2024 Tropics Season Lets Track!

amugs wrote:Ugghhh these poor folks

CAKED IN FEET OF SAND in Venice Beach, Florida from Hurricane Milton pic.twitter.com/xOpYefIQ0m

— Reed Timmer, PhD (@ReedTimmerUSA) October 10, 2024

Yep just horrible...and reminds me of Sandy...here it to hoping the storms are done for this year

My Dad’s side of the family is all fine. Some additional damages and cleanup to their houses after the compounding effects of Helene and then Milton, they’re relatively ok, and it could have been worse. Glad to hear that everybody else is ok too!

rb924119 wrote:This is a very interesting situation from a meteorological perspective. My Dad’s side of the family lives in and around Tampa (excluding my Grandmother who is in New Jersey), and my Uncle asked for my thoughts (they’re evacuating regardless). Based on my assessment, I think it’s actually a GOOD THING that the storm is intensifying so quickly so early. Here’s why:

In my opinion, if the storm’s main circulation doesn’t actually graze the coast of the Yucatán Peninsula (which I think it will based on my analysis), it’s going to come dangerously close. Obviously if it grazes it, then that will disrupt the equilibrium and cause it to drastically weaken off its peak within the next day due to the increased friction and entrainment of drier air in the lower levels. Now, it would still remain a formidable storm, likely in the category 2-3 range, but that would be a significant weakening off its peak of a category 4-5 that it will likely achieve within the next 18 hours or so. Even if it just passes close boy, the entrainment of lower-level dry will still likely disrupt it, though not as much. Once that equilibrium is disturbed (assuming from the coastal graze), and the eye likely hollowed out on the southeastern flank, it’s going to take a while to reorganize, just like we saw with Helene. However, Helene was still a relatively weak tropical storm when it was interacting with the Yucatán, so the disruption was not nearly as impactful because there was no established equilibrium. Anecdotally, this is something that we see very often with these strong storms; if they have a substantial interaction with land, it is very difficult for them to regain their former intensity before landfall. I’m not saying that it can’t, I’m just saying that I don’t think it will, and will likely remain steady-state around category 2-3 intensity until landfall.

As for its track, my opinion is that it will come in south of consensus, and actually spare Tampa the worst of the surge. HOWEVER, that means they’ll get all the rain. Here’s a map of my probability of landfall, with the orange lines denoting the cone of uncertainty, and red lines indicating where I think landfall is most likely:



Overall, I think the GEM Suite looks the best with how it’s handling this storm and depicts my ideas well.

Sorry that I don’t have time for a full write up, but as usual, if anybody has any questions about my thoughts, feel free to ask

I just wanted to do a quick post-mortem on this, as I usually like to with my forecasts - objective self-assessment is the best way to learn and hone skills, in my opinion. Overall, I think this turned out really, really well. Admittedly, while Milton was passing the Yucatán, I thought it would get closer than it did, so it didn’t weaken as drastically as I thought it would at that time. However, I did mention that caveat and explained that if it did remain further away, then it wouldn’t weaken as much during that period of time.

The re-intensification after clearing the Yucatán was not something that I really touched on too much, though, admittedly, because I was expecting more interaction with the peninsula, was surprising from my forecast’s perspective, not environmentally.

As for the endgame, which is what was most impactful, I think I did really, really well, and also Scott (sroc) deserves a shoutout as well with this, as we both signaled early on that this would weaken DRAMATICALLY on its approach. My prediction of a category 2-3 was accurate, and from what I can tell from observations, it made landfall as a category 2. No weather stations or observation station recorded category 3 wind, and the minimum pressure that I could find (unofficially, from a personal weather station) was 964 mb. With the pressure coming up so rapidly, it makes sense that the peak wind potential was not realized at the surface, and that is something I mentioned in the discussions. Regardless, even if they keep as a major in the books, it still verifies. Lastly, I have no complaints about my track forecast whatsoever. The eye made landfall at Siesta Key, which was just slightly north of the centerline of my red zone outlined above, which noted where I thought the highest probability of landfall would be.

Overall, though, my storm prediction turned out really, really well.

The one thing that I absolutely SHOULD HAVE made a bigger deal out of, though, and this is definitely an oversight on my part, was the severe weather potential. The signs were all there, but I was so focused on the storm itself that I didn’t look beyond it to the secondary impacts. So that is a big time failure on my part. And unfortunately, this likely turned out to be the biggest cause of the loss of life during this event, and there’s no hiding from my failure to discuss this, and I cannot apologize enough for this. Very, very bad, and lesson surely learned.

With all of the above said, I hope that the information presented throughout the entirety of our discussion and observations helped others as much as it helped my family and friends. Predicting snow storms is one thing; it’s generally fun, lighthearted, and the risks are relatively low. But when it comes to something as impactful as a storm like this, and the possibility/probability of the loss of life and property is so much higher, all the fun and lightheartedness takes a back seat, and you just have to focus on getting people the best information that you can, and I think that we did that here, collectively, at least with respect to the storm itself.

oh my, I can't even imagine. I know it's early, but jeez.

Euro keeps it off the peninsula. Since my brother lives there I've been keeping a close eye on it.

Given the blocking setting up in the northern mid-latitudes, be prepared to see some really wild and off the wall solutions on operational runs the next few days. Models are notoriously bad with handling blocks, add in a tropical cyclone, and it’s like the Joker meeting Harley Quinn. Utter chaos lol