TC Issac Reload

Tonight Tropical Storm Issac makes it way westward into the Caribbean.  Tomorrow it will begin impacting the islands.  This has been a very strange hurricane season.  We have named storms very early on (May and June).  We have had two hurricanes (Ernesto and Gordon).   Issac is a tropical storm and forecast to become a hurricane.  The storm track has been favoring the Caribbean sea, but there has also been so much dry air coming across the Atlantic from the Sahara and the storms have been moving fairly fast over the last couple of weeks.  Hence, thus far the storms have been nothing to write home about. 

This Issac reminds me of a time 6 years ago when its predecessor (Issac) was taking shape off the Guinea coast on about the 19th of September 2006.  The French Falcon aircraft was stationed in Dakar Senegal in the third phase of the Special Operations Period (SOP-3) of AMMA.  All of the forecast were suggesting development of a storm off the coast and I felt confident about it also.  The aircraft team went our suggestions and when they arrived there some 2 hours later -- nothing....  The disturbance was there in the wind field but not clouds, no developing cyclone... a waste of fuel.  Yeah I felt bad about it but it turns out that the disturbance did form much later over the Central Atlantic.  It evolved into a minimal hurricane over the Atlantic that posed a threat to no one.

But can we say the same for Issac that is about to enter the Caribbean Sea?  I don't think so.  It has been organizing itself slowly even with dry air to the north that has inhibited the storm from developing.  There is low shear over the Caribbean sea and the ocean temperatures are warm.  The track of the storm is carrying it toward Haiti.

However, there has not been lots of consensus on where this storm is going or its intensity.  In the short term they all seem to take it into near Haiti, but after the ECMWF model carries it towards western Cuba while some of the others carry it towards Florida.  The strength of the storm is also unclear, because if it does interact with Haiti (which I hope that it does not), the mountains will disrupt the circulation and weaken the storm.  It seems that the storms this year have been difficult to forecast at least in the early stages so we will stay tuned.    But in the meantime, we are ramping up into the heart of the hurricane season.  It is not a bad idea to check and make sure that you have your emergency kit and know where all of your important documents are located. 

You never know.....

Maybe Issac 2012 will outshine its 2006 predecessor