Sunday, July 4, 2010

Tropical "Invest 96" (aka Alex part 2?)

The visible satellite picture above was taken at 11:45 a.m. Central Time.  It shows a couple of tropical waves/disturbances over the Carribean and Atlantic basin.  The one toward the lower left corner of the image (to the Southeast of the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico) is the system that I blogged about a couple of days ago (which had already been picked up by the ECMWF computer models at that time).


The image below is a summary of the current forecast model tracks of this system.  As I pointed out in my last post on the subject, the models want to take this system on a strikingly similar (if not identical) track as with recent Hurricane Alex.  This trend has not changed thus far, and if anything has been solidified by other computer model forecasts jumping on board with the same conclusion.  Obviously a lot can change over the next 5 or 6 days, however we'll have to keep monitoring the system very closely.
The National Hurricane Center has scheduled a hurricane hunter aircraft to fly into this area tomorrow and investigate the system.  

Even if this system does not strengthen to hurricane force, the potential for additional heavy rains alone across parts of Mexico & Texas would be of great concern later this week.  Stay tuned!

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