Some Ensemble Members Show A Very Small Possibility Of Karen Making It Into The Gulf
The latest is out on Karen and the winds have increased to 45 MPH sustained since the last update at 10:00 am CDT. The official forecast track from the National Hurricane Center continues to show Karen moving north-northeastward until Friday before making a left turn toward the east coast of the southeastern US.
The model images below are not official forecasts, but just to show you what some of the ensembles are showing us at this point for the possibility of Karen continuing a westward march toward Florida and possibly crossing over into the Gulf of Mexico.
The ATCF (Automated Tropical Cyclone Forecast system) shows that a good many of its members have Karen taking a hard left turn to the west and west-southwest at the end of the week and the start of the weekend and moving it in the general direction of the east coast of Florida. This run only goes out 168 hours from 7:00 am this morning, so it ends at 7:00 am Monday.
Much of the same story from the EPS Model Guidance… The black bold line is the ensemble mean showing that Karen will make a small loop this weekend then head westward toward the east coast of Florida. There are still plenty of members that keep Karen well away from the US mainland. As you can also see, there are a couple of members that have Karen making across Florida and into the Gulf of Mexico. That is an outlier at this point, but a brief hope of bringing Central Alabama some decent rain in the future.
The GEFS Model Guidance doesn’t really go out far enough to make a real determination on where Karen will go after this weekend. We do see the agreement between the mean of this model with the mean of the EPS showing a curve to the northeast and the end of the weekend. We just don’t know where it will go after that.
The European Deterministic Model shows Karen moving westward toward Florida but really losing its punch as it makes it closer to the shore. It does make it onto the peninsula late Thursday of next week, but that is as far as the model goes. The GFS doesn’t give us this much hope as Karen is nowhere on the board with its latest run.
The bottom line: we’ll just have to wait and see what Karen will do after the end of the workweek and through the weekend. Stay tuned.
About the Author (Author Profile)
Scott Martin is an operational meteorologist, professional graphic artist, musician, husband, and father. Not only is Scott a member of the National Weather Association, but he is also the Central Alabama Chapter of the NWA president. Scott is also the co-founder of Racecast Weather, which provides forecasts for many racing series across the USA. He also supplies forecasts for the BassMaster Elite Series events including the BassMaster Classic.Subscribe
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