TD24: Another Monster In The Making
Wilma Flintstone was hardly a monster or a nasty, contentious woman of any sort when she had to put up with Fred's whims back in the prehistoric day. Unfortunately for residents of the Western Carribbean and eventually the Eastern USA, the future Wilma will be a nasty storm.
Tropical Depression 24 was announced at 5 PM. Like we discussed yesterday, the former investigation 98L had all the makings of a tropical system in waiting. All it needed was time to organize itself. Now that it's become a TD, let's take a look at what might occur with the future Wilma.
Wind Shear in the Western Carribbean is forecast to be low. Good for Wilma and for her development, bad for whoever gets her at landfall.
Heat Potential (which is how much octane a tropical cyclone will have to fuel itself) is high, strong enough to fuel a major hurricane.
The 26 C isotherm, which is the magic threshold in most cases for tropical cyclones to sustain themselves, runs about 100 meters deep in most of the Western Caribbean, easily able to support a major hurricane in mid-October.
The GFDL model, which takes TD24/Wilma to 898 mb and 175 mph, in about 4 1/2 days, has been consistently calling for a monster hurricane in the Western Caribbean for the last day or so. The GFDL handled the intensity of Rita and Katrina quite well.
Track is forecast to leave her in the Western Caribbean for the next few days. The National Hurricane Center has her moving west and then north around the island of Jamaica and towards the western tip of Cuba. As you can tell by the above factors, we have another big time player on our hands in the tropics. The factors at play suggest very strongly that Wilma could be a monster and in short order. Here are my initial thoughts on the future Wilma:
(1) Hurricane in about 72 hours.
(2) Potential High End Category 4 hurricane in the Caribbean.
(3) Possible landfall over Western Cuba but there is potential for this system to 'split' between the Yucutan and Cuba and ride up into the Gulf without impacting land. I'll discuss this more tomorrow.
There is one potential scenario I want to highlight. Splitting the Yucutan and Cuba is not out of the question with this system, especially if it begins to get tugged north because of an advancing late-week trough and low pressure system that will be moving into the Central Plains.
If Wilma follows this track that I think might happen up into the Gulf of Mexico and gets pulled NNE towards the US, she will weaken but will still be a formidable storm for entire East Coast. According to the Euro model, Wilma and the trough could possibly phase together and bring a formidable system with hurricane conditions in the SE US and a gale event for the Mid-Atlantic and New England for NEXT weekend (the 22nd in the SE and the 23rd and 24th Mid-Atlantic/Northeast).
It is too early for me to predict final tracks and predict that this phasing event, coastal storm situation will happen lock, stock, and barrel. Wilma, however, does need to be monitored very closely for the next four or five days as it drifts throught the Western Caribbean. If the late-week trough can grab hold of it and pull it north we could be in for a doozy on Sunday.
