Monday Morning: Irma Winding Down, Could Have Been Worse

Winter Outlook 2018 Out Monday October 16th

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Good morning. As we look at our latest satellite image below, we can see Irma is a shadow of what used to be (currently a very weak cat 1)...

Heavy rains and possible tornado activity will continue today into Northern Florida and Georgia.

The storm hit a few areas particularly hard yesterday including parts of the Keys, Marco Island and Naples. Sustained winds were around 70mph for those areas (higher in the keys) but some gusts above 130mph were recorded. I haven't seen all the reports yet of damage but I know there is some. In terms of storm surge, I have not confirmed that situation either, but I believe it was not as bad as feared.

This storm was impressive in so many ways, especially when it was out over open water. The thing that I found the most fascinating was how the models struggled with this storms exact track even up to yesterday. The land interaction with Cuba for example, was not forcasted on all major models, then the same models that did nail the Cuba interaction failed to see that Irma would move more inland yesterday and not just skirt the west coast of Fl.

The interaction with Cuba was the first reason why this storm did not hit as a Cat 5. Despite the fact the upper air and water conditions were favorable once the storm turned north Friday night towards Florida, it never quite had the time to rev up to what it was. Granted, it got back to a Cat 4 right before landfall. The biggest thing I noticed however was that the eye wall never fully regenerated. The microwave image below shows this. Notice the circle in the middle and how it weakens a little when it goes over Cuba then tries to restrengthen but never gets back to a full closed structure....

You can see it strengthen as it moves north from Cuba but its weighted to the northeast side. The result was still an impressive wind field but not as intense as it could have been. This did surprise me as the pressure really started to drop but the eye never fully recovered. 

Another major factor that helped this storm stay more tame was its track. Notice how the storm goes due north then right into SW Fl as opposed to riding directly up the coast. This helped keep the potential devastating storm surge at bay as the wind configuration was not as ideal for a big surge.

Even tho the European model nailed the west track it failed to see the turn inland as seen below...

The red X's represent the actual storm track vs European model runs. 

So at the end of the day this storm will be remembered as being significantly impactful but not completely devastating as we all feared. We saw how factors can effect a large storm like this and how models struggle even up to the day of the event to handle these factors. In my opinion we dodged a bullet overall. 


So hey how about Jose???  That storm will linger in the Atlantic for a week before trying to figure out where to go. Yes some models have it as an east coast threat, but most have it harmlessly moving out to sea....

I will be the first to keep you posted if anything changes.

That's all for now, thanks for checking in.