00:00You know, Alex, quickly, from where we are now, from what we talked about yesterday,
00:05I don't think there's really been many surprises.
00:07No, not really. We expected that as the storm approached the Yucatan Peninsula there
00:12that the Corps would likely get better organized, and it certainly has.
00:15The hurricane hunters have been flying around in this all night
00:18and are about to go through the Corps right now,
00:21so we're going to get some real-life data here over the next hour to see how the storm is
00:25doing.
00:26I think we may see the winds tick up a little bit.
00:28It looks like the storm has about 24 more hours or so to really intensify there
00:33before the wind shear begins to increase.
00:36That pressure surprised me a little bit there.
00:40979. I expected the winds to be a little higher given that pressure, Alex.
00:45Yeah, 979 pressure, that's something you would usually expect with a higher-end Category 1 hurricane,
00:52but what happens is sometimes the pressure in these tropical cyclones will drop
00:55a little bit quicker than the wind speeds can come up,
00:58so there's a little bit of a delay sometimes.
01:00We'll see that pressure come down, and then maybe there's a couple hours lag,
01:03and then the winds will come up as well.
01:05So, again, look for those winds to continue to tick up through the day today.
01:08When I look at the water vapor loop, two things I see.
01:11Number one, the upper low. We'll talk about that coming across Texas.
01:14That's a key, but when I see the water vapor loop,
01:17the structure in the middle and upper part of the atmosphere,
01:20that certainly has gotten better organized.
01:22Explain what I'm talking about.
01:24Yeah, look at that big ball of green there.
01:26That's the moist air, the air that's right around the center of the cyclone there,
01:30so it's in a pocket of good moisture, and you can see the clouds to the north fanning out.
01:35Look at how far they're going into the Carolinas.
01:37So the system is breathing very well right now.
01:39That's like the lungs of the storm.
01:41So this is why we expect intensification to continue.
01:44You can see the dry air to the west not really getting into the storm.
01:47So it's kind of found a pocket there.
01:49You can see the lighter purple colors.
01:51That's lower wind shear, so you can see a lot of wind shear to the north,
01:54but where the storm is right now, it's in a little bit lower wind shear,
01:58and that's why I think we're going to be seeing that intensification through the day today.
02:01And I want to talk about that because when we go forward, Alex,
02:04and what I did is I took the wind shear this afternoon
02:07and I played it out through Thursday night in the Friday morning,
02:13and you'll notice there's the center of circulation by Friday morning.
02:18And look at that pocket of lower wind shear denoted by the light purple.
02:24Yeah, exactly.
02:25It looks like it's going to be kind of living right on the edge there of that higher versus lower
02:29wind shear,
02:29and we expect it to be more on that lower end,
02:32at least through the day today into the overnight hours.
02:35So that can give it a chance to intensify.
02:37We still can't rule out that this could become a major hurricane there somewhere north of the Yucatan Peninsula.
02:43We do expect it to then move into higher wind shear,
02:45and likely we'll see those winds come down a little bit.
02:48But at the end of the day, losing 5, 10, maybe 15 miles an hour on the wind,
02:52I don't think is going to make all that much of a difference.
02:54The storm is still going to have so much power when it comes into the likely western Florida
03:00or southern Alabama coastline later tomorrow evening.
03:03And this is something that you and I were discussing off camera.
03:07You know, we were talking about the modeling of storms,
03:11the AI models, which are certainly a big new valuable tool.
03:17When they talk about the strength, it was my understanding that there's 60 members.
03:2120 of the members had a 1, 20 of the members had a 2, and 20 of the members have
03:26a 3.
03:27As you know, I'm more on the stand that I think it's going to go,
03:32because not only the wind shear you talked about,
03:34but it almost looked like there's a little piece of energy that's going to be dropping into that
03:38from that upper low across Texas.
03:40Yeah, there's that coming in from the west, but also to the north we have what's called the jet streak.
03:46So there's going to be a lot of difluent air, wind coming apart to the north.
03:50So that's going to help the storm breathe a little bit better here over the next 24 hours.
03:54So, again, we are calling for a Category 2 right now, top intensity,
03:58and then maintaining that intensity as a Category 2 into the coast.
04:01But we cannot rule out that this could be a 3 in the Gulf.
04:05I don't think it would be a 3 at landfall.
04:07We're likely to lose some of that wind intensity.
04:08But, again, if it can build more intensity,
04:11all that means is that there's going to be that much more impacts, I think,
04:14as it comes into the coast tomorrow evening.
04:16This is not the worst case scenario for Mobile, but you're not out of the woods yet, Alex.
04:23Really quickly, there is our landfall forecast.
04:25Yeah, southern Alabama to the far western Florida panhandle.
04:29These are the areas that have to be watching out.
04:31This is your last chance to get prepared.
04:33All right.
04:34AccuWeather lead hurricane expert Alex Da Silva.
04:36Thanks again for joining us.
