Turnerloose on Irene...

So we've got our first hurricane of the season... alrighty then.

My only source of news this morning has been my twitter feed (@LewTurner if you'd like to follow)... I haven't turned on my TV yet, and have been oggling weather maps for hours, so I haven't had a chance to go to the local or network sites yet...

However, it is clear that Hurricane Irene is one of the largest topics of interest this morning, as apparent by it's top status as a trending topic on twitter.

The #Irene hashtag is bombing... much like the surface pressure of Irene overnight... but we'll get into all that in a second.

I mentioned this in one of my tweets earlier in the morning... that it seems like every TV station is tweeting out that Irene will probably hit in there geographic region. Whether it's NC stations, or west coast Florida stations... and depending on the model they'd like to reference, they are absolutely not wrong.

Let me say this first and foremost... in a situation where my forecast contradicts Tim Deegan, I am trumped. He's got the years of experience, he's the chief, he's got the final say... and is most likely right.

However, I am going to get my feet wet a little by giving my first forecast/impression of what Hurricane Irene will do.

I know it's a bit silly to get hyper-specific, but this blog is silly... haven't you been reading it? Come on, I wrote about having a battle with Oprah!

So I'll stick my neck out... I'm going to get very specific here... I'm going to give you intensity forecast and an exact location and general time of Irene landfall (where the eye wall comes ashore), as well as other areas that are going to feel those impacts and what those impacts will be... I'm using several numerical models, trends this season, and real time observations to generate this forecast.

Hint: if you want to skip all the blah, blah technical jargon... just flip straight to the bottom and I'll sum it all up for ya. THANKS!!

Yep, it'll all be in writing... for two reasons...

1. To go on record...
2. To show (if I happen to be wrong), that many times guidance is WAY off when it come to the day 4 and 5 forecast... NHC stats show a 200-250 mile margin of error when it comes to that many days out. So we can all laugh at the silly weatherman later.

In the meantime... here we go:

I think Irene is going to be a major hurricane at landfall... I'm talking a strengthening Cat 3 storm. It's going to miss the mountains of Hispanola and going to be moving through some very warm water. Upper level conditions (according to ONE MODEL) seem very favorable with an upper level anti-cyclone (high pressure) situated over Irene Tuesday and Wednesday as it emerges from all the rocks of the islands and into relatively open water. Here's the latest (as of this writing) GFS for Wednesday afternoon, paying closer attention to the 200mb chart, that's way up there... you can see wind barbs pointing in a clockwise flow above our storm.

That upper level high, over the surface low vents the storm, helping it grow.

So conditions seem right for this one to be strong... winds in the 120 mph range, but, again, getting stronger at landfall.

So where and when...

When is fairly easy, so we'll knock that out now... Saturday morning. Done and done.

No how bout where?

ridge shifts into western atlantic midweek... trough tries to get in here by Thursday... hmmmmm... sorry just thinking aloud here...

I really think, given the trends and how steering currents are looking, that this storm will recurve, so I think south Florida and the west coast should be in the clear, though they are certainly still in the cone. They have every reason to tell me I'm way off base etc...etc.

So, that leaves an area from Jacksonville to Myrtle Beach that I think we should focus on...

Historically, Jacksonville and the rest of the Ga-Fl bight get missed... I'm not going to buck that trend here. I think it recurves and does not make a direct landfall on Jacksonville. I do however think we will get hurricane conditions here... with some very strong winds and rain as Irene skirts our coastline late Friday night into Saturday morning.

This is not going to be a Wilmington, outter banks storm... at least I don't think so.

So that leaves an area between Savannah, Georgia and Myrtle Beach.

Maybe I'm drawing a wrong conclusion here... but this storm reminds me a lot of Hurricane Floyd, although Floyd tracked in September and a couple hundred miles to the north. Floyd stayed north of the Bahamas, made that massive recurve, and then plowed into NC.

Keeping that in mind... since Irene is a little further south now... I think landfall will occur a little further south. How bout we go down the coast a couple hundred miles.

How about Edisto,SC? That's what I'm sticking with for now at least. I'm not going to say Beaufort or Fripp Island, SC that's where I grew up and where my parents work and live (though what's a couple of miles between friends?)... but I really an concerned about a SC landfall this weekend.

So there we go... my official (unofficial) primary Irene forecast... I will probably change this 25 times before tomorrow... but what the heck... this was fun right?

IF YOU ARE SCROLLING DOWN STOP HERE:

Concise forecast for scrollers:

Irene makes landfall Saturday morning as a strengthening Cat 3 Hurricane (120mph winds) between Savannah, GA and Charleston, SC (I'm picking Edisto, SC as the spot Jim Cantore sets up shop), Jacksonville, the First Coast and SE Georgia will get strong tropical winds (perhaps hurricane strength gusts), some flooding and will deal with beach erosion and very large surf.


There you have it folks... DISCLOSURE: I'm sure this will come back to bite me in my ---, please be gentle and remember my boss and chief meteorologist Tim Deegan is the one with the true final say and real official First Coast News forecast.

Just putting my name in the race.

-My God, what have I done?

Mahalo,
Lew