Looking at buoy data in the NE Gulf tonight finds sustained winds of 33-35 mph. It won't take much development for winds to reach 40+, and if that happens, you'll see NHC name the circulation in the eastern Gulf "Sub-Tropical Storm Ana" either tomorrow or on Friday. The system is nearly stationary and I feel uncomfortable saying where it will go when it's not going anywhere right now. High pressure is blocking any northward movement so the best guess would be a westward drift with a turn to the north over the weekend. A westward drift would take the circulation over the Gulf "Loop Current" where the water temperatures are above 80 degrees. Could this develop into something? Maybe, but the cold upper low would have to fill some and that is not likely for another day or two. Bottom line...it's too soon to make the call on who's gonna feel the main impacts (heavy rainfall, high tides, gusty winds to 40+) until there is some discernable motion.
In the short term, the muggies are back and we'll see more clouds than sun on Thursday with a few daytime heating showers in the afternoon. Rain chances will increase by Friday PM IF this distrubance heads closer towards us. A quicker turn to the north would leave us on the dry side of the system resulting in a pretty good weekend here, but much wetter the farther east one goes. Next update tomorrow.
4 comments:
Why does the NWS have to name this storm before the start of Hurricane Season??? If its going to be subtropical, then why even name it.
To me thats going to get all the scare pundits out there saying we have a named storm over a month before the season starts and this could be a active season...Plus I am sure we'll all be reminded that Hurricane Season starts June 1st.
To me this is an area of low pressure and at this time of the year its no different than a low pressure system associated with a cold front. Yes it will bring rain and wind, so does cold fronts. So what, last I saw we need the rain.
Yeah, they'll name this storm and looking at the cloud coverage and how huge the circulation is, that just covers Florida right now, we'll have some mayor saying this is the mother of all storms....now who was that???
I have been skeptical over the past few days on whether or not this would become Sub-Tropical or not.But it seems to be making a run for it this morning. The Surface Low has become tighter and well defined, convection is developed near the center, and there are Banding Features are starting to take shape.All of those signs are suggesting organization.Not to mention that the Low is detaching its self from the cold front and is in the beginning stages of transitioning to a warm core, or at least at the surface which is what the Cyclone Phase Diagrams are showing.I would give this a 60% chance of going Sub-Tropical and being named but may I stress that the impacts will not be noticeably different whether or not it is named.
That's like saying don't name your kid if he/she is born early... so what if hurricane season has not started. So if it snows after winter has officially ended you can't call it snow?
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