Subtropical Noname

There is an old saying that if it looks like a duck, waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck; it is probably a duck. Well such is the case this morning. Sitting 140 nm southeast of Berwick Bay this morning is a low pressure area with a central pressure of 994 mb, 29.35 inHg. Now I will be the first to admit it is not a classical tropical system. The thunderstorms have not wrapped around the southwest quadrant.  But they are trying to. Not only is there the low pressure but checking the NOAA weather stations on some of the Gulf platforms around the center, show Galveston 444 reporting sustained North winds of 43 mph; Sabine 13B has East winds of 49 mph , and Vermillion 331 has SSE winds of 49 mph sustained. And just to close the circle, East Breaks 165, well south of the center, has West winds of 26 knots. Another nearby platform to the one at East Breaks had similar winds to 29 knots and pressure “rapidly rising from 29.65 inHg. So what is this system? I don’t know for sure. We do not have recon data to help us out. But at the very least, I have seen the NHC name systems more messed up than this as subtropical storms. I won’t get into the politics of why there is not a peep out of the NHC on this. That is for another day and time. But bottom line is there is a major low pressure system in the northwestern Gulf of Mexico headed this way. And no matter how you class it, it has winds to near 50 mph, torrential rains, and a strong southerly fetch piling up water along the central Louisiana coast. It appears it will come ashore  somewhere around Intracoastal City early tonight, dumping up to a foot of rainfall over the area, along with gusty winds and tides as much as four feet above normal. Kudos to NWS Lake Charles! They have been on top of this from the beginning and done an amazing job of raising watches and warnings where needed. As always the fine crew there and at NWS Slidell have our backs and it is appreciated. As for where this came from, chock it up to the debris from Patricia’s circulation, a tropical wave which tried all week to get going in the southern Gulf but kept forming just inshore, and a strong subtropical jet that all met up and decided to party. Maybe they are Tiger fans? TGulf he moisture fetch extends all the way into the Bay of Campeche, so it will be Tuesday before all the rain chance has cleared. But once past, drier northerly winds will build behind the system and herald very nice weather for most of next week.

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