVE USED THE GFS SOLUTION
FOR THE MARINE WIND FORECAST AND IN COORDINATION W/ SURROUNDING
OFFICES HAVE CAPPED THE WIND SPEEDS AT 15 KTS AND SEA HEIGHTS AT 4
FEET UNTIL A BETTER HANDLE ON DEVELOPMENT AND STRENGTH CAN BE
GAINED

It seems prudent to keep an eye on this as long as there are thunderstorms that seem to be persisting out in the Gulf. Looks like our boat trip to Lulu's we have planned for this weekend might not be happening.

[Stormcenter]

I believe south of the mouth of the MS. is an area to watch for "possible"
development.

http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/east/gmex/loop-vis.html

[HouTXmetro]

Looking interesting this morning.

[Ivanhater]

Havnt really been paying attention to this....Ill watch it some today to see of anything happens...I just dont see anything more than a weak low forming...but gotta watch it this time of year..

[Berwick Bay]

Houtex wrote
Looking interesting this morning.
__________________________________
Yes it does. If you look at the visible loop you'll see that strong flow of storms coming from the north around the High centered over S Tex. Do you see the flow? Right now it continues south over the Sabine River (at the border of La-Tex) and then on into the Gulf. That border marks the edge of the High over Tex. Now the main Bermuda High is trying to push in over Fl and into the Gulf. Notice how the weather over the Sabine slides into the Gulf then E off the La coast to an area of weakness off the mouth of the Miss River. That area of weakness is between the Tex High, and the oncoming Bermuda Ridge. It is very suspect right now, and I think that odds for development are growing. BTW I will be in your neck of the woods Galveston-Houston for the next few days. Last year took a little trip to San Antonio-Austin (beautiful country), can definitely see why anyone would want to homestead there and between Austin and Houston, really nice too.

[Steve]

This is a copy and paste of a post I put in on the EE Board at sr. It's basically a recap of the most current models I can get (excluding the ECMWF which I haven't looked at yet). The 12Z NAM continues to keep the LA/MS option (and if you check out the 850mb Virtual Temperature, you'll get a pretty good idea on what it's up to). It basically rotates the moisture across the Mississippi Coast and wraps it across SE LA (possible training if the scenario is right). Then it moves the system WNWish as high pressure builds in and the high over Texas now retrogrades. Some discount the NAM/ETA model, but it was effective last week with the SE Texas/SW Louisiana rainfall when none of the globals were clued in. Therefore, with its recent success*, I'm not going to completely discount it. (*One of the pro mets on here was disagreeing with looking to a model that was the proverbial blind squirrel. Well with recent success of that model, this isn't cherry picking some solution from 2003 or whatever).

CMC Closes off a low off the LA/MS Coast and moves it back inland over both (lots of rain for LA/MS/AL/FL)

GFDL (side note from Invest 99L which it takes across Mexico into the EPAC) Closes the low off south of Mobile Bay. Bulk of the rainfall offshore and into the Big Bend area of Florida (east of the system).

GFS06 - Forms it south of LA/MS/AL and keeps it around for a few days. Keeps bulk of the rain offshore.

Navy NOGAPS - Closes off the low in Plaquemines Parish/adjacent coastal waters and moves back inland near AL/FL border. Bulk of rainfall from Boothville over to Panama City.

UKMET06 - South of Mobile Bay, stationary through the run (short run)

NAM12Z - Bulk of rainfall over LA/MS. The NAM basically rotates the rainfall across the MS Coast into South LA and moves the system sort of westward bringing possible training bands in from the east across SE LA.

Steve

[jasons2k]

This is potentially a bad situation for the NC/NW GOM. We already have a weak low forming and upper-level conditions should improve as time goes on. With the ridge potentially pushing this off to the W/NW, that is bad news for oil interests off the LA/TX coasts as there will be little time to prepare.

[Steve]

http://www.nco.ncep.noaa.gov/pmb/nwprod ... loop.shtml

Link to the 12Z SIM Reflectivity (NAM = fine)

and Link to the 12Z 500mb (Nam = fine)
http://www.nco.ncep.noaa.gov/pmb/nwprod ... loop.shtml

and link to the 12Z 24 hour precip (NAM = fine, run not yet completed)
http://www.nco.ncep.noaa.gov/pmb/nwprod ... loop.shtml

If the NAM is right, it's a low-midgrade tropical storm (don't see any super strong winds).

We shall see.

Steve