Wilma about to be influenced by trough! Maybe no stall......

[Foladar0]

5pm forecast for 2pm Monday:

72HR VT 24/1800Z 25.5N 82.5W 80 KT

Which is offshore SW FL...

11pm forecast for 8pm Monday:

27.0N 80.0W

Or moving offshore the East Coast...

So it seems to be a bit faster.

It also seems to be a hair further south...

Hmm, a hair south? Push it north, NORTTHH!!!

[Cookiely]

I theorize it's land friction/interaction and weak steering currents. They are so weak that I think that her own outflow is deflecting off the land and pushing her parallel to it.

It doesn't sound credible, but that is what I think.

We've seen this happen numerous times in the islands. Where the storm just rides the coast and wobbles in and out. Its like one of those trains that bump into the wall and back up. Wilma says oops I hit something lets back off here.

[Stratosphere747]

She is ever so slowly wobbling her way NW right along the NHC track. Almost like she's stalled. Hmmm, where have we heard predictions of a stall?

So much for the relevance of this thread.

It that based upon two or three wobble movements of this storm, or over six or more hours of observation?

Let's see if you can say the same thing six or twelve hours from now. I have a hunch that you will be wrong.

In fact, I'll predict that 12 hours from now Wilma will not have any eyewall winds on the Yucatan.

So much for the relevance of my post.

Sooner...

If I could come into this discussion..

The consensus of this board for the most part has been doing almost everything possible to argue against the track of the NHC. I'll chalk it up to plain concern for their areas, and respectfully they have every right to ask questions.

The simple fact is that the track is almost dead on to what the NHC has predicted in the short term.

Scott

NHC's track forecast from 4PM CDT today had Wilma exiting the northeastern tip of Yucatan near midnight tomorrow. That's more than 24 hours from now. You can defend NHC all you want on track confidence, but they have consistently stated that they had low confidence in their own track and timing based upon divergence of the models that they use to background their predictions.

Nothing they have done is wrong. They basically said they wouldn't be surprised if their forecast was wrong. Now it appears it will be wrong. Please don't give me satellite pics of the last 1-1/2 hours to support any kind of theorem about the track of this storm. The western side is being sheared away, which means all of the potency of this storm will be over the water.

I'm no god, I can't make the earth and sun move. But I can deal with what my eyes and brain tell me. I don't have great confidence in their track speed and short-term forecast for Wilma. NHC wouldn't have been embarrassed to say the same, they've been telling us all along.

Let's wait a few hours before we grant sainthood to the track that NHC said was quite possibly wrong. It may have actually been wrong. And that would not be surprising to me, nor to them.

Go to the NHC archive and look at the track forecast history. It's been very good overall as usual. But in the short term it's been around average for them for recent years, which makes them light-years ahead of any other source for confidence on track.

I still think that Wilma will not spend anywhere near 30 hours over land.

I will say that one thing that I find very irritating about their track forecasts is how they change the format from one to the next. They move the legend randomly from this corner to that, the scale from one to another, they move the central focus of the track by hundreds of miles when the hurricane has moved 60.

That tells me that they feel confortable in an environment of radical change, which doesn't make me appreciate what they are doing.

Outstanding rebuttal Sooner...

I wish I had time to zero in on some of the points you have made, but honestly there is not much to argue with.

With respect to the track of the NHC and what I mentioned, the arguments last night with the NHC's track and the possibility of a stall were thrown out the window. I'm not looking at the "pinpoint" track that everyone else looks for, but yet the "track" of Wilma has gone over the northern part of Cozmuel and is now slowly moving in the general area of Cancun.


Scott

[soonertwister]

My biggest concern is acceleration potential catching people who have been fidgeting for days unready to deal with a rapidly approaching serious storm.

I do not think that Wilma can reach category 5 or for more than for a brief time hit minimal category 4 winds from here to Florida windfall. But the timing of that landfall and the intensity of the storm are pretty much not solved thus far. We think she will diminish until landfall but don't know that for sure.

