Melissa to eventually strengthen into a hurricane

AccuWeather

AccuWeather's Geoff Cornish explains how meteorologists are tracking the potentially destructive path of Tropical Storm Melissa.

Transcript

00:00Melissa eventually becoming a hurricane, and it could become a very powerful major hurricane

00:06as we head into next week, and that's the focus of the forecast feed. Let's take you right out

00:12to the satellite picture here. There is Melissa. Where is it located? Right in here. It is actually

00:18on the western side of where you see all the clouds. That's where you have the cold cloud tops.

00:24That's where you have the upward motion high in the atmosphere. That's where you have the showers

00:28and thunderstorms. Now, before we talk about the structure, what I want to do is I am a big history

00:33buff. I think when it comes to the weather, I'm a pattern recognition guy. I'm old school. So what I

00:39like to do is when we get a storm to form, we have a tremendous database of tracks in the Atlantic

00:47where Melissa is located now. I want to show you that. That will give us a starting point on where

00:55this would go. Let me put this on full. So what I did was I said, well, here's Melissa and all tracks

01:01within 60 miles. Where did they go during the month of October? And you can see some tracks out

01:09to sea, but a lot of tracks in this box in here. So that's where we start with. Now, there's a couple

01:15of storms I'd probably not highlight. This was Matthew, this storm here, that was Matthew, but that

01:22happened in early October. I don't think that that is a storm that would necessarily one I would look

01:30at here. But I'll tell you what, one storm to watch the track was Hazel in 1954. That happened in mid

01:38October. I don't think this track is going to happen, but I think it gives you a starting point

01:44on where this storm historically has moved. And historically, this tells us what? It tells us

01:51that Florida is in play. Now, the weather pattern may stay something different. The other thing to

01:59note, as I mentioned earlier, back to the satellite picture here, the center of circulation with

02:04Melissa is in here. All of the convection is on the right-hand side. There's a reason for that.

02:10It's called wind shear. I want to show you this explainer. Now, in an organized tropical system,

02:16the center of circulation at the surface through a large depth of the atmosphere is vertically

02:20stacked, right? That's why, like, when we have a hurricane, you can look right down into it,

02:26right? That's because the center of circulation vertically stacked through the entire depth of

02:30the atmosphere. That's when you have light wind shear. But when you have strong wind shear,

02:34this is what happens. It gets tilted and it disrupts the flow. And that's why Melissa is

02:39relatively weak right now. So having said that, I do want to take a look at the wind shear here

02:45over the next couple of days. And we'll continue to use our wind shear product that we've used

02:51in the past. And you could see the concern about the wind shear and how it lessens. So let me show you

02:57where we're at right now with the wind shear. So here we are tomorrow morning. All of this in here

03:06is wind shear. And that includes near Jamaica. And we think the storm is going to be tucked down in

03:10here. But you'll notice as we move forward, as if this moves northward, it is going to continue to

03:16be influenced by this westerly wind shear in here as we move forward here. There we are Thursday

03:23morning. How about Friday morning? Still a lot of wind shear in here. You'll start to notice they'll start

03:28the weekend here south of Jamaica. That's Friday. How about let's skip ahead to Sunday. What does it look

03:35like? Okay. See what's going on here? By Sunday, all your wind shear is north of Jamaica. Once you get

03:41south of Jamaica, do you see what I see? Almost like a little outline of an upper high here in low

03:47wind shear. That's the concern. So if this stays south of Jamaica, by the time we get in the weekend,

03:52we're going to have a problem because the only thing stopping this storm is wind shear, right? By the

03:57time we get into early next week, this is where it gets very dangerous. If this storm doesn't take this

04:03track but gets into here early next week, then we're going to be looking at rapid intensification

04:09and a major hurricane, at least Category 3, and it could even get higher than that. So that's the

04:14concern. All right. Let me show you our track guidance here as we move forward here. This is

04:19the AccuWeather I-Path track. Now, it seems more and more likely that this track is not going to happen,

04:25all right? Because the reason for that is I just think that it's remaining so weak that it's not

04:32going to be able to move northward. It's still possible, but I'll tell you what, we'll know today

04:36because if this doesn't start turning by later tonight and tomorrow, you can get rid of this path.

04:42And then we focus more on a path that would be like this. Now, right now, we are in between what

04:49can happen. This is the far northern eastern track. This is the far southern track. Right now,

04:55we're in between here. This would be the worst case scenario for Jamaica. This would produce a

04:59tremendous amount of heavy rain and flash flooding. We don't want to see that, but unfortunately,

05:04if it takes a southern track, we would bypass the heavy rain in Jamaica, but then you're going to get

05:09a major hurricane. Why? Because there's less wind shear. So you could see no matter what track you have,

05:15you're going to have a problem, right? You're going to have a problem no matter what track you take.

05:20I do want to continue to show you the two different outliers to this. We're going to take a

05:25look at the American model, and we're going to take a look at the European model. And not much

05:29has changed with the European model right now. Let me show it to you. Let's go to a two box here.

05:36So here's the American model, and it just continues to show this scenario. Watch that red area coming

05:43right into Hispaniola and then stalling. This would be the worst case scenario for Hispaniola,

05:48not so much for Jamaica. We're starting to think that this is not right. I've been thinking that over

05:53the last couple of days. Take a look at the European. Not much difference here. This is

05:58tomorrow night, American-European in the same spot, but watch the European keeps it weaker,

06:03keeps it going along, keeps it going along. And then it's south of Jamaica this weekend,

06:07and then it really goes to town. Look at that storm. That's a major hurricane by Tuesday and the

06:15Wednesday. So the question then becomes is, what are the odds of this hitting the United States here?

06:23Well, we take a look at this. I'll end with this. The European shows early next week. Look at this

06:28dip in the jet stream. You see it right in here. Now, if this dip in the jet stream continues to be

06:34there, then we've lucked out in the United States because that would mean that this storm would likely

06:43stay well east of Florida. But if this is a little farther west and the trough is farther west,

06:50then we have a pathway to Florida.

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