Otto transitioning to a tropical storm
Subtropical Storm Otto, the 15th named storm of this very busy 2010 Atlantic hurricane season, is here. Otto is not a threat to bring high winds to any land areas, but will produce heavy rains over Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and northern Lesser Antilles. Radar estimated rainfall over Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands (Figure 2) shows rainfall amounts in excess of eight inches have fallen in several locations over the past three days, and the St. Thomas Airport officially recorded 9.30" of rain so far from Otto. Not surprisingly, Flash Flood Warnings are posted for both the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. Weather radar out of Puerto Rico shows that a large area of heavy rain will continue to affect the Virgin Islands and eastern Puerto Rico today. Martinique radar shows considerably less activity over the Lesser Antilles.
Figure 1. NASA MODIS image of Subtropical Storm Otto taken at 12:55pm EDT October 6, 2010.
Satellite loops show Otto's heaviest thunderstorms lie in two bands to the south, many hundreds of miles from the storm's center. This is characteristic of a subtropical storm, which is a hybrid between a tropical storm and an extratropical storm. An upper level low pressure system over Otto has pumped cold, dry air aloft into the storm, keeping it from being fully tropical. However, the upper low is weakening, and Otto has recently developed a burst of heavy thunderstorms near its center, and very tropical storm-like spiral bands are now developing to the east and south of Otto's center. Otto is fast becoming fully tropical, and will be called Tropical Storm Otto later today. The storm's newly developing spiral bands will mostly stay offshore, but a few heavy rain showers capable of dumping 1 - 2 inches of rain may affect the Turks and Caicos Islands today, as well as the northern Dominican Republic. The heavier rains in Otto's old rain band over Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands will continue to dump flooding rains in those locations through tonight. Steering currents favor Otto being lifted northwards and then northeastwards out to sea by Friday. Given the very warm waters of 28 - 29°C and low wind shear of 5 - 10 knots today, Otto may approach hurricane strength before high wind shear in excess of 20 knots impacts the storm Friday night.
Figure 1. Radar-estimated rainfall from Tropical Storm Otto over Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands shows that rains in excess of eight inches (white colors) have fallen in many regions. The strange ray-like pattern to the east of the radar location (the white "+" symbol) is due to mountains blocking the radar beam.
Elsewhere in the tropics
An area of disturbed weather has formed in the Western Caribbean, a few hundred miles west of Jamaica. The disturbance has a moderate area of intense thunderstorms that brought close to two inches of rain to Grand Cayman Island over the past day. The disturbance is under a high 15 - 25 knots of wind shear, and is not likely to develop significantly today. The disturbance is headed south at 10 - 15 mph, and will bring heavy rains to northeastern Honduras and Nicaragua over the next two days. None of the models develop the disturbance, but it does have some potential for slow development beginning on Friday when it will be off the coast of Nicaragua, in a region of lower wind shear and higher moisture. NHC is giving the disturbance a 10% chance of developing into a tropical depression by Saturday.
Monsoon flooding kills 139 in Asia
Heavy monsoon rains triggered flash flooding in a remote section of Indonesia this week that killed at least 91 people and left 100 more missing. In Vietnam, heavy rains of up to 51" (1300 mm) have fallen since Friday, resulting in river flooding that killed at least 48 people, with 23 people still missing. Over 34,000 people are homeless from the floods, which hit five provinces from Nghe An to Thua Thien-Hue, a swath of territory starting some 300 km (180 miles) south of Hanoi and stretching south. Heavy monsoon rains of up to seven inches over the past week have also hit nearby Hainen Island in China. The resulting flooding was the worst in 50 years there, and killed one person and forced the evacuation of 55 villages with 213,000 people.
Press
I've been a subscriber for several years to NewScientist magazine, a weekly science news magazine that does a great job staying abreast of all the latest breaking science happenings. This week's October 4 issue features a 4-page section on Extreme Weather that I wrote for them as part of their "Instant Expert" series. If you haven't ever seen the magazine, I enthusiastically recommend taking a look.
