Category 2 Sanba closes in on Korea; 92L enters the Lesser Antilles
The winds are rising in Busan, South Korea, and heavy rain is lashing the Korean Peninsula and Southern Japan as Category 2 Typhoon Sanba steams northwards at 22 mph. Sanba pounded Okinawa, Japan early Sunday morning local time as a Category 3 storm with 120 mph winds, but no casualties or heavy damage has been reported thus far. Radar loops show that the large 35-mile diameter eye of Sanba passed over the northern part of Okinawa. Oku, on the northern tip of the island, experienced the eyewall, and recorded a gust of 124 mph (55.3 m/s). At Kadena Air Force Base, the eye of Sanba missed, passing just to the north. The winds peaked at 56 mph, gusting to 77 mph, at 8:30 am local time, after the eye passed to the northeast, and the base received 6.30" of rain. High wind shear of 25 - 35 knots is now affecting Sanba, and satellite loops show that the typhoon is weakening, with the cloud tops warming and dry air wrapping into the core. Radar out of Korea shows that heavy rains from Sanba cover most of the Korean Peninsula, and heavy rain is likely to be the main threat from Sanba in Korea. Sanba will continue to weaken as it encounters cooler waters and higher wind shear today, and is likely to be at Category 1 strength at landfall in South Korea near 22 UTC on Sunday.
Figure 1. Radar image of Typhoon Sanba over Okinawa at 6:25 am local time Sunday September 16, 2012. Image credit: Japan Meteorological Agency.
Video 1. Raw video of Typhoon Sanba hitting Okinawa, taken by storm chaser James Reynolds.
Sanba: the strongest tropical cyclone of 2012
Sanba became a Category 5 Super Typhoon with 175 mph winds for an 18-hour period ending at 12 UTC Friday, September 14, making it Earth's only Category 5 tropical cyclone so far in 2012 (there were two Category 5 storms in 2011, both in the Western Pacific.) The previous strongest tropical cyclone of 2012 was Super Typhoon Guchol, a Category 4 storm with top winds of 150 mph east of the Philippines in June. Sanba is the strongest typhoon in the Western Pacific since October 2010, when Super Typhoon Megi's sustained winds hit 180 mph.
Figure 2. Super Typhoon Sanba at peak strength, as seen at 04:50 UTC September 13, 2012, by the MODIS instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite. At the time, Sanba was a Super Typhoon with sustained winds of 175 mph and gusts to 205 mph. The spectacular eye of Super Typhoon Sanba featured two counter-rotating eddies at the surface. Image credit: NASA. NOAA's Environmental Visualization Laboratory has a spectacular large-scale image of Sanba at Category 5 strength.
Invest 92L entering the Lesser Antilles
A tropical wave (Invest 92L) entering the Lesser Antilles Islands is moving west at 15 mph, and is bringing heavy rain showers and gusty winds to the islands today. The wave is under a moderate 10 - 20 knots of wind shear, and has only a small amount of heavy thunderstorm activity, due to a large area of dry air surrounding the system. The amount of heavy thunderstorm activity has decreased since Saturday. The latest SHIPS model forecast predicts shear will fall to the 10 - 15 knot range Monday through Wednesday, which will favor development. However, the atmosphere over the Caribbean is unusually dry and stable, and this will make it difficult for 92L to organize quickly. 92L will bring heavy rain showers to the Dominican Republic and Haiti on Wednesday, Jamaica and eastern Cuba on Thursday, the Cayman Islands and Central Cuba on Friday, and Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula and Western Cuba on Saturday. The 06Z run of the NOGAPS models indicates some weak development of 92L once it reaches the Western Caribbean, but none of the other reliable models develop the system. In their 8 am EDT Tropical Weather Outlook, NHC gave the wave a 20% of developing into a tropical depression by Tuesday morning. A hurricane hunter aircraft is on call for Monday afternoon to investigate the storm, if necessary.
Figure 3. Morning satellite image of Invest 92L.
Hurricane Nadine headed towards the Azores Islands
Hurricane Nadine is heading eastward on a track that may bring the storm close to the Azores Islands on Wednesday. However, steering currents for Nadine are expected to collapse by Wednesday, and the storm will likely wander for many days in the Central Atlantic.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 — Blog Index
Take a look at the TCHP in the eastern Gulf. It's pretty pathetic. It's hard to see 93L developing in this kind of environment.
Now it looks as if some of the models are finding their way out of the wad and picking a direction.
