Tomas, What A Mess
Thursday evening NOAA Hurricane Hunters found a strengthening Tomas. The pressure is falling rapidly and the winds are starting to come up. While that is not good news, if it maintains a northward overall motion, the core of the cyclone with the strongest winds would likely not impact Port-Au-Prince. That being said, a strengthening cyclone would probably lash eastern Cuba and the western portions of Haiti with the main threat to Haiti still being torrential rainfall, flooding, and mudslides. Thursday evening NOAA WP-3 flight track through Tomas.
Thursday For Haiti, this storm is going to be mostly a torrential downpour, flooding, mudslide mess. Hurricane hunters late Thursday afternoon found some stronger winds in the thunderstorms east of the center. Thursday afternoon IR satellite image of Tomas with "x" indicating the low level center. The upper level wind ahead of the Gulf of Mexico trough is beginning to shear the storm and give its disorganized structure a lop-sided appearance. The Thursday afternoon visible image shows the same mostly exposed low level center.
NOAA research aircraft and Air Force Reserve hurricane hunter aircraft have been almost continuously monitoring the storm today. From that data a fairly detailed wind analysis can be generated. As you can see in the image below, the tropical storm has a rather small area of winds greater that 40 mph and that is mostly confined to the northeast side. Thursday afternoon Hurricane Research Division analysis of Tomas windfield. The storm is forecast to continue moving north placing Haiti and the Dominican Republic on the east (right) and the very wet side. There is a small window of opportunity for strengthening before shear will