If you're a fan of the geek humor xkcd webcomic, see if you can find me on the hilarious map of the "blogosphere" on comic artist Randall Munroe's latest xkcd comic. I like the disparity between my influence in September vs. March, but thought I should have been closer to the "Bay of Flame!" I also appeared in a mouse "rollover" text box in an xkcd comic during the Gulf oil disaster earlier this year.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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I want the poster :)
Link
NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL
200 AM EDT FRI OCT 8 2010
FOR THE NORTH ATLANTIC...CARIBBEAN SEA AND THE GULF OF MEXICO...
THE NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER IS ISSUING ADVISORIES ON TROPICAL
STORM OTTO...LOCATED ABOUT 575 MILES SOUTH OF BERMUDA.
1. A BROAD TROUGH OF LOW PRESSURE CONTINUES TO PRODUCE AN AREA OF
SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS OVER PORTIONS OF THE WESTERN CARIBBEAN
SEA. SOME SLOW DEVELOPMENT IS POSSIBLE AS THE SYSTEM REMAINS
NEARLY STATIONARY OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS. THERE IS A LOW CHANCE...
20 PERCENT...OF TROPICAL CYCLONE FORMATION DURING THE NEXT 48
HOURS.
ELSEWHERE...TROPICAL CYCLONE FORMATION IS NOT EXPECTED DURING THE
NEXT 48 HOURS.
$$
FORECASTER BLAKE
NNNN
Tropical Cyclone Advisory #6
DEPRESSION BOB02-2010
8:30 AM IST October 8 2010
======================================
At 3:00 AM UTC, Depression BOB02-2010 over west central Bay of Bengal moved north northeastward and lays centered over northwest Bay of Bengal near 21.0N 87.5E, or about 90 kms southeast of Balasore, 90 kms south of Digha, and 300 kms southwest of Khepupara.
The current environmental conditions and numerical weather prediction models suggest that the system would move northeastward and cross West Bengal/Bangladesh coast near 89.0E, about 100 kms east of Sagar Island this afternoon.
3 minute sustained winds near the center is 25 knots with a minimum central pressure of 998 hPa. The state of the sea is rough to very rough around the system's center.
Satellite imagery indicates shear pattern. The Dvorak intensity is T1.5. Associated broken intense to very intense convection lies over north Bay of Bengal. The lowest cloud top temperature due to convection is around -70C in association with the system.
Vertical wind shear of horizontal wind over the region is moderate to high (20-30 knots). There is negative 24 hours tendency of vertical wind shear to the nroth of the system's center. The system lies to the north of upper tropospheric ridge, which roughly runs along 18.0N. The ocean heat content over the north Bay of Bengal and interaction of the system with the land surface are not favorable for intensification.
I know it has something to do with the temperature differences, but if someone could please explain thoroughly and clearly exactly the process, that would be great.
5:00 AM AST Fri Oct 8
Location: 24.8°N 65.5°W
Max sustained: 70 mph
Moving: ENE at 14 mph
Min pressure: 986 mb
Can just see Otto appearing at the bottom of the picture.
SAB supports Hurricane status.
The NWS's local climate pages are excellent. They only ever show info from midnight or so, so anything that's happened since then won't be reflected, but they're still an excellent source:
1) Go to the NWS San Juan page;
2) Select a location;
3) Select a timeframe;
4) Click 'Go'
Everything you want to know.
Definitely. Now if we could just get it to promise to stick around for another seven weeks or so, we really could proclaim the season as over for the CONUS. Of course, the hundreds of wildfires throughout the southeast by then would pose a problem of a different kind...
Personally, I'd rather take the risk of a landfalling storm than a fire-starting, crop-killing, water-rationing drought. Not that either one is much fun...
