I did not intially take this system seriously, and I did not believe the chances were great that it would come from so far east to strike the Fl. Keys this early in the year.
But Fay has consistently defied expectations so far, and I have been famously wrong about tropical cyclones before (luckily my old blog is gone so I can't link to my old predictions about Wilma).
I do think Fay is likely to get torn apart over Cuba, and will not be a strong hurricane when she emerges off the Cuban north coast, but the water is pretty hot and I could be wrong. Certainly if she goes farther west into the open gulf, a lot more strengthening is likely before a more significant landfall on the Gulf Coast.
I do not think, however, that the water is as hot as in 2004 and 2005 - I'm trying to find good links to the SST data to post as comparison, but as usual NOAA doesn't make it easy to find. As the situation develops maybe I'll find and post the comparative GOES SST graphics.
3 comments:
"but as usual NOAA doesn't make it easy to find"
Our tax dollars at work. The ex-federal researcher in me thinks that they don't want people making temperature trend predictions who are not members of the Church of Anthrogenic Global Warming.
That's the dang truth... although I know there are plenty of real meteorologists at NOAA who do not ascribe to the Religion of Greenhouse-Gas Induced Climate Change. The "policy level", however, has an instinctive urge to do the wrong thing, I'm afraid.
Ahem. NOAA and NASA both track the same datasets, and the NASA site is a lot easier to work with: http://oceancolor.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi/browse.pl?sen=am
This is the place where I get all my satellite images for work purposes. In particular, MODIS-Aqua SST imagery is available almost immediately after it's taken.
Have fun. ;)
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