thermos wrote:boca_chris wrote:well even if pressures are rising some the convection is expanding and I would think that soon after we would see the pressures start to drop again.
No remember that's not the convection expanding and intensifying its the sunset
Even NHC reported that the cloud tops were cooling in the last discussion.
He isn't looking at Shortwave IR. I know you're being sarcastic (I think), but the tops will appear to cool if you're looking at shortwave IR at sunset, courtesy of the ceasation of incoming radiation from the sun. If you don't believe me, look at a national view of shortwave IR near sunset (or sunrise).
So far, Wilma is behaving pretty close as I had expected. I thought she may be able to shave off a mb or two in past few hours, but instead she's risen 3mb and, according to max FL winds on recon, is really a Cat 1. Just as a word of caution, you'll drive yourself crazy if you read into every new satellite image! Just as you shouldn't really put too much faith into any individual numerical model run, you shouldn't really look at very short-term trends and try to guess on that. I will guarantee that Wilma will wobble northward... and southward. I will guarantee that there will be bursts of convection. Such things really shouldn't surprise anyone. However, it takes a lot more to bring a storm to a strong hurricane than some blobs of red on an IR image.
By the way, good sat images at
http://www.cira.colostate.edu/RAMM/Rmsd ... PICAL.html and
http://www.cira.colostate.edu/RAMM/Rmsdsol/RSOMAIN.HTML . Since the GOES 12 is in Rapid Scan Mode, new images are sent considerably more frequently than usual. The NHC site only updates sat images every 30 minutes -- the link above has 5-10 minute updates. (I guess it isn't now, but GOES 12 is supposed to be in eclipse right now, so we should see rapid update resume in the morning).
