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Tropical Major Hurricane Florence

Typically the government will tell people when it gets within 4 or 3 days, then they will do zones starting with the highest chance for highest impact. As for inland, they never will call evacuations there unless you live in a flood-prone area.

As for the storm at the moment, microwave imagery looks bad. The eye appears to be shrinking and heavy convection building up.

Something interesting to note, the HWRF and HMON 00z runs last night both indicated that Florence would see a collapse of the current eye as an EWRC starts sometime today and lasts into Tuesday before completing. Assuming these end up being accurate, the new eye should be much larger with an expanded wind field. We may be seeing the beginnings of an EWRC now or later today since these small eyes usually can't sustain very long.
 
Sometimes the inner eyewall chokes off the outer wall sometimes?
 
I usually don't put as much faith into the GFS/GEFS/Fv3 camp vs the EPS in cases like this where we have a strong tropical cyclone riding the edge of a rapidly building subtropical high that'll only be reinforced by Florence's upper level outflow thru -PV deposition. I've seen this movie play out so many times and know better than to ride the underdispersive & poleward biased GFS/GEFS suites. Fv3 seems to be doing better in this respect w/ more realistic intensity & track but I'll still take the Euro/EPS over it.

It's notable to me that the UK is in the GFS camp. Usually the UK has a bit of a south/west bias to it and the majority of it's ensembles are now centered on NC. Usually the UK and Euro are pretty close with track but seeing them diverge last night was a bit unusual. Of course the UK has been horrible with Florence so far too but still something to keep an eye on. I actually think the FV3 has the best balance and may be close to what transpires.
 
Typically the government will tell people when it gets within 4 or 3 days, then they will do zones starting with the highest chance for highest impact. As for inland, they never will call evacuations there unless you live in a flood-prone area.

As for the storm at the moment, microwave imagery looks bad. The eye appears to be shrinking and heavy convection building up.

Still fighting some dry air intrusions but looking better. Should be RIC time by evening.
 
Sometimes the inner eyewall chokes off the outer wall sometimes?

Yeah some of the hurricane models are forecasting that to happen today and I would expect a new and much larger eye to form. All models significantly increase the wind field and size of Florence and I am expecting that to be the case here as well. An EWRC looks very likely today.
 
It's notable to me that the UK is in the GFS camp. Usually the UK has a bit of a south/west bias to it and the majority of it's ensembles are now centered on NC. Usually the UK and Euro are pretty close with track but seeing them diverge last night was a bit unusual. Of course the UK has been horrible with Florence so far too but still something to keep an eye on. I actually think the FV3 has the best balance and may be close to what transpires.

Being in the GFS camp at this stage in the game isn't exactly a good thing in a setup like this, the UKMET has been all over the place & anything but reliable with this storm, the European hasn't deviated much overall from a landfall in southern NC or central-northern SC, I'm still taking the EPS here.
 
I know UNC-Wilmington has canceled class for the week and told the students to go home. I am wondering if the colleges in the mountains like App State, UNC-Ashville, and Western Carolina are going to do the same.
 
Being in the GFS camp at this stage in the game isn't exactly a good thing in a setup like this, the UKMET has been all over the place & anything but reliable with this storm, the European hasn't deviated much overall from a landfall in southern NC or central-northern SC, I'm still taking the EPS here.

I like the FV3 personally, it's been pretty consistent and is in good alignment with the NHC track as well. I feel the Euro/EPS is a bit too far south but it should be interesting to see how it all plays out.
 
That has to be the most obnoxious map I have ever seen someone ever put out. Most people can make better maps than that, and I'm sure he used his mouse do draw all of that, not to mention that he threw a pound of his personal "I like the worst possible scenario!" bias in there to make it look like Isaac is going to screw us later too and make Florence go into a huge loop to cover more ground than any model suggests.
 
Florence's inner core has closed off completely, the northwesterly shear that was affecting the storm yesterday has since abated. The inner core of Florence closing off allows the vortex to become inertially stable, essentially less affected by "external" influences related to shear, dry air, etc. and allows the buoyancy reservoir inside the eye to build up and the eye can warm w/ ferocity. As you can imagine, with a warmer eye adjacent to a clouded over and rainy eyewall, increasing the temperature gradient across the eyewall will also ramp up the winds. Florence will become a category 4 hurricane later today as long as it doesn't undergo an EWRC.

41503604_327065788050427_6114022981082546176_n.jpg
 
I like the FV3 personally, it's been pretty consistent and is in good alignment with the NHC track as well. I feel the Euro/EPS is a bit too far south but it should be interesting to see how it all plays out.

I think the Fv3 is still second rate to the Euro/EPS, the 6z HWRF also agrees with them btw...
 
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