Wow...great shot
7Oct 03amGMT - - 23.5n68.2w - - 65mph - - - - 990mb -- NHC.Adv. #4
7Oct 06amGMT - - 23.5n68.2w - - 55knots - - - 990mb -- NHC-ATCF
7Oct 09amGMT - - 23.6n68.2w - - 60mph - - - - 992mb -- NHC.Adv.#5
7Oct 12pmGMT - - 23.6n68.3w - - 50knots - - - 992mb -- NHC-ATCF
TS.Otto
7Oct 03pmGMT - - 23.8n68.0w - - 60mph - - - - 992mb -- NHC.Adv.#6
7Oct 06pmGMT - - 23.7n67.8w - - 50knots - - - 992mb -- NHC-ATCF *23.6n67.9w
7Oct 09pmGMT - - 24.0n67.6w - - 60mph - - - - 992mb -- NHC.Adv.#7
8Oct 12amGMT - - 23.9n67.0w - - 55knots - - - 992mb -- NHC-ATCF *23.8n67.1w
8Oct 03amGMT - - 24.1n66.6w - - 60mph - - - - 992mb -- NHC.Adv. #8
8Oct 06amGMT - - 24.4n66.1w - - 60knots - - - 989mb -- NHC-ATCF
8Oct 09amGMT - - 24.8n65.5w - - 70mph - - - - 986mb -- NHC.Adv. #8
50knots=~57.5mph=93.6km/h __ 60mph=~96.6km/h
55knots=~63.3mph=~101.9km/h __ 65mph=~104.6km/h
60knots=~69mph=~111.1km/h __ 70mph=~112.7km/h
MaximumSustainedWind speeds are rounded to the nearest 5mph or to the nearest 5knots
Copy&paste 23.5n68.2w-23.6n68.2w, 23.6n68.2w-23.8n68.0w, 23.8n68.0w-24.0n67.6w, 24.0n67.6w-24.1n66.6w, 24.1n66.6w-24.8n65.5w, bqn, 23.5n68.2w-23.6n68.3w, 23.6n68.3w-23.7n67.8w, 23.7n67.8w-23.9n67.0w, 23.9n67.0w-24.4n66.1w into the GreatCircleMapper for a look at the last 30hours.
The "fish on the line" is due to separate plottings of NHC.ADV. coordinates and of the NHC-ATCF coordinates, superimposed upon one another,
to reflect the apparent disagreement on center positions between those responsible for the ATCF and those responsible for the Advisory.
I would say Otto will become a hurricane today, note the wheel spoke pattern of upper level outflow which is indicative of a strong tropical cyclone. Also very cold cloud tops shooting up from the center.
Models aren't doing much in the western Caribbean...NOGAPS...CMC...latest ECMWF...GFS.
Otto may be it for a while if those models verify.
SE USA looks bone dry the next 7-10 days.
MJO....
It is dry. I don't see any change for at least a week and a half.
.............................................
***MJO focused in the ATL because that's where all of the heat is focused in 2010. If it leaves it will come back.***....
Nope...wrong.
***Pattern change coming in 7-10 days***....
Nope. For the last 3 months.
I'm just an amateur who is wrong a lot. But if I was doing this for a living...as a career...I wouldn't be saying things on here I wasn't sure of..or I would phrase it in a way where I admit, I could be wrong.
Shields are still up! Way up!
Beautiful morning here.
77F, but humidity at 95% at the Airport...
Does not feel like that at all.
The "Glob" to the east of here looks like it will pass north of us, and fair weather will continue.
The floods in Puerto Rico sound bad....
14" of rain and still coming down.
6 days out
Link
Link
From the BBC yesterday, and CNN today, recent research on the Sun's relationship to weather has shown that recently "visible radiation actually increased as Solar activity was declining..."
Now, this is contrary to current understanding, and will likely turn the whole Sun/Weather debate upside down......
Yep. Even JFV/Weatherstudent was pleasant back then...
Hey pottery.
I think that's the result of the relationship of the Earth's heliosphere. Solar winds decrease, and radiation increases.
It's still a nascent discipline, though. We still know so little.
How's the weather on the island?
Real Nice right now, Cot!
Seeing a little dry-spell that always occurs around this time and called 'Petit Careme' by the old French Planters.
Thought we would get some weather from the area east of here, but it looks to be going north.
Enjoying the dry-out, after some months of heavy stuff..
Dont think you are going to get one in the near future...
Hope you get some showers though, sounds unpleasant...
Yes, that's probably useful, heard a few weeks ago when you got drenched.
Here it is surprisingly pleasant as well, particularly for October.
Clear skies, a bit of a stiff breeze, but 18C-19C (high 60s). That's above normal for this time of year, certainly. Looks to be a lovely weekend.
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