Sandy’s Now Official

People think meteorologists hype the weather. Not so. Well, at least not so where I can see.

Sandy is now officially a tropical storm. It’s 375 miles SSW of Kingston, Jamaica. Top winds are 45 mph.

It’s not moving! The slower the storm the more difficult to forecast.

The most likely scenario shows Sandy starting to move sometime Tuesday. By Wednesday she’ll be over Jamaica, then Eastern Cuba.

After that the picture is a little more blurry.

The technical discussion talks about Sandy the way a parent might gush over a newborn. All the conditions are right for growth.

A CENTRAL DENSE OVERCAST FEATURE APPEARS TO BE FORMING. IN ADDITION…INNER-CORE CONVECTIVE BANDING HAS DEVELOPED SOUTH AND NORTH OF THE CENTER… WITH OUTER BANDING FEATURES ALSO DEVELOPING OVER MUCH OF THE EASTERN SEMICIRCLE. UPPER-LEVEL OUTFLOW HAS EXPANDED AND IMPROVED IN ALL QUADRANTS…ESPECIALLY TO THE NORTHWEST WHERE IT HAD BEEN RESTRICTED BY AN UPPER-LEVEL TROUGH.

The spaghetti plots at the top of this entry hint at the most likely scenario, the storm goes out to sea!

The ECMWF aka, the “European” is the outlier, bringing Sandy up the East Coast, making landfall near the Hamptons on Long Island then heading northwest toward Monticello, NY.

That path would slice right through Connecticut!

The ECMWF is alone coming to this conclusion When so many models have a totally different solution the tendency is to assume the ECMWF has not yet properly modeled our current scenario. The problem is you can’t dismiss the European because it’s been so good in the past.

THE MODELS BEGIN TO DIVERGE SIGNIFICANTLY WITH THE NORMALLY RELIABLE ECMWF TAKING SANDY NORTH-NORTHWESTWARD CLOSER TO THE U.S. SOUTHEAST COAST…WHEREAS THE GFS…HWRF…GFDL…AND OTHER LESS RELIABLE MODELS TAKE THE CYCLONE NORTH-NORTHEASTWARD. GIVEN THE HISTORICAL RELIABILITY OF THE ECMWF MODEL…THE OFFICIAL FORECAST TRACK REMAINS SIMILAR TO THE PREVIOUS ADVISORY TRACK

What yesterday looked like a Wednesday arrival now looks more like next Tuesday morning.

Seriously, this is too far away for worry. The models aren’t yet locked in. We’re still a week out.

It’s going to take a lot more certainty before I start getting nervous.

It deserves close scrutiny.

2 thoughts on “Sandy’s Now Official”

  1. How come that European model track is not on the graphic? Its only showing the tracks that go out to sea. I can’t seem to find the European model track anywhere else either – is it not an official track?

    1. Unlike NOAA’s weather data, the ECMWF is is proprietary. You need to pay for access. There are a few places where it magically appears, but I don’t want to post them and lose my access.

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