Jared W. Smith

We in Charleston have reverted back to October, apparently. If you’ve stepped outside, you’ve undoubtedly noticed the return of warm, mid-70s temperatures, Charlestonian humidity and a familiar urge to dodge mosquitoes. Funk-nasty. This is happening thanks to a system pumping a very warm southerly flow into the area.

Well, this sort of thing doesn’t last too long in December, and typically, these temperature differences resolve themselves with force. A fairly potent storm system is sweeping through the middle of the country, causing plenty of problems with severe weather across Texas and into Mississippi and Alabama. So, as you might expect, we’ve got a slight risk of severe weather tomorrow, which primarily hinges on how much sunshine peeks through before the front arrives. In fact, the outer portions of the storm are showing up on radar.

So, keep an eye out during the day tomorrow — it could get a little rough at times. It’ll be through by Friday, and we’ll get back into upper 50s for highs (though the lows aren’t currently projected to be as low as they have been, which is good for my getting up on time). One thing is for certain, this late fall has been anything but normal; we just can’t seem to figure that out this time around.

Something happened last night that hasn’t happened for several months — I felt cold.

Fall is definitely on the approach. While I won’t rule out one last resurgence of warmth in the next few weeks (this typically happens in Charleston, we can’t transition nicely into seasons here at all), we’re entering the second of the two periods of the year where Charleston’s weather is incredibly gorgeous. I’m talking high 70s to low 80s for highs, and low to mid-60s for lows.

While fall is generally more tame than spring severe weather-wise, there can still be elevated levels of severe weather, because the setup is similar to spring: strong cold fronts running into warm air, causing lift and storm formation. Now that we’re seeing fronts again, there could be some decent storms at times.

In the next week, at least, we’ll be keeping some cloudiness around with a chance of showers. There’s a disturbance southwest of here that’s been consistently kicking up some rain on long-range radar.

Hurricane season isn’t over yet: Invest 93L out there

Thankfully, the tropics have been much quieter since Ike roared ashore in Texas. However, a disturbance is trying to get it together in the Atlantic; the Hurricane Center has dubbed this one 93L for now and are watching it for development. As the model spread indicates, there is no shortage of computerized opinion about what this one’s going to do. The HWRF and GFDL models develop it and take it northward; GFDL curves it out to sea, but HWRF seems to keep it hanging around the islands and weakening it. Again, it’s early as heck, and it’s tough to say what will happen. Jeff Masters seems to think that this one will gradually get it together. Again, it’s always worth watching — a tough sell to a hurricane-fatigued populace, for sure.

In the meantime, enjoy the weather out there — it’s pretty gorgeous, if not a bit on the cloudy side.

After Tropical Storm Hanna gave us some much-needed rain Friday, it turned northeast and hit hyperspeed and has made conditions quite interesting going up the Eastern seaboard, dumping a lot of rain and causing some brief flooding issues from North Carolina up into New Hampshire. It’s lost tropical characteristics now, and the Hurricane Center has issued the final advisory for Hanna, which will go down as a reasonably bizarre, devil of a storm to try to predict.

Despite rumors to the contrary, Hanna actually did have some winds. Francis Shepherd had some videos of some of Hanna’s wind and rain from Deltaville, VA on Saturday morning. While the winds didn’t seem too exceptionally strong in those videos, that’s certainly more than I saw from my humble abode in West Ashley.

Hurricane Ike lashed a Hanna-ravaged Turks and Caicos Islands and is going to give the Bahamas quite a ride today before it slams into Cuba, likely maintaining Category 4 strength throughout. Evacuations have been underway in the Florida Keys for the last day or two; first, tourists were asked to leave, and now residents are being evacuated as the Keys are under a hurricane watch. They likely won’t see the brunt of Ike’s fury, but even Category 2 winds can cause severe problems on the Keys.

From there, it’s anybody’s guess where Ike will end up. Here’s the path, which could point it anywhere from south of Texas to just to the west of Pensacola.

