00:00Well, we have a lot of concerns here as we move on through the beginning of the weekend,
00:03Friday, Saturday, high-impact event with what will become Hurricane Isaias,
00:08making landfall and charging through the central Wolf Coast states with a variety of impacts,
00:13storm surge, damaging wind, flash flooding, flooding rainfall, and even a tornado threat
00:19will be present as well. So let's take a look at the latest here with our storm.
00:23And here you can see our environment that is across much of the area of the Gulf.
00:30There's a lot less shear to the south and a lot more shear to the north.
00:34Highly sheared environment to the north is going to change the character of the storm right before landfall.
00:39But the opportunity for strengthening is going to be greatest here as it moves through the next, I'd say, 36
00:44hours.
00:45So here we are Wednesday evening through Thursday into Friday morning.
00:49When we get to Friday afternoon and evening closing in on landfall,
00:53generally up in this area around Mobile, Pensacola, it'll be entering an area of stronger wind shear.
00:58But for now, we got warm water. The warm water is not deep.
01:03So the oceanic heat content is somewhat limited, but the surface temperatures of the water are above average.
01:12So what that means to me is that we have a lot of very warm water at the surface,
01:17but deep down, it may not be nearly as warm as it sometimes is this time of the year.
01:22So it's kind of a shallow layer of warmth that'll fuel the storm.
01:25But after it sits for too long over one area, it might actually begin to cool things down.
01:30I do think it's moving enough that it's not going to cool too much of the water beneath it too
01:34long.
01:34So the forward motion of the storm will probably mitigate some of that.
01:38The biggest limiting factor is going to be the wind shear to the north.
01:40Hey, by the way, we've been talking about records and so forth and the lack of hurricanes.
01:46At midnight Greenwich Mean Time, so we're looking at midnight tonight in England.
01:52You shave four hours off of that here.
01:55We do daylight saving time now.
01:57We've been doing that since World War I, 8 p.m. Eastern tonight.
01:59If this is not a hurricane by then, and it will not be most likely,
02:03then this will become the new record latest first hurricane to form.
02:08We do expect this to become a hurricane probably on Thursday.
02:10That'll break the record from 1905, when the first hurricane of 1905 became a hurricane pretty late in the season.
02:20Admittedly, there were no known hurricanes in 1907 or 1914, but we didn't have satellites back then.
02:26All right, so here I want to talk about some of the things that will influence the steering of the
02:30storm.
02:30Then we'll look at landfall.
02:32Overall, I'm going to plot a couple of things on the map here.
02:36You know what?
02:36Instead of doing it that way, let me bring up just the H's and the L's here.
02:40High pressure and low pressure.
02:42So there's a large area of high pressure.
02:45The Bermuda Azores High is configured a little farther south.
02:48It's south of Bermuda, and it's in an area north of Puerto Rico and east of the Turks and Caicos
02:53and Bahamas.
02:53And here we have our strengthening system.
02:57There we have Isaias.
02:58And overall, the steering flow is going to – it's been very limited.
03:04It's weak steering flow, and you can see the winds here.
03:06It's 15 knots, 5 knots over Mexico.
03:09We're looking about 20,000 feet up into the atmosphere.
03:1210 knots on the north side here from northwest to southeast.
03:16Not much steering flow, just enough to nudge it along.
03:18But as time progresses, Thursday, Thursday night, Friday, we get into a zone here where
03:23look at the winds across Florida, 25 knots, 35 knots southwest of St. Petersburg, and 25
03:31knots southwest of the storm.
03:34There's going to be a trough that digs into Texas, and that's going to be this mechanism
03:39that steers this thing northward.
03:41It's going to begin to step on the accelerator.
03:43So there is the GFS.
03:45Yes, GFS would make landfall happen Friday night.
03:49The GFS at one point was much later than that.
03:52So the GFS is now in agreement.
03:54Here's the NAM, Friday night landfall.
03:56Here's the European model.
03:58A little farther west, arguably, Friday night landfall regardless.
04:02So we have pretty good agreement.
04:03This trough that sets in over the interior southwest, we can plot a low here, a loft.
04:09And again, we're going to draw the steering flow around that.
04:12And that brings our hurricane at this point in.
04:17Here comes Isaias coming in, making landfall.
04:20So it's kind of the X's and O's here behind what's going on.
04:24And overall, I don't want to show you too many graphics here.
04:29Again, we do have a lot of different competing things going on timing-wise.
04:32But just the current wind shear as we go back to our weather graphics.
04:37Here you can see very strong wind shear across the northern part of the Gulf.
04:40And that's going to be an influence that weakens the storm a bit.
04:43But the opportunity for this to really ramp up to a hurricane will be in this lighter lavender shade here
04:49as it moves through this area.
04:50That's your opportunity for significant strengthening.
04:52All right.
04:53So based on what we showed you with the steering flow, where do we expect landfall to occur?
04:57We generally expect it to happen between Mobile Bay and areas around Destin, Florida.
05:03Most likely, I would, you know, the biggest city that I'm really concerned about, Pensacola, Florida here.
05:08Pensacola, here we have Mobile, Mobile, Alabama, and then Pensacola, Florida.
05:13Pensacola is probably going to be in the line of fire here for direct impacts and landfall.
05:18We're looking at a 6 to 10-foot storm surge.
05:21That's going to be problematic.
05:22If this were to come in a little farther west, it would be a worst-case scenario for Mobile coming
05:26in as it is.
05:27I really think it may be at its absolute worst in some of these bays just to the east closer
05:32to Pensacola.
05:34If it comes in any farther west, if it came in directly in the southeast corner of Mississippi, that would
05:39drive more seawater into Mobile Bay.
05:41We've got to keep an eye open for that potential, and the winds are going to be fierce with this
05:44one, with 100 to 120 mph gusts within the eastern eyewall.
05:48Big, big concerns there.
05:50You can see, though, if this were translated 30 miles west, that is right over Mobile Bay, and that's going
05:55to shove some tremendous seawater inland.
05:57Big concerns there.
05:58Total rainfall.
05:59We have a forecast of 8 to 12 inches there for the area around Pensacola and southern parts of Alabama.
06:05Last thing I wanted to talk about before we go.
06:08Again, here you can see this coming in.
06:10Pretty good agreement on landfall.
06:12Might be at 986 low.
06:13It's a strong hurricane there.
06:15Here we have a 9, about 996.
06:19A little bit less intense for the NAM.
06:20European, a 980 low.
06:22That's very strong.
06:23And heavy rain.
06:24You can see this nature of the rain with, you know, many areas seeing over 8 inches.
06:28But the Energy Helicity Index, looking at the tornado risk, into Saturday, Georgia and parts of the Carolinas.
06:36I'm most concerned about southeast Alabama and into south Georgia through midday Saturday for the greatest risk of tornadoes.
06:43Here's our tornado risk map here for Friday night through Saturday, and still some risk farther east into Sunday.
06:49Good day.
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