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Posts Tagged ‘july’
Bonnie – Discussion #3
Good Afternoon. This is the third discussion posted on the progress of the storm once named Bonnie. This very well may be the final update as it appears that Bonnie is in the process of becoming an open wave, or a complex of showers. Tropical Storm Bonnie made landfall earlier today in Florida and quickly moved across the southern part of the state. What is left of her is now over the eastern Gulf of Mexico. As you can see in the image above there is no well defined convection and what convection left is located north of the ‘circulation’. There is some question if Bonnie still has a low level circulation and at this point I would lean towards the side that says she may be declassified later tonight. The convection over Cuba is not associated with Bonnie. As can be seen by the shear chart below, Bonnie is in an area of 30 knots of shear, which is quickly increasing to 50 knots. Anything that is left will likely be shredded to pieces.
Depending on whether Bonnie survives this the forecasted track of the system. Many models are in agreement so this forecasted path looks good. Even if she is declassified these areas will be affected by the moisture from Bonnie, thus can expect heavy rain.
Based on the strength of the system and the conditions over the Gulf the primary threat would appear to be Heavy Rainfall. This system could produce 3 to 5 inch rain amounts along its path, as shown in the graphic above. There really is not much more to say about this system. If there is any regeneration another discussion will of-course, be posted.
David Reimer
Chasing Oklahoma in July – Who Thought?
Good Morning,
It’s just before the despicable hour of six and the sun has not even begun to rise as of the time of this typing. Not exactly the way I wanted to start off the chase, but hey, I can’t sleep so what am I going to do?
Checking data this morning the first thing that pops up is that there is an extensive amount of precipitation and cloud cover over Texas and Oklahoma this morning. Most of Oklahoma has some light precipitation this morning while more vigorous convection has developed over West Texas in the past hour, as shown by the brighter colors in the Infrared map. That convection, and associated cloud cover, will most likely impact areas along and south of Oklahoma City as the morning goes on. That precipitation shield is associated with a disturbance that will move into Oklahoma today and help spark off more convection.
With situations such as this the models have a very hard time keeping up with current trends, thus their projections for later periods are usually out of whack. The same applies to this case, thus It’s going to be more of a hand-analysis type of day to determine where the boundaries are along with the stationary front. Low Level Shear is weak but stationary fronts have a tendency to locally enhance the shear, so if any storm can ‘ride’ the front it will have a brief chance of producing a tornado. It looks like a High Wind Event should commence across Oklahoma later today so that, along with a slightly lower chance of hail, will be the main threats. It should be noted if a sustained supercell can develop the hail threat will temporarily become the most significant threat, and the potential for an isolated tornado will become more likely, especially if its riding the front.
Connor is out of town this week, thus I’ll be out chasing solo today. My plans are to depart around the 9 AM hour. My current thoughts are that North/Northwest Oklahoma will be the best area, but that will be determined by trends later today. I’m likely going to head where clearing has taken place as that will be the area with the most destabilization. There is a chance that convection will fire earlier then anticipated thus I could be ‘chasing’ or heading to intercept a storm by the time I reach Oklahoma City around the lunch time hour, but I would anticipate that the best chances for severe convection to hold off until the afternoon. I’ll be updating the Twitter account regularly (twitter.com/txstormchasers) so stay tuned to that for the latest information. It’s often hard to post a blog update like this one once the chase has started. Both the Live Stream and GPS will be online today so make sure you check them out at our Live Stream Page!
Chase Status
This shows the probability of a storm chase within the next 5 days.
By roczag
By weatherworm