Tropical Troubles

The tropics are fully active now, and require full attention.

NOGAPS takes very powerful Hurricane Felix further south than the current National Hurricane Center consensus path, and brings the storm into the border area of northern Nicaragua/NE Honduras, scraping all along the Honduran coast, into Belize. What I find interesting is that, a week from now, after several days of having passed lengthwise through the unsupportive Mexican highlands, the storm will arrive at the Pacific coast of Puerto Vallarta still a recognizable system. Indeed, Felix might even regenerate in the Pacific.

After having crossed Baja California, Hurricane Henriette may bring heavy rains to parts of SE Arizona, particularly border areas like Nogales and Bisbee. So far, desert areas farther west do not appear to be the target, and Phoenix may be on the fringe. But we’ll see. Much depends on how quickly the storm reacts to the trough passing through the Rockies and how effectively the storm catches up. The longer the storm dallies down south, the more likely the trough will pass it by, and the farther west the storm will enter Arizona.

NOGAPS calls for the stormy area off the coast of Georgia to become a tropical storm, or hurricane. The forecast path is quite erratic, with the storm heading NE at first, stopping, reversing direction and heading for the South Carolina coast, stopping again, then heading north, clipping North Carolina’s Outer Banks, then causing havoc along the entire Atlantic coast, clipping Cape Cod and hitting Nova Scotia, among other places. As mentioned before, NOGAPS tends to overestimate the likelihood of hurricanes ‘nucleating’: I hope that is the case here too…..