Hurricane Bill was downgraded to a tropical storm last night and the last advisory was issued this morning. Bill brushed my Nova Scotia racing at over 30+mph. Highest gusts I was able to find were near 50mph around 2pm. Cape Race, Newfoundland recorded hurricane-force gusts late last night into this morning. Bill had began the extratropical transistion yesterday as the hurricane was losing it’s cold cloud tops and becoming assymetric as the core was getting colder. Shear was also ripping at the system blowing what little convection remained away from the center of circulation. But, though Bill is gone, there are two other areas of interest to watch.
Tropical Storm Bill WV Aug 24, 2009 19:45 UTC courtesy NRL Monterey
The National Hurricane Center is watching two areas of interest: one in the Atlantic and one in the East Pacific.
The Atlantic Invest – I do not see that it has been assigned a number, yet – is located just to the east of the Lesser Antilles. I really have no idea why the NHC would even list this system, even given less than 30% chance of development. Whatever convection is there is clearly getting drawn into a mid/upper-level low to the northeast. It’s certainly nothing worth paying attention to at this point.
Atlantic Invest - WV Imagery - Aug 24, 2009 10:15 UTC
The NHC is also watching Invest 93E located about 500 nm soutwest of Baja. While there is a surface circulation, it is very broad and Quickscat shows 20-25kt winds well away from the center. Convection is also sporadic as strong easterly shear is hitting the low. While the system did have a chance of development it is highly likely this, too, will dissipate throughout the day as the system progress west-northwest.
Invest 93E - IR Imagery - Aug 24, 2009 10:00 UTC
Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Hilda is expected to strengthen into a hurricane going into tomorrow. The storm is expected to pass well south of the Hawaiian Islands at category one intensity. Unfortunately, you can’t track it on this website – I’ll be working on that soon. I can’t recall the last time there was so much activity in the central Pacific. Blame it on El Nino.
A reminder our Katrina archives are being published in real-time. You may have noticed a post yesterday of a depression developing over the Turks and Caicos. This was the first in a series of articles that will be republished in the next week on Hurricane Katrina to commemorate the 4-year anniversary; yesterday marked 4-years since tropical depression twelve developed and today is 4-years that the depression became tropical storm Katrina. The articles are minute for now as I had no clue what Katrina would become. They do pick up as the system leaves Florida so stay tuned for those posts.
Also, there was no tropical update post yesterday as I was working very hard to get the tracking map up and running. You may have noticed the map currently available is not showing storms as of right now. I do not know why nor care. I’ve reestablished the original tracking map from last year with the forecast tracks, wind radii, computer models and what-not – it’s just a matter of implementing it into the website. I hope to have that done by tonight. Thank you for bearing with me.
