Friday, August 16, 2013

Invest 92 Eyeing Mexico, Texas for Landfall

As I predicted would happen a few days ago, the tropical system over the Yucatan Peninsula is going to take a westward path and threaten Mexico/Texas in coming days.

The latest suite of model guidance agrees that Texas and Mexico are at risk of this storm making landfall in the next few days, although just how intense the cyclone ends up being is to be determined. Intensity forecasts for this tropical system indicate it has a chance to strengthen to tropical storm status prior to landfall. While warmer sea surface temperatures indicate this could happen, the general trend this year is for tropical systems to not strengthen when they are supposed to. Going with the trend, I anticipate a modest tropical system (meaning some rain, some wind, but NOT a tropical storm or hurricane) to impact either Texas or Mexico.

The HWRF model, a hurricane version of the WRF forecasting model, shows a strong tropical cyclone making landfall in northern Mexico, producing significant rain and wind. It is worth noting that the HWRF is consistently over-exaggerating the strength of any and all tropical cyclones, and thus this forecast is worth little. I put it here to show not only what appears to be the strongest forecast for this invest, but also just to show how weather models are not 100% reliable.

Andrew