The forecast has Ike taking a beating from Cuba, but eventually getting it back together in the Gulf and becoming a Category 3 again. Ike’s got folks along the Gulf Coast worried, and rightfully so; this could be a force to be reckoned with through this week. A lot of the folks I followed for Gustav are watching Ike extremely closely, and making preparations now just in case. While it shouldn’t affect us in the Carolinas, thankfully, we’ll be watching the Gulf Coast closely, hoping folks there get out of harm’s way.

Hanna’s made a very sharp jog to the left which has complicated a lot of things in the forecast. It’s looking more and more that unless the northeast turn happens in the next couple hours from now, landfall will indeed be in northern Charleston County near Awendaw and Bulls Bay. The Hurricane Hunters are in the storm as I type this and there is some really interesting data coming back — it looks like the pressure at the center fix is 978 mb. The fix puts the center about 85 miles to the southeast of Charleston. It’s hauling butt, too, and I’m sure that fix is outdated by this writing.

As I write this, a squall associated with the inner core of the storm — which is rapidly regenerating — is coming ashore. The worst may be yet to come…keep tabs in the Charleston Weather broadcast and chat room. Next advisory at 11…

Here’s the 8am model runs. Note the increasing amount of divergence ahead of Hanna’s landfall. There’s still reasonably strong agreement for the Horry County landfall scenario, but I would not be surprised to see the track jog west a bit more before it’s all said and done.

The 8:00 advisory slows Hanna’s forward motion down ever so slightly (to 18 MPH instead of 20). It’s still headed northwest. Winds are still 65 MPH, but the pressure is down a bit more. Satellite imagery is indicating that the shear has backed off some; note the gigantic plume of convection trying to wrap itself around the center. A hurricane at landfall is reemerging as a possibility.

Stay tuned…

Hanna’s looking rough this morning. It’s back down to 65 MPH winds, and there’s a lot of speculation that Hanna is becoming extratropical. NHC acknowledges Hanna’s struggle to remain tropical in the discussion:

VERY DRY AIR ASSOCIATED WITH THE UPPER-LEVEL LOW OVER THE
NORTHWESTERN BAHAMAS IS CHOKING OFF CONVECTION NEAR THE CORE OF
HANNA…AND THE CYCLONE HAS A VERY SUBTROPICAL APPEARANCE.
CONVECTION HAS DIMINISHED SUBSTANTIALLY OVER THE PAST 6-12 HOURS
AND THE HIGHEST FLIGHT-LEVEL AND SFMR WINDS HAVE COME DOWN AS WELL.
BASED ON SOME 52 KT SFMR WINDS AROUND 11Z…THE INITIAL INTENSITY
IS LOWERED TO 55 KT.

Here’s the latest track, which returns more to the rightward path that we started seeing emerge during the day yesterday before the 11:00 came out:

The wind field is still pretty broad — 310 miles, to be exact — but largely to the north and northeast. We in Charleston still stand a decent chance of seeing tropical storm force winds for a time, and some rain, but with the dry air influencing the storm as well as the continued rightward bias in the models, impacts along our coast will be lessened.

News 2 reports that Gov. Mark Sanford has called for voluntary evacuations of Horry and Georgetown counties; he also said that Hanna might be a “dress rehearsal for a thing called Ike.” Ike is bothersome to me; I’m crunched for time now but will have more later on.

As of 5am, hurricane watches are now up from Surf City, NC, to just north of Hilton Head, SC. Tropical storm watches extend from roughly Hilton Head down to almost the Georgia/Florida border.

Hanna’s still a 65 MPH storm, headed to the northwest at 11 MPH. Its satellite presentation has been less than impressive this morning; however, strengthening is still fairly likely and Category 1 strength at landfall is to be expected.

The 5am track speeds up the timeline a bit and shifts landfall slightly left. As of now we’re looking at a landfall a bit closer to the NC/SC border (almost right on top of Wilmington) around 2am Saturday. Tropical storm force winds should begin to arrive in Charleston around noon tomorrow, or so. Today is another clear day, so today is the day to finish your preparations. Conditions will turn drastically downhill as Friday comes along. On the current track — still very subject to change — the center of the storm will probably pass to the east of here from around 7 to 9 PM Friday night. Once this occurs, conditions will begin to improve as Hanna’s not expected to have much on its southwest side.

More after 8 or so with the new model runs and the intermediate advisory.

