Sunday, August 27, 2006

Forecasting for the tropics today

Just a general remark this morning.

I'm certainly glad that I wasn't working the midshift at NHC this morning!

The models (at least the NAM and GFS) are at best ambigous in their solutions regarding what might evolve at low latitudes the next few days. Ernesto seems to go a variety of different directions and the NAM tries to bring another tropical system up toward Baja at end of period - last time it did this it was an artifact and nothing materialized.

The NHC does anticipate that the tropical wave coming off Central America will develop into a tropical system. Meanwhile, there is something sitting over the southern Gulf of California with considerable associated convection. It seems to be a weak, nearly stationary low, BUT with the absence of observational data over much of Mexico continuing, the models seem constrained mostly by their last forecast.

What a mess! Does anyone care that the missing sounding data have caused extremely unreliable model forecasts for much of southwestern N.A. this summer?

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