But right now NHC has Wilma moving at a snail's pace, being a bare 40-50 miles off of Yucatan by 7 am Sunday, then accelerating at a ridiculous pace, averaging around 20 miles per hour from 7 pm Sunday until 24 hours later.

I frankly can't believe their latest forecast. They have Wilma moving maybe 3-4 miles per hour for the next 44 hours, then maybe 6 miles per hour for a day, then rocketing across Florida. I wouldn't take that track speed forecast on a bet.

What I don't understand about an agency that was created to protect us from the worst of tropical storm consequences is that they would go ultra-conservative in the first part of their forecast, then go nuts at the end.

Somebody needs to stand up and say that Florida could be hit on Sunday. It's not even close to outrageous to say so. Given their own recent low confidence in their track position and speed estimates, I don't understand why they are low-balling the short-term motion of this storm.

Wilma may be nothing. But I'm wary of a storm that had a minimum pressure of 882 mb. It may be not all that right now, but nobody in their wildest imagination thought this storm could get as strong as it did when it did. We should not ever underestimate Mother Nature.

[Scorpion]

Well Wilma just decided to head inland and is moving very slowly.

[Stratosphere747]

Well Wilma just decided to head inland and is moving very slowly.

Really?

How about that jog to the southwest?

[soonertwister]

Well Wilma just decided to head inland and is moving very slowly.

She's so far inland that her eye is still about half over water.

She's so far from the northern extent of Yucatan that a strong walker could get there in a day, if on a good trail, and not hiking in a hurricane.

Let's face it, unless this storm suddenly decides to defy all logic by moving south of west for an extended period of time, she won't be over land for long. Anywhere north of west there isn't much land to be had any more.

Did you notice how she's regaining strength right now? I guess than landfall may not be all that it's cracked up to be, when 80% of your storm is still over water.

From my perspective she's essentially stalled right now. She might wander over land or go back over the warm water of the NW Carribean, before making a power run over western Cuba into southern Florida.

Track confidence can't be very good right now.

[Scorpion]

I agree. Dennis was a small hurricane and stayed over Cuba for what 15 hours and got its core disrupted, but once it emerged it became even more powerful than it was before. Im not saying it will reach Cat 5 again, but Cat 3 is a good bet as long as she doesn't stay over land more than a day.

[Windtalker1]

Well Wilma just decided to head inland and is moving very slowly.

Really?

How about that jog to the southwest?

How can you say this? and then.........

[Windtalker1]

I agree. Dennis was a small hurricane and stayed over Cuba for what 15 hours and got its core disrupted, but once it emerged it became even more powerful than it was before. Im not saying it will reach Cat 5 again, but Cat 3 is a good bet as long as she doesn't stay over land more than a day.

Say this...seems like a flip flop to me.

[gtalum]

Well, I hate to say "I told you so", but, I told you so. She's well inland. She will be well inland on the 13:45 frame, as I said she would be last night. Sorry folks, the NHC has a decent handle on this one from here on out.

[krysof]

Well, I hate to say "I told you so", but, I told you so. She's well inland. She will be well inland on the 13:45 frame, as I said she would be last night. Sorry folks, the NHC has a decent handle on this one from here on out.

she's not going westward anymore, she actually went to the east a bit and northward

[gtalum]

she's not going westward anymore, she actually went to the east a bit and northward

Can you say "wobble"? SHe's right on the NHC track. She took a one-frame wobble NNE.

[AZS]

she's not going westward anymore, she actually went to the east a bit and northward

Can you say "wobble"? SHe's right on the NHC track. She took a one-frame wobble NNE.

she is moving Northward....

[gtalum]

Still on the NHC track. the 12:45 frame was a jog NE and the 13:15 frame was a jog NW.

[krysof]

she's not going westward anymore, she actually went to the east a bit and northward

Can you say "wobble"? SHe's right on the NHC track. She took a one-frame wobble NNE.

she is moving Northward....

I know she wobbled NNE, I was just stating she isn't moving NNW anymore