#ExtremeWeather Update Thread:
"Intense Cyclone" #Batsirai is stronger than expected, forecast to strengthen, with a path slightly to the north of previously. It is now expected to land at Cat 3-4 Hurricane intensity - near the centers of population on the island of Madagascar.
"Intense Cyclone" #Batsirai is stronger than expected, forecast to strengthen, with a path slightly to the north of previously. It is now expected to land at Cat 3-4 Hurricane intensity - near the centers of population on the island of Madagascar.
https://twitter.com/althecat/status/1488124154452795402
The storm is experiencing a lot of shear, and yet remaining remarkably intact. You can see the ragged eye here north and west of the forecast path with a large wobble.
The access issues I had been experiencing with the #JTWC appear to be fixed. And here is their latest forecast and discussion & reasoning. metoc.navy.mil/jtwc/jtwc.html 
The latest JTWC forecast shows #Batsirai at high Cat 3 Hurricane strength (110 knots) at landfall, just 3 knots short of Cat 4 strength. Spaghetti ensemble (GFS and ECMWF) modeling is tightly clustered with all runs showing landfall clustered near the middle of the East Coast.
Rainfall forecasts show massive rainfall across all of Madagascar, but concentrated in the areas where population is clustered on the central and southern East Coast.
The latest GFS model forecast shows 30mb of strengthening 970mb to 941mb between now and landfall on Saturday.
Alarmingly the long range forecast for shows two more intense cyclones developing and following a very similar path. The second graphic (also posted earlier) shows spaghetti ensemble graphics (10 days) for the 4th and 5th cyclones for this season on roughly the same trajectory.
As previously noted - statistically forecast model error for cyclones increases significantly beyond 72 hours.
If this Cyclone was headed for the US coast, in Florida or the Gulf of Mexico, evacuations would most probably be ordered around now.
If this Cyclone was headed for the US coast, in Florida or the Gulf of Mexico, evacuations would most probably be ordered around now.
The latest model run shows landfall on the African coast on February 9th whilst still a powerful storm delivering levels of rain which would be expected to cause significant flooding over the Eastern South Africa.
This animation shows the latest GFS model forecast path for #Batsirai following landfall on Madagascar on Feb 5th through to Feb 13th.
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