The 11PM advisory is now out on a steadily reorganizing Hanna. Winds remain around 65 MPH, and pressure is sticking around 989 millibars. The Turn has really started to happen, as NHC states forward motion is north-northwest at 13 MPH.

The Track

The track seems to have shifted a bit more leftward before landfall; there’s still a fair bit of uncertainty. In the discussion, NHC acknowledges low confidence in the track, citing some spread in the forecast models.

There’s good consensus for a turn to the north and then the northeast; the big question is where it will happen. There’s decent consensus heading toward Wilmington, but there’s spread on the western periphery of the consensus — including a HWRF model that generally gets a fair bit of weight from NHC forecasters — hence the uncertainty and the slight leftward jog in the track.

NHC is saying that hurricane watches are likely for a “large portion of the southeast US coast” by tomorrow morning. It’s probably safe to assume that we in Charleston will be included in this watch.

It’s worth noting that the storm will be relatively short-lived; it’ll be increasing in forward speed throughout its approach. In Charleston, it’s likely that Hanna will have largely cleared the area by Saturday night. This is good for reducing the threat of severe flooding. There will still be heavy rains, but at least they will be short-lived.

Effects

Charleston should start feeling effects from Hanna as Friday wears on. As it gets closer, winds will increase. I’ve been able to use an experimental forecast wind field product as a decent guideline for what we might see here.

The forecast says that we’ll see some of the worst of the weather Friday night into early Saturday morning, as the center passes within 75 miles or so of Charleston. Sustained winds of 58 miles per hour or greater — as indicated by the purple shading in the map above — are possible for a brief period. As mentioned above, rain totals will probably hit 6″ in some places, but this won’t be a storm that sits and spins and dumps 30″ of rain like a Fay over Florida.

Again, a lot of this is contingent on something resembling the current track holding. There’s more time for stuff to wobble back and forth, and Charleston is still in the cone of uncertainty, so there’s still stuff to watch. However, the direct strike scenario is looking less and less likely.

Closures, etc.

Keep an eye to media outlets and other sources for closure information in the Charleston area tomorrow, as I expect most of those closures (or lack thereof) would be announced during the day. A good resource for this is the @news2 Twitterstream.

Check out Lowcountry Bloggers’ Storm Buzz

The Lowcountry Bloggers roundup site has launched Storm Buzz, an automated feed of hurricane-related posts from the Lowcountry blogosphere. This is a good one-stop resource to see what Charleston bloggers have to say about Hanna and Ike.

Speaking of Ike…

Ike exploded into a dangerous but equally gorgeous Category 4 storm during the day Wednesday. It’s in a perfect environment for strengthening and could be a 5 before it’s all said and done. It’s expected to weaken to a 3; tentatively, it’s headed to the Bahamas, but there’s a lot of spread and uncertainty. It could recurve out into the sea — which would be ideal, of course — or it could threaten the U.S. within the next five or so days. Ike is one to watch because it’s expected to retain major hurricane status as it traverses the Atlantic, with fluctuations in intensity characteristic of huge storms.

For now, though, all eyes will continue to be on Hanna as she makes her move toward the coast. I’ll have more in the morning, probably shortly after the 8am advisory unless there’s a major shift in track that needs immediate attention.

Coverage Continues

Another video briefing will be broadcast at about 9:15 PM, with a roundup of the day’s information and hopefully a better fix on what Hanna’s going to do. She’s still got a history of behaving badly and needs to be watched closely.

Coverage will be more frequent as conditions deteriorate; I’m planning on bringing in additional folks to assist with coverage. Additional streams are planned for as long as power is viable. Now’s the time to follow @chswx and my own personal Twitter account for information and accounts of the storm, too.

Cautious optimism is the word in Charleston; however, preparedness needs to become the word in Wilmington and the Outer Banks. The 5PM track shifted well eastward and now points to a landfall very close to Wilmington as a medium Category 1 hurricane. Despite this shift, Charleston could still see tropical storm force winds and some heavy rain at times on Friday into Saturday morning.

11:00 is about to come out — I’ll have more then. Regardless of Hanna’s track, I’ll do another briefing tomorrow night at 9:15 when more should become clear about what Charleston will face.