Monday Morning 7am – DC in the Crosshairs?
October 24, 2012
I’m getting frequent updates. Will try to keep posting regularly on this.
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Monday Morning, 7 am. This is what I consider to be the most reliable weather model looking out more than 4-5 days, the European ECMWF model. It has consistently hooked Sandy inland for the last 3 days, and it continues to push the storm into the northeast coast, but now closer to Rehoboth and Ocean City, Maryland. If this solution verifies D.C. would experience hurricane force winds and flooding rains. The models indicate possible landfall anywhere from the Chesapeake Bay to Cape Cod, but I put more stock in the ECMWF solution.
Climate Denial Crock of the Week 
October 24, 2012 at 7:15 pm
Peter,
It’s my experience that NHC and the modelers have gotten extremely competent at storm track projections up to 3 days out. Beyond that, we’re still shooting darts at a complex, moving target.
While a Chesapeake Bay landfall is possible, I’ve seen other equally skilled suggestions of a New Hampshire landfall and a Long Island, NY landfall. In brief, it is just too soon to tell.
However, one interesting aspect of all this is that in your part of Michigan, you might experience your first winter storm next week, as Sandy combines with an Arctic low now descending through Canada to pull Arctic air down to the West of one of those infamous blocking patterns in the jet stream with a huge high pressure cell providing a strong anti-cyclonic flow from just south of Greenland.
On the other hand, it could be like this, if the slackers out in San Francisco are not enjoying too much medical marijuana this week:
http://squall.sfsu.edu/scripts/namjetstream_model_fcst.html
[I actually think this scenario to be highly unlikely at 5 days out. But it would be what we should be hoping for.]
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Just now some really mean person suggested the alternative might be repeat of Hurricane Irene. This is the really soggy solution:
October 24, 2012 at 7:49 pm
You know, if I ran a navy on the East Coast of North America and my own predictions showed this, I’d be scrambling…. NOW!
https://www.fnmoc.navy.mil/wxmap_cgi/cgi-bin/wxmap_loop.cgi?&area=ngp_troplant&dtg=2012102412&prod=prp&tau=180&set=Tropical