Ensemble Models WU : )
I'm not seeing any models for 93L, just the usual SHIPS intensity. I don't know where you're seeing models. I just see an "L"?
I think that was sarcasm. :)
Yeah, that's all that's there so far for 93L. I was talking about Nadine's bizarro models, which have changed since I first looked at them a few minutes ago. They're updating the Tropical Weather & Hurricanes page on WU as we speak I think.
Kristy looks like somebody took a picture of a blob and used the swirl tool in Photoshop.
Well, Helene couldn't do squat with much more favorabe conditions, except hang around and pester us for days. I expect 93L will do even worse.
Or someone took a tropical cyclone and put it over 22C waters.
Helene was very close to land.
So there are basicaly two semi-crazed model runs for 93L? I wonder why the NHC didn't hold off on designating it an invest until it as some more model support?
LIES! >:|
And we still got Helene with those conditions, I think we could see some development. What do you think 93L will do Cody?
And here I thought we were obsessed with the letter e-m-m-m-a! lol
Well their goes another on the list.
Open water is kind of stretch. It looks pretty close to the coast, depending on where the center is placed. It will also run into a bunch of dry air and low TCHP's as it tries to move east. None of the usual terrestrial models have picked up on this supposed low and move it inland over the Southeast. Just looks mighty strange to me.
The male victim has not been identified, and no other injuries were reported.
According to the Pasco County Sheriff's Office, the crash occurred before 8 a.m. near Pilot Country Airport at U.S. 41 and State Road 52. Power was knocked out in the immediate area.
Pilot Country Airport is a small air park located between Land O' Lakes and Spring Hill, east of the Suncoast Parkway. An ultralight is a small recreation aircraft.
Traffic was diverted in the area of U.S. 41 and S.R. 52. News crews were kept away while the man's body was removed from the plane.
GULF OF MEXICO...
A WEAK UPPER LEVEL TROUGH MOVES ACROSS THE ERN GULF ON WATER
VAPOR IMAGERY. DOPPLER RADAR IMAGERY SHOWS THIS UPPER FEATURE IS
GENERATING CLUSTERS OF SCATTERED SHOWERS AND ISOLATED
THUNDERSTORMS OVER THE WRN COASTAL WATERS OF THE FLORIDA
PENINSULA AND STRAITS E OF 84W S OF 28N. SHORT RAGE COMPUTER
MODELS KEEP THE CONVECTION IN THIS REGION DURING THE NEXT 12
HOURS...DRIFTING N ACROSS THE FLORIDA PANHANDLE OVER THE NEXT
12-24 HOURS. A SURFACE TROUGH IS ANALYZED OVER THE NW BASIN FROM
NEAR THE COAST OF TEXAS AT 27N96W TO 22N94W...PRODUCING SIMILAR
CONVECTION W OF 90W FROM 24W-28W. THE SURFACE TROUGH IS EXPECTED
TO DRIFT WNW AND WILL EVENTUALLY BE ABSORBED BY A FRONTAL
BOUNDARY THAT WILL REACH THE NW BASIN OVER THE NEXT 24 HOURS.
MOIST CONDITIONS AND BROAD SURFACE TROUGHING WILL REMAIN ACROSS
THE BASIN DURING THE FORECAST PERIOD.
A TROPICAL WAVE NEAR
60-61 WEST LONGITUDE WAS MOVING 20 TO 25 KNOTS TO THE WEST
NORTHWEST AND IS EXPECTED TO BEGIN AFFECTING PUERTO RICO BY MONDAY
AFTERNOON. THE NAM IS DEVELOPING THE WAVE INTO A TROPICAL
DEPRESSION BY TUESDAY AND IS A LITTLE FASTER...BUT THE GFS KEEPS IT AS
A WAVE THROUGH THE END OF THE WEEK. CURRENT FORECAST IS NEAR THE
MIDWAY POINT BUT FAVORING THE GFS SOLUTION. THIS WILL BRING
SHOWERS AND SCATTERED THUNDERSTORMS TO THE AREA THROUGH THURSDAY
AT A MINIMUM.
289@ncstorm I don't suspect they'll be to strong as the atmosphere around here lately has been rather cool with low/no humidity and temps in the 70's.I'd be a little more worried if the temps were in the upper 80's-90's with high humidity.
Do you live in Belize? I've see quite a few banana plantations on my visits there. The climate seems to support banana cultivation, the main limiting factor being the number of hurricanes that regularly tear up the plantations. Sugar cane is much more hardy and is the main export of Belize.
Looking at some things, it will likely be upgraded to a Moderate risk tomorrow.
