Matthew drenching Central America and Mexico
Tropical Storm Matthew continues to dump heavy rains over Honduras, Belize, Guatemala, and neighboring regions of Mexico today. Puerto Barrios, in northern Guatemala, has received 4.57" of rain in the past 24 hours. With Matthew expected to slow down and dissipate by Sunday, the storm's heavy rains of 6 - 15 inches can be expected to cause severe flooding and dangerous mudslides. The rains are of particular concern for Guatemala, which suffered its rainiest August in its history, followed by the landfall of Tropical Depression 11E during the first week of September, which dumped torrential rains on the country that triggered flooding and mudslides that killed at least 48 Guatemalans.
Figure 1. Visible satellite image from NASA's Terra satellite taken yesterday, showing Tropical Storm Matthew approaching landfall.
Figure 2. Forecast rain amounts for the 5-day period beginning at 2am EDT today (Saturday, September 25) as predicted by this morning's 2am EDT (6Z) run of the GFDL. Very heavy rains in excess of eight inches (yellow colors) are predicted for portions of Central America along Matthew's track. Image credit: Morris Bender, NOAA/GFDL.
Lisa
Tropical Storm Lisa pulled a bit of a surprise last night, intensifying into a Category 1 hurricane with 80 mph winds in the far Eastern Atlantic. Lisa's longitude of 27.9W at the time made it the 10th strongest hurricane so far east in the Atlantic. Record keeping began in 1851, but it is likely that many hurricanes stronger than Lisa were missed prior to the advent of reliable satellite coverage in 1974. Lisa is even farther east than Category 4 Hurricane Julia, which earlier this month set the record for strongest hurricane ever recorded so far east. Lisa's glory will be short-lived, though, as strong upper level winds out of the west are expected to increase tonight, bringing high wind shear of 20 - 45 knots over the storm. The high shear may be capable of destroying the storm by early next week. It appears unlikely that Lisa will affect any land areas.
Forecast for the rest of the tropics
Most of the models continue to predict that by Wednesday, the remnants of Matthew, and/or a piece of a tropical disturbance over the Eastern Pacific off the coast of Guatemala, will evolve into a huge and very wet low pressure system that will start spinning over Central America and the Western Caribbean. NHC has been referring to this expected storm as a "monsoon low", and these sorts of storms are very dangerous for Central America and the Western Caribbean, even if they do not develop into a tropical storm. In October 2007, a similar monsoon low I dubbed "the sleeping giant" spent a week spinning over the region, dumping very heavy rains over all of Central America and the countries bordering the Western Caribbean. Rains from this system triggered flooding that killed 45 people in Haiti, damaged thousands of homes in Cuba, and caused havoc in Guatemala, El Salvador, Belize, Mexico, Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, and the Bahamas. A similar type of storm is likely to develop on Wednesday and Thursday, and most of Central America and the nations surrounding the Western Caribbean can expect to see dangerous flooding rains develop this week in association with this giant low. Most of the models also predict that this big low will eventually develop into a tropical storm or hurricane that would be drawn northwards over Cuba late in the week, and threaten the Bahamas, Florida, or the U.S. Gulf of Mexico coast. This is an exceptionally difficult system to forecast correctly, and the models have been coming up with some pretty unusual solutions as to what might happen. We'll just have to wait and see what unfolds over the next few days.
I'll have an update Sunday by 2pm.
Jeff Masters
Reader Comments
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AOI
TS BUSTED FORECAST ALIBI
Karen was a weak storm a couple of years ago, that degraded into a remnant low, but we tracked her remnants all the way across the atlantic. She didn't want to die, much like Julia.
WOOT WOOT!
I would not go that far, they have been wrong before and will be wrong again in the future... such is the life of weather forecasting.
She's a lonely ghost lol.
They run forever on Saturdays lol
Thank you for the update! It seems lately that regardless of top windspeed or SS category, everything that spins up in the Caribbean has ridiculous amounts of moisture in it.
And who or what is "Karen?
No, they have this stupid Worldwide day of play on most of the Cartoon channels.
Its where they block most of the channels, so we have to go find something else to do. I'm surprised they haven't come yet...Cartoons come back on in about 45 min.
rain and wind.. about 50/50... a "system" maybe 30/70
Me! Me! Pick me!
I say 80%
LATEST SFC ANALYSIS SHOWS A WEAK FRONT EXTENDING FROM NEAR KSJT NW
INTO THE PB/WRN LOW ROLLING PLAINS...AND DRIFTING SLOWLY SOUTH...AND
HAS BEEN THE FOCUS OF YESTERDAY/S CONVECTION. RADAR BIAS
CALCULATIONS...MPE...AND RAINFALL TOTALS SUGGEST AMS IS FINALLY LOST
TROPICAL CHARACTERISTICS FROM REMNANTS OF GEORGETTE...SO Z-R
RELATIONSHIP IS BACK CONVECTIVE MODE..
High. Florida is the most likely place to be hit/impacted by a storm coming from the Caribbean during the next week. However, that isn't set in stone.
I'll say 50/50. There's really no way of knowing where 'Nicole' will go until 'Nicole' develops. Once it does, we'll have a much better idea as to what will happen with that particular cyclone. All I can say is just be ready for anything.
Other than 'Nicole', I would say that there is a >60% chance that south Florida gets hit during the next 10 days.
Nick is better than CN, imo.
And I have no clue what The doors are.
lol
That's a gigantic legend. :)
Make it 200 cheapskape ;) :P
Current conditions
15mph winds
28mph gust
998.3 mb pressure
MiamiHurricanes09: Moderate (50%)
Orcasystems: Moderate (30%)
Me: High (80%)
I say 60%
Correct me if I am wrong (I usually am). Every system that has even gotten close to the GOM (Caribbean included), has turned into a physically huge system. So far we have been relatively lucky... these systems have not really had the real estate to gain their full potential in velocity?
Circulation at 12N, 34W.
A piece of him will do that however, and if that piece says around over the Western Caribbean waters for a while, she will be singing this.
What are these percentages?
These images are primarily for use in tropical storm monitoring. There are several areas to choose from providing a large-scale view of the Atlantic, down to the Gulf of Mexico. During hurricane season, the hurricanes page provides a variety of GOES atmospheric products to help monitor the active storms.
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