Hurricane Maria rushes towards Newfoundland
Hurricane Maria is bearing down on Newfoundland, Canada, as a Category 1 hurricane with 80 mph winds. The wind shear over Maria turned out to be much lower than was predicted yesterday, allowing the storm to organize into the season's third hurricane. Latest satellite imagery shows that Maria is steadily degrading, with a hole in the storm's southwest eyewall, and the cloud pattern distorted by 30 - 50 knots of wind shear. The eyewall has collapsed, as seen on recent microwave satellite imagery. Maria's very fast forward speed of 45 mph means that only locations on the right (strong) side will experience hurricane force winds. With the center of Maria expected to pass over the extreme southeast tip of Newfoundland, only a small region of the island near Cape Race will see the powerful right-front quadrant of the storm. Winds at Sagona Island on the south shore of Newfoundland were sustained at 50 mph at 7:30 am local time, but have dropped to 37 mph at 9:10 am. Winds in the capital of St. John's have been rising steadily this morning, and were sustained at 37 mph, gusting to 46 mph, at 10:30 am local time. Winds will probably reach sustained speeds of 55 - 65 mph between 1 pm and 5 pm today in St. Johns, causing considerable tree damage and power failures. Radar out of Newfoundland shows the hurricane has been dumping heavy rains over the southeastern portion of the island this morning; rainfall has been under a half inch thus far at most locations, though. Along with wind damage, heavy rains leading to flash flooding are the main threat from Maria; last year, heavy rains of up to 8 inches from Hurricane Igor caused major damage in Newfoundland. Fortunately, Maria's rains are not expected to be as heavy as Igor's. According to the Canadian Hurricane Center, rivers in eastern Newfoundland are currently at average to below average levels, which will limit the amount of flooding. Maria's storm surge will arrive when the normal astronomical tide will be going out, limiting the damage the expected 3-foot storm surge will do.
Yesterday, Maria brought a brief 8-minute period of sustained winds of tropical storm force, 39 mph, to the Bermuda airport. Bermuda picked up 0.20" of rain from Maria.
Figure 1. Radar image of Tropical Storm Maria taken at 10:13 am EDT September 15, 2011. Image credit: Bermuda Weather Service.
Newfoundland's second consecutive year with a hurricane
If Maria strikes Newfoundland as a hurricane, this will be the province's second consecutive year with a hurricane strike, something that has never occurred since hurricane record keeping began in 1851. Last year, Hurricane Igor killed one person on Newfoundland, and damage exceeded $100 million, making Igor the most damaging tropical cyclone in Newfoundland history. A summary of the impact of Igor prepared by Environment Canada put it this way:
"Hurricane Igor and its severe impacts certainly represent a rare event in Newfoundland history which has been described as the worst in memory. In statistical terms, this was effectively a 50 - 100 year event depending on how one chooses to define it. There are no hurricanes/post tropical events of this magnitude striking Newfoundland in the modern era. Hurricane Juan in Nova Scotia was the last Atlantic Canadian hurricane to cause extreme damage. Prior to the naming of hurricanes, the 1935 Newfoundland Hurricane 75 years ago was of similar intensity."
Figure 2. A ravine carved by Hurricane Igor's flood waters washed out the Trans-Canada Highway, isolating Southeast Newfoundland from the rest of the province. Image credit: CBC News.
Elsewhere in the tropics
All of the models have been sporadically predicting development of a tropical wave 5 - 7 days from now between Africa and the Lesser Antilles. The location and timing of the hypothetical storm have been inconsistent, and there is at present no signs of anything brewing. The NOGAPS model continues to predict a strong tropical disturbance or tropical depression could form in the Caribbean 6 - 7 days from now, near Jamaica. None of the other models is supporting this idea, so the NOGAPS model is probably wrong on this scenario. I'll have an update Saturday afternoon.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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Grothar is far from passing on. I find it quite unpalatable to see someone make a statement that suggests true knowledge, but in reality, shows ignorance.
I feel for Grothar and those who are going to have difficulty telling the difference.
Thank you for that, and I hate to remind a certain few, but i said it before...wait until it gets cooler and the rains will come...
very true.
The use of the
mind posting the link to KTVN please.
When do you meet the Kiwi's in the Rugby?
It is Friday night. There is NO school tomorrow and the trolls could not get a date. Sooooooooo, we get the trolls.
Who's the airforce guy? Always happy to see others who serve.
We'll likely meet them in the final, today we play Ireland. will be a tough game.
I'm out, going to kids party.
P.S Don't feed the trolls.
i saw one on u tube
I haven't been following the Bannings too much, so I dont know about that one.
And the AGW thing...
There are 2 groups.
A very large group that thinks that AGW is a threat to future well-being.
A small group that dissagrees with that.
Dr. M. is from the first group.
He is a PHD in his field.
He posts about it here because he chooses to do that on his own blog.
I agree with him, frankly.
I can state w/o equivocation, Grothar is definitely among the living.
Apologies if I came off as a hard*ss. I don't find a premature burial acceptable.
GFS doesn't actually develop 97L, it develops that one and the disturbance in the CATL.
Sorry, but as I know it, there is no Ph.D for global warming.
I wish the west African countries had better weather station coverage. I'd love to know how deep those lows are over land.
Dang. I'm not a met but an army guy interested in weather. I like this site but I wish I didn't have to tune out so much nonsense.
One of these days, I desire to actually see a tropical depression form over Africa.
That would be very fun to watch, as long as there is no damage. We shall call them the LandDepressions near the tropics, that way like other things, we can make it sound scaryer than it actually is.
Grothar is a dear Friend. I got worked up when I saw some writing him off as dead.
I won't presume to speak for him, but I know that he has serious concerns about the current state of the blog.
Good point!
But there are very often very good new points being put forward.
I tend to read them all, laugh at some, roll my eyes at some, and say 'wow' to a couple...
i would re move that
that photo could end of geting you ban
Did you read Angela Fritz's blog, above?
Good stuff there.
Well now, that would leave everyone speechless and Avila would have a reason to make a little joke in the discussion. xD
Just a nice mesoscale convective system (MCS) associated with a coherent diurnal cycle of convection over Africa. These MCSs are usually short lived and form from certain topographic features in Africa such as the Guinea Highlands (west coast of Africa), Jos Plateau, and the Ethiopian Highlands. There is a convectively-coupled Kelvin wave (CCKW)currently over Africa. These waves move from west toward the east and if you look closely at looping brightness tempature images, you can see the eastward progression of cloudiness and thunderstorms. CCKWs act as convective triggers for the genesis of new African easterly waves. They also tend to amplify the MCSs during the afternoon over Africa.
It never fails....
LOL
This image of Tropical Storm Delta was acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Aqua satellite at 1600 UTC on November 24, 2005.
This is a list of tropical cyclones that have either made direct landfall in Western Africa and its surrounding islands or have come close to making landfall.
This list of West Africa hurricanes includes tropical cyclones which originated in the Atlantic and directly or indirectly affected the west coast of Africa or its surrounding islands, or both. Atlantic hurricanes seldom directly affect Western Africa, the Cape Verde Islands, or the Canary Islands, since westerly winds carry the storms away from land, and most Atlantic storms that move off the African coast tend to be weak.
2000-present
Tropical Depression Four to the southeast of the Cape Verde islands
August 4, 2000: The tropical wave that later became Hurricane Alberto dropped 1 inch (25 mm) of rain across Dakar, Senegal and produced winds of 40 mph off the West African coastline.
I believe Tropical Storm Christine in 1973 was named a tropical cyclone over Africa... well at least in the best track data.
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