One interesting thing about Josephine's weak circulation south of the center is that it makes it a little more resistant to ingesting dry air to the west of the system. There really isn't much inflow to the south of the center, and most of it is coming from the east. For the dry air west of the system to penetrate into the circulation, it would have to hook all the way around to the east side and enter the inflow from that direction. You can kind of see this on microwave imagery, and the earlier ASCAT posted in this thread was also helpful in diagnosing storm inflow.
However, the Catch 22 is that if Josephine tries to strengthen, it's going to improve the equatorialward inflow, and therefore more readily draw the dry air in. If it remains weak though, the TUTT will probably tear it apart. Josephine is kind of in a tough spot right now no matter what it does. I think the meteorologist aboard the latest recon flight may have said it best in this tweet.
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1900hurricane wrote:One interesting thing about Josephine's weak circulation south of the center is that it makes it a little more resistant to ingesting dry air to the west of the system. There really isn't much inflow to the south of the center, and most of it is coming from the east. For the dry air west of the system to penetrate into the circulation, it would have to hook all the way around to the east side and enter the inflow from that direction. You can kind of see this on microwave imagery, and the earlier ASCAT posted in this thread was also helpful in diagnosing storm inflow.
However, the Catch 22 is that if Josephine tries to strengthen, it's going to improve the equatorialward inflow, and therefore more readily draw the dry air in. If it remains weak though, the TUTT will probably tear it apart. Josephine is kind of in a tough spot right now no matter what it does. I think the meteorologist aboard the latest recon flight may have said it best in this tweet.
it has a large well-established pouch.. and any dry air has all but been eliminated. what is left is not enough to do anything but cause a hiccupp. Shear or not.
shear is the only thing that will weaken this/hold it in check.
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Still seems like a concern to me, especially with this drop to the W of Josephine with the earlier recon mission. That air is rotating around the circulation, but hasn't worked its way in as of yet because of the limited inflow. I've annotated the MetOp-B pass I posted above with both the dry air trajectory (solid arrows) and Josephine's main inflow (dashes). If Josephine is going to strengthen, it's going to draw in more air. A tropical cyclone is a Carnot Engine, and any engine is an air pump. With nearly 75% of the circulation surrounded by low PW air, that's not a good sign.
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It would be interesting if Jo pulled an Irene ‘05 and got an injection of adrenaline in a few days as it heads north and reached hurricane status. I’m not making a forecast, as I’m not even going to attempt with this storm, but I’m watching with interest. I do think she might have some surprises up her sleeve.
Kyle formed a little faster and stronger than what I was thinking. Looks like CONUS will likely be in the clear. However there is another front forecast to stall along the east coast with another behind in the Midwest. Convection plays a big role on modification of Rossby Waves. Going to check into this in more detail.
That mid-level convective debris I mentioned last night may have done the trick. She is deep in the shear now but deep convection is firing right on top of the CoC. No sign of dry air entrainment. Next big tell is if recon can find high rain rates.