Tropical Storm Agatha, Pacaya volcano kill 15 in Guatemala; oil spill update
Tropical Storm Agatha, the first Eastern Pacific named storm of 2010, was short lived but deadly. Agatha was a tropical storm for just 12 hours, making landfall Saturday on the Pacific coast of Guatemala as a 45 mph tropical storm. However, the storm brought huge amounts of moisture inland that continue to be wrung out as heavy rains by the high mountains of Guatemala and the surrounding nations of Central America. So far, flooding and landslides have killed twelve people in Guatemala, and one person in neighboring El Salvador. According to the excellent Guatemala weather site, climaya.com, rainfall amounts of up to 152 mm (six inches) in 24 hours have occurred in some regions of Guatemala. The National Hurricane Center is warning that rainfall amounts of up to 30 inches may fall the next few days in some mountainous regions near where the storm has dissipated. Adding to the mayhem is fallout from the Pacaya volcano in Guatemala, which began erupting three days ago. At least three people have been killed by the volcano, located about 25 miles south of the capital, Guatemala City. The volcano has destroyed 800 homes with lava and brought moderate ash falls to the capital.
Figure 1. Visible satellite image of Tropical Storm Agatha at landfall. The storm was intensifying right up until landfall, and had an impressive "hot tower" of building cumulonimbus clouds near its center that brought heavy rains to Guatemala.
Figure 2. Flooding in Quetzaltenango, Zone 2, in Guatemala on May 29, 2010, after heavy rains from Tropical Storm Agatha. Image credit: Carlos Diaz, climaya.com
Oil spill update
Light onshore winds out of the south are expected to blow over the northern Gulf of Mexico today through Tuesday, resulting increased threats of oil to the Alabama and Mississippi barrier islands, according to the latest trajectory forecasts from NOAA. Winds are expected to shift to southwesterly on Wednesday and continue through Friday, increasing in force to 10 - 20 knots late in the week as a cold front approaches the Gulf. These persistent and strengthening southwesterly winds will likely bring oil very close to shore from Mississippi to the Florida Panhandle by next weekend.
Oil spill resources
My post, What a hurricane would do the Deepwater Horizon oil spill
My post Wednesday with answers to some of the common questions I get about the spill
My post on the Southwest Florida "Forbidden Zone" where surface oil will rarely go
My post on what oil might do to a hurricane
NOAA trajectory forecasts
Deepwater Horizon Unified Command web site
Oil Spill Academic Task Force
University of South Florida Ocean Circulation Group oil spill forecasts
ROFFS Deepwater Horizon page
Surface current forecasts from NOAA's HYCOM model
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery from the University of Miami
Join the "Hurricane Haven" with Dr. Jeff Masters: a new Internet radio show
Beginning next week, I'll be experimenting with a live 1-hour Internet radio show called "Hurricane Haven." The show will be aired at 4pm EDT on Tuesdays, with the first show June 1. Listeners will be able to call in and ask questions. Some topics I'll cover on the first show:
1) What's going on in the tropics right now
2) Preview of the coming hurricane season
3) How a hurricane might affect the oil spill
4) How the oil spill might affect a hurricane
5) New advancements in hurricane science presented at this month's AMS Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology
6) Haiti's vulnerability to a hurricane this season
I hope you can tune in to the broadcast, which will be at http://www.wunderground.com/wxradio/wubroadcast.h tml. If not, the show will be recorded and stored as a podcast.
I'll probably be back Monday with a quick update. Have a great holiday weekend!
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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Agreed.
They do. They graduated the first one in 2009. It is not easy for a university like FIU to begin a program like that, but they did.
You could increase it a little.
lol, my bad on that one for real.
Thanks Miamihurricanes09, weather456. My gut tells me development or not, this will affect central and south FL and not go NNE like Barry in 2007.
My Blog:
However, models continue to show some level of moisture reaching the Florida Peninsula by mid-week. I expect about 1-4 inches over the state from ex-Agatha but highly doubt any significant reorganization of the system.
then why do they have people saying they don't offer meteorology at the school then? I am going to support it, I love meteorology
yea it's interesting how it was just named Agetha yesterday.. and was expected to make landfall today.. and die tomorrow...
18z.
I honestly don't know. They are working very hard to develop a program designated specifically for tropical weather, since of course it is a logical place for it. It takes time. Make sure you contact the correct campus.
Either way, ex-Agatha will be running up progressively closer to the subtropical jet over the Gulf of Mexico, and her fairly rapid pace won't give her much time to organize at all over the western Caribbean. Based on this, I doubt we'll see a re-development, but she may try to play around a little before she heads out into the gulf.
Shallow-layer steering:
Mid-level steering:
LONG TERM (TUESDAY NIGHT THROUGH SATURDAY)...
A FEW DISCREPANCIES IN THE LONG TERMS MODELS ARISE THIS
AFTERNOON. DECIDED TO SIDE WITH THE ECMWF FOR THE MAJORITY OF THE
LONG TERM DUE TO ITS RELATIVE CONSISTENCY THE PAST COUPLE OF DAYS.
MAIN MODEL DIFFERENCE IS THE EFFECTS...IF ANY...THAT THE REMNANTS
OF TROPICAL STORM AGATHA WILL HAVE ON SW AND CENTRAL FL. GFS IS
MUCH MORE AGGRESSIVE WITH THIS SYSTEM SHOWING A 1011-1013 WAVE
MOVING NE FROM THE WESTERN CARRIBEAN AND PUSHING THROUGH THE WEST
CENTRAL PENINSULA ON WEDNESDAY. THE MOISTURE SURGE ASSOCIATED WITH
THE EURO CURRENTLY APPEARS A BIT MORE REASONABLE SHOWING A
MODERATE MOISTURE SURGE REACHING THE SOUTHERN HALF OF THE CWA.
WENT AHEAD AND NUDGED UP POPS ACROSS THE CWA (MAINLY COASTAL
LOCATIONS AND ADJACENT WATERS) TO ACCOUNT FOR ANY TYPE OF MOISTURE
SURGE.
So, it's heading for the Carribean?
Humidity: 92%
Dew Point: 76 °F
Wind: 7 mph from the South
Wind Gust: -
Pressure: 29.84 in
Visibility: 4.0 miles
lol
I don't give percentages because they are too exact and weather is not an exact science. A low chance.
Bravo. I hate statistical probabilities.
It will eventually touch the Caribbean Sea, based on its trajectory, no surprise there really. It now comes down to, how much time it remains over the sea?
Agree
Weather is extremely tricky, it seems. There is convection still associated with the low pressure that used to be Agatha. The question is, does it go into the GOM?
It already is. You can tell because the upper anticyclone over it is getting disrupted by the jet, causing it to elongate SW to NE. Vertical shear is 20-30 knots east of Belize, and although that number will be going down over the next 3 days, it won't be in time for ex-Agatha.
It's going into the gulf no question about it, but it has no chance of developing there.
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