What is Emily doing?

Posted: 8:50pm EDT Tue July 19
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OK, I give up trying to predict what Emily is going to do, I'm just going to watch. Brownsville 248 nm mile range radar shows that Emily has essentially stalled the past 75 minutes. The 7:18pm recon flight showed that the central pressure had risen 6 mb to 948 mb, and saw no increase in flight level winds. With the storm sitting in place, lots of cold water is going to upwell beneath her and make it difficult to intensify further. In fact, the eye appears less distinct than two hours ago, and is filling with clouds. However, a very impressive circular Cirrus Dense Overcast has formed over the hurricane, and the overall banding and outflow still look impressive. Once the hurricane starts moving again away from its cold pool it kicked up underneath itself, it could start intensifying again. What's next, Emily??

As many of you noticed, we've had some problems with my blog disappearing today. The software for this is still in its experimental stages, and has been put to the test today! It seems we sometimes have problems when multiple comments are posted simultaneously. Bear with us, we'll try to keep things working while we craft a permanent fix. Expect to see many improvements in the blog interface over the next few weeks, the code is still under heavy development.

Dr. Jeff Masters

Posted: 4:50pm EDT Tue July 19
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I should know better than to doubt this hurricane's abilty to bounce back from adversity! Emily's pressure has dropped 13 mb the past 3 1/2 hours, and is now a 959 mb storm. The winds are still at 95 mph or so, and will take a few hours for Emily to adjust to the new pressure. The satellite presentation and pressure both point towards a Category 3 hurricane, and I imagine the surface winds will be close to 115 mph (minimal Category 3 status) by this evening. The track is doing some major wobbles as the storm reorganizes and deepens, but appears to have a more westward bend. The Hurricane Center is doing the proper conservative thing by advertising a continued WNW motion toward the Texas/Mexico border until the westward turn becomes more obvious.

The hurricane is impressive to watch on the Brownsville 248 nm mile range radar.

Jeff Masters