This kind of thinking suggests that storms have a certain kind of "personality". As silly as it is to anthropomophize natural phenomena, it seems that patterns that we can recognize and relate to, don't stop up from assignining personality traits, but encourage us to do so. In our selfcenteredness, we tend to compare everything to our puny selves, even making the comparison in traits, personality, even the 'naming' of a monster of a hurricane. You could say that is is "human nature" to do this.
Really bad joke, I know. Sorry, I'm so tired I'm punchy.
The problem is that kind of thinking takes us away from the truth. And the truth is that hurricanes behave according to physics. And as we have seen so far this season, and every hurricane season, the physics of the amazing storms are imperfectly understood.
I think what I'm doing here is analylizing our own abilities to analyze.
As we have seen in recent days, emotions have run very strong regarding this process. Another aspect of our ability to interpret data and what seem to be "dry"
facts is our psychological makeup.
Sometimes I am amazed when reading the NHC's forcasts, and especially the discussions, where one can get a real sense of the individual author's struggles to remain objective, and stick to the model guidence. Or at the very least, describing the reasoning process involved in drawing conclusions from sets of data, often conflicting sets of data. This reasoning process, is, alas, wonderfully human.
Just a few thoughts on my thought processes. So, my reasoning for strengthening tonight, is: she's done it often before, she'll do it again, maybe. Given that hurricanes often go through these diurnal cycles. Correct me here if I'm wrong, but isn't nightime strengthening a result of the storm's using the energy gained during daytime heating, with a little time lag...ie. heat in the afternoon, hurricane absorbs heat energy in the early evening hours, then blammo, 2:00AM, we see deepening of the storm.
Thanks,
Zip
Caveat:
It does seem that the overall expansion of the windfield, as pointed out many times today on the board may indeed make it more difficult for Frances to tighten up and spin faster. She could, in my opinion, pull it off. There is enough time, with this slow motion and very warm water ahead, to do exactly that. From and old salt, "NEVER underestimate the Gulfstream".
