Just a quick update on our A-B-C trio, in reverse alphabetical order, before I go to bed.
The center of Tropical Storm Claudette is approaching the Florida panhandle, and will make landfall in the next few hours. Heavy rains are already ashore, as the radar map shows. Claudette has not strengthened, and is basically out of time to do so. Flooding rains will be the main threat; here’s a map of radar-estimated rainfall totals.
Bill is now a maximum-strength tropical storm, with winds up to 70 mph. By morning, we’ll probably be talking about Hurricane Bill, and he’s likely to be a major hurricane (i.e., Category 3 or higher) within two or three days. Luckily, the computer models keep trending further and further to the right, and are tightly clustered on a track taking Bill out to sea. There is one fly in the ointment: projecting the official NHC track/cone about 24 hours beyond its final forecast point, and assuming another couple of small rightward lurches by the computer models, it looks like Bermuda could potentially be threatened at the end of the week. Stay tuned on that one.
Meanwhile, Tropical Depression Ana is just about dead. In fact, the 11pm EDT discussion suggests that Ana’s continued ostensible existence as a tropical cyclone is more political than meteorological:
ALTHOUGH SOME DEEP CONVECTION HAS RECENTLY RE-DEVELOPED…IT IS ORIENTED LINEARLY ALONG A NORTH-SOUTH AXIS AND APPEARS MORE REPRESENTATIVE OF A TROPICAL WAVE. THE CENTER APPEARS REASONABLY WELL-DEFINED ON THE GUADELOUPE RADAR BUT THIS IS LIKELY DEPICTING A MID-LEVEL CIRCULATION RATHER THAN ONE AT THE SURFACE. AT THIS TIME WE WOULD RATHER NOT STOP ADVISORIES WHILE THE SYSTEM IS MOVING ACROSS THE LESSER ANTILLES. HOWEVER IF SURFACE OBSERVATIONS FROM THOSE ISLANDS CONFIRM THE LACK OF A CENTER…ADVISORIES WILL BE TERMINATED EARLY MONDAY.
By the time I wake up Monday morning, it’s likely Ana will have ceased to exist, Claudette will be a tropical depression dissipating over land, and Bill will be a hurricane. By the end of the day tomorrow, we’ll be down to just one storm — Hurricane Bill — who we’ll be talking about for the next several days. But, unless Bill threads the needle and hits Bermuda, he’s likely to be a harmless “fish” storm. What Alan Sullivan wrote earlier remains true: “It looks now as though our flurry of activity will result in no serious weather for anyone.”
Stay tuned for the latest from the National Hurricane Center, and the blogrolled sites listed at right.
Zero rain from Claudette here, north of New Orleans. Frankly, we need the rain badly. We are in a moderate drought.