ATL: TROPICAL DEPRESSION ALEX - DISCUSSION

[HurricaneStriker]

Alex needs to shift further north over the next few hours or else it'll die over Mexico or the Bay of Campeche.

[cycloneye]

Center has to be close to this location.

[Air Force Met]

Pressure down to 995.2mbs and had winds still at 16kts when that reading was made, so could be a little lower then that...looks like they made a good center punch that time.

Yep...bombing out big time. Making a run at hurricane before hitting the coast.

[Aquawind]

Wow!

[KWT]

Alex needs to shift further north over the next few hours or else it'll die over Mexico or the Bay of Campeche.

It'll have no trouble over the BoC, in fact I think it'll get some help by the curve of the coast in strengthening right towards landfall if its far enough south...now obviously Mexico is a different matter.

Pressure down to 995mbs, perhaps even 994mbs...pretty impressive stuff!

[Ivanhater]

Wow, extremely lucky land is near, otherwise there would be nothing to stop this rapid intensification going on

[HURAKAN]

I'm absolutely not surprised

[chzzdekr81]

This is huge.

[Ikester]

It's important to remember that pressure is direct relation to windspeed but to size as well. Just because the pressure seems low at 995 mb does not mean the winds are going to respond because the envelope of the storm is so big. If it were a tiny system then we'd be on the verge of a hurricane. Size DOES matter when it comes to storms. The steeper that "slope" is from the periphery to the center, the faster the winds are. The bigger the storm, the shallower the slope which means you need a lower pressure in the center for winds to corresond to that of a smaller storm with the same given pressure. Am I making sense?

An example of this would be Hurricane Ike and Alicia. Ike had a central pressure of 950 hPa. Alicia had 962. Which was stronger in terms of wind? Alicia. Alicia was a cat. 3 with a pressure 12 mb higher than that of Ike. Why? Ike was MANY MANY MANY MANY MANY times bigger.

[KWT]

Yep...bombing out big time. Making a run at hurricane before hitting the coast.

Lucky that once again this system hasn't got that much time to strengthen, still its going up to 50kts and could well get stronger then that, could see damage.

[xironman]

It will be interesting to see where the next fix is, this looks more nw that I imagined.

[HurricaneStriker]

Some impressive bombing going on right now with Alex. According to radar, Alex has made a LANDFALL!!!

[KWT]

Wow, extremely lucky land is near, otherwise there would be nothing to stop this rapid intensification going on

I wouldn't be surprised if the land is actually helping this system to tighten itself up, the convection is obviously another factor!

[hurricaneCW]

996 or even 994 pressures are not that low for a 50 knot system. I thought it may have been rapidly intensifying but recon confirms that the intensification is very steady rather than rapid. I don't think it gets any higher than 55 knots before landfall because land is right there. I know a hurricane is possible in the GOM but being over land may completely disrupt the core. We saw in 2008 where big storms hit land and than took days to reorganize. Ike never did regain that major power pre-GOM although it compensated by expanding rapidly in size.

[KWT]

xironman, looks like recon got a better center fix this time and the system looks like its wobbling its way NW right now, probably in response to the quick strengthening thats occuring.

[HURAKAN]

Some impressive bombing going on right now with Alex. According to radar, Alex has made a LANDFALL!!!

According to RECON, not, it hasn't.

[KWT]

I know a hurricane is possible in the GOM but being over land may completely disrupt the core. We saw in 2008 where big storms hit land and than took days to reorganize. Ike never did regain that major power pre-GOM although it compensated by expanding rapidly in size.

I wouldn't bank on it, remember Alex probably won't have a core, or if it does it would be very weak simply because its not had time to wrap it up...therefore its not really losing anything, where as the bigger storms from 08 already had a powerful inner core that couldn't totally collapse and thus needed rebuilding, and that can take a while, far longer IMO then to make a fresh one in certain situations.

[ConvergenceZone]

good call HURAKAN ,

I remember you mentioning yesterday that you believed it would bomb in the Western Carib before hitting land, and bombing is exactly what it's doing. As others have said though, luckily it doesn't have much more time over water.

[HURAKAN]

Bursting over the center

[HURAKAN]

good call HURAKAN ,

I remember you mentioning yesterday that you believed it would bomb in the Western Carib before hitting land, and bombing is exactly what it's doing. As others have said though, luckily it doesn't have much more time over water.

It's just common sense looking at all the factors involved.