Kingarabian wrote:1900hurricane wrote:It's somewhat tough to say with any certainty what is ailing Blanca currently, but if I had to guess, I'd actually say eyewall replacement. Microwave imagery from this morning showed a rather loose brightness gradient between the warmest part of the eye and coldest updrafts in the eyewall, which is something that is often seen in the latter stages of eyewall replacement. A flaw in this thinking though is that this pass occurred only just at cloud tops were beginning to warm, but it is perhaps possible that the polar orbiter did not have the resolution to resolve the very small inner eyewall well enough to clearly distinguish it, thereby displaying the loose brightness gradient. This is just a hunch at this point, but so far, the convective degradation seems to be in line with what is typically observed during eyewall replacement, where the most robust warming occurs directly adjacent to the eye.
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Good hunch. It's surprising though. Normally you would see an ERC once the storm has leveled off in intensity. Blanca certainly looked like it was in the midst of RI earlier.
That's why my explanation seems to make the most sense. Sometimes (if I recall correctly) strong outer convective bands can, by disrupting flow, halt RI and force an early eyewall replacement.
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