Air Force Met wrote:Derek Ortt wrote:the SSTs are going to be largely irrelevant in the evolution of this feature. many hee are stuck on SST and completely ignore the atmosphere
You could have a surfac low over 25,000C SST, but if you had strong shear, nothing would develop (I am a tad bit high on the SST, but just want to emphasize a point)
Let's cut is back to just below boiling point...but the emphasis is still the same...
...And I have yet to look at one upper level chart (not a SHIPS output...not a SHEAR chart...not a whatever...)...one 200mb forecast from any model in the past day or so that shows any upper level pattern that is very favorable for the kind of deepening some on here are panicking over. Things looked much different earlier in the week. Now...the upper low tracks west with the system...rather than moving south and building a ridge over the top of it.
As I said earlier...many here...I think...expected this upper low to be gone already...and as you and I know...it doesn't work that way. These cold cores just don't disappear over night.
For those of you who doubt this...go look at Ingrid. I told you all last week it would still be dealing with that upper level low through mid-week. These buggers are persistent. That's why a few well placed TUTTS can kill a season.
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Once again, this may be a clear case of what is described in the literature as a tropical transition. The position or latitude that the upper low center finds itself is a bit unusual for September 19th and is related to the strong trough that led to record cold in the upper Midwest last Saturday morning. The trough fractured and we now have this feature retrograding west in the GOM.
One might expect to see a rapid decrease in shear which may be directly related to the convection created by the initial baroclinic disturbance. These type of transitions often take place later in the season and more poleward. This is important, imo, because if there is to be a tropical transition, it is over sufficiently warm water for further intensification. Many of these transitions fail to produce a tropical cyclone often because SSTs become too low before the shear can abate. Furthermore, a climatology of such transitions shows most of them do not exceed CAT2 levels. However, there are exceptions. And with an anomalously large warm ridge to the north of this potential tropical cyclone, there may be more to this than what many of the numerical weather guidance indicates.
The initializations may have been a bit off with the position of any potential tropical cyclone and why it might make more sense to look at the global ensemble means for a better idea of potential tracks during the intial extra-tropical period this feature is currently in. Tonight's occluded look on satellite and the convection increasing in the SW GOM near the upper center should be a concern. I think perceptions of the potential tropical system will greatly change in the next 24 hours. The key will be can the baroclinically driven convection help decrease the shear.
