FLHurricane.com: Rita weakens to a Tropical Depression

storm is getting close to landfall. at it's forward speed it'll probably be moving ashore at sabine pass around 4am eastern/3am central. extrapolated track takes the eyewall and core of the strongest winds right through the beaumont/port arthur/orange area.. with the significant surge extending westward from there across cameron parish. no reports from lake charles lately, but beaumont is reporting hurricane force gusts now. pressure was hanging around 930mb all evening but since has risen up a few mb.. storm will probably landfall at around 940mb. that's typically a category 4 pressure, but rita has done as many before it and come somewhat unwound. typical behavior of hurricanes that get insanely strong days before landfall; ERCs slowly broaden their cores and make them into broad, less intense windstorms. with that low pressure the surge will likely be very significant.. locally on the order of 15-18'. i believe the port arthur, johnson bayou, and cameron will see the worst surge damage; the latter two towns should be pummeled to bits. rita will be with us through the middle of next week. it'll probably be down to tropical storm saturday afternoon and a depression by sunday morning, but the center will be meandering... probably southward after the weekend as advertised by some models. there is a chance it could pull an allison and get back to the gulf, but more likely it will just rain itself out over the very areas that it has impacted worst.
philippe has left us... or rather been declassified. if some system evolves out of that nontropical low that it twisted into i'd personally rename it philippe, since the surface remnant of the former storm is the most significant vortex in the larger system. the whole thing has elongated since the other day, though, and may never acquire tropical characteristics as was earlier surmised.
wave out near 35w isn't looking too hot, but still has some model support. some shear to contend with, but it may fight its way up over the next few days.
noticed the euro seeing a caribbean system now... different from the gfs. it may be resolving it from that piece of wave energy currently near 55w sliding westward, while the northern extremity peels off up into that complex low that ate philippe. gfs still resolving an early october storm that runs at the southeast coast, so i'm not sure which bunch of ideas to buy into. bottom line is that whatever if anything does spring up at the end of the month in the caribbean will have a window to run at the u.s. as the ridge really builds up in the western atlantic during the first week of october.
i checked on the mjo graphic earlier and it is showing that the main wave is finally sliding over, after sending an early pulse in and camping in the pacific for a week or two. lot of shear in the basin now, but if that cools off a little we'll probably see another batch of wannabe storms brew up. give it a few days to calm down from the big zing rita threw into the circulation as it went haywire a couple days ago... and we may see that.
HF 0541z24september

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