The banana plant has been cultivated for over 4,000 years and has been extensively hybridized. Originally from Asia, it is really not a tree in the true sense. Instead of having a woody trunk, its trunk is made up of the remnants of the closely packed leave sheathes formed after the leaves have died and fallen off. There are many varieties of bananas of which the plantain is one, and both the yellow table banana and the plantain grow on Ambergris Caye. The exact species here is unknown but the two listed at the top are the most common ones grown in this part of the world.
The banana tree has a trunk with the leaves growing at the top of the tree. It grows from 10 to 30 feet tall. The leaves grow on short sheathed stalks with very large oblong blades. The leaves have a heavy central vein with smaller secondary veins growing to the leaf edges. This leaf shreds easily in the wind to give it a tattered look. The leaves come out spirally to form the top crown. The flowers grow on spikes with lavender leaf-like parts and yellow flowers. The banana tree is a sterile hybrid, in spite of bearing flowers, and reproduces through basal suckers. It cannot tolerate high winds.
The fruit of the banana, which is technically a berry, is widely used raw and in cooking and the banana tree is capable of producing a lot of food per acre. The plantain is a starchier fruit and is used in cooking. Once the banana or plantain bunch has been cut, the plant then dies and is cut down. Suckers come up from the base of the old plant and then these are replanted to give a new plant. The yellow banana and the plantain will grow a new fruit producing plant in 6 to 9 months.
1. SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS HAVE DEVELOPED OVER THE NORTHWESTERN GULF
OF MEXICO IN ASSOCIATION WITH A WEAK SURFACE LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM
LOCATED ABOUT 90 MILES EAST OF BROWNSVILLE TEXAS. SOME GRADUAL
DEVELOPMENT OF THIS DISTURBANCE IS POSSIBLE OVER THE NEXT COUPLE OF
DAYS AS IT MOVES NORTHEASTWARD AT 10 TO 15 MPH. THIS SYSTEM HAS A
LOW CHANCE...20 PERCENT...OF BECOMING A TROPICAL OR SUBTROPICAL
CYCLONE DURING THE NEXT 48 HOURS. REGARDLESS OF DEVELOPMENT...THIS
SYSTEM COULD PRODUCE PERIODS OF LOCALLY HEAVY RAINFALL AND GUSTY
WINDS ACROSS PORTIONS OF THE LOUISIANA...MISSISSIPPI...
ALABAMA...AND THE FLORIDA PANHANDLE ON MONDAY AND CONTINUING INTO
TUESDAY.
* URBAN AND SMALL STREAM FLOOD ADVISORY FOR MINOR FLOODING OF POOR
DRAINAGE AREAS IN...
SOUTH CENTRAL WILLIAMSON COUNTY...
TRAVIS COUNTY...
* UNTIL 400 PM CDT
* AT 209 PM CDT...LIGHT TO MODERATE RAIN CONTINUES TO FALL ACROSS
PORTIONS OF SOUTH CENTRAL TEXAS. RAINFALL TOTALS THIS MORNING AND
EARLY AFTERNOON ARE AVERAGING BETWEEN 1 AND 2 INCHES. MODERATE TO
LOCALLY HEAVY RAINFALL CONTINUES TO FORM SOUTH OF AUSTIN AND OVER
THE NEXT FEW HOURS AN ADDITIONAL INCH OF RAIN MAY FALL ACROSS THE
ADVISORY AREA. ALTHOUGH WIDESPREAD FLASH FLOODING IS NOT EXPECTED
THROUGH THIS AFTERNOON...SOME CITY STREETS...ROADS...SMALL
CREEKS...AND DITCHES MAY EXPERIENCE SOME MINOR FLOODING.
* SOME LOCATIONS THAT WILL EXPERIENCE MINOR FLOODING INCLUDE...
ANDERSON MILL...AUSTIN...AUSTIN BERGSTROM INT AP...CEDAR PARK...
PFLUGERVILLE...ROUND ROCK...TANGLEWOOD FOREST...WINDEMERE...BEE
CAVE AND COUPLAND.
PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...
EXCESSIVE RUNOFF FROM THIS STORM WILL CAUSE MINOR FLOODING OF SMALL
CREEKS AND STREAMS...URBAN AREAS...HIGHWAYS...STREETS AND UNDERPASSES
AS WELL AS OTHER DRAINAGE AREAS AND LOW LYING SPOTS.
&&
LAT...LON 3050 9732 3003 9770 3030 9805 3062 9781
$$
Viewing: 251 - 301
Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 — Blog Index