The Atlantic Basin has been busy this week. While Tropical Storm Humberto (likely a Category 1 Hurricane when this is published) has some landfall potential, the storm I think has the better shot is Invest 97L. It was hanging over Haiti and the Dominican Republic when I started writing this, with a 90% estimated chance of cyclone formation in the next week.
Invest 94L is coming in hot, high in the Caribbean, headed for Cuba, and then, my guess, Florida.
The spaghetti models I just hunted down are pointing toward (future hurricane Imelda drifting up Florida’s Atlantic coast and landing in the Carolinas – if it does not follow the primary pattern of all the others.
Both of our potential landfall storms also have some impact on each other. One could push the other and, this or that, or the other thing.
The estimated motion is northwestward at 9 kt. Humberto is expected to be steered along the southern and southwestern side of a subtropical ridge centered over the western Atlantic. The track forecast becomes more complicated in the next few days due to the proximity of the tropical storm to 94L, the developing system to the west. Global models generally show Humberto moving around the western periphery of the subtropical high by the end of the forecast period, however there is quite a bit of uncertainty in the timing and location at which the storm will make that turn. The GFS and UKMet show a much faster and farther east track while the ECMWF predicts a slower and more westward track. The latest official track forecast is slower and a bit west of the previous prediction, near the center of the guidance envelope.
This lands on the recurring theme of these posts. They still don’t know. It is a few days away, and they have technology and models and a few decades of history and they’ve no clue what they will do. To borrow from Lawrence Garfield, in the movie “Other People’s Money,” “For even if the prayers were answered, and a miracle occurred, and the yen did this, and the dollar did that, and the infrastructure did the other thing..” they still can’t tell you with certainty.
Not one week, ten years, or one hundred of them.
