ozonepete wrote:Aside from all of the track guessing going on, I see some are speculating that it could get back to cat 5 tomorrow before reaching Haiti and Jamaica. Unfortunately it's not out of the question. On this IR satellite image from 5:45PM EDT I circled that large area of convection to the east of Matthew's main circulation. It has been around for a couple of days now and appears to be reaching a maximum. Though it's hard to discern exactly why it formed or why it has persisted so long, at this point it seems likely that it is now taking some energy away from Matthew that could be used to maintain or increase his strength. My only guess is that it has something to do with the shape and topography of the northern S.A. coast, but regardless one would think if it weren't there Matthew would gain a really symmetric circular shape and thus re-intensify. If Matthew does indeed start moving NNW soon and further away from the S.A. coast that area of convection will either die out and/or merge with the main circulation and allow Matthew to regain a very symmetric flow and probably intensify. The other obvious factor is that if Matthew doesn't start moving soon there will be upwelling of cooler water under it that will aid in weakening.
Maybe it has something to do with the interaction between the mountains in Columbia and the winds blowing across Lake Maracaibo and other coastal swamps (Catatumbo has an almost eternal lightning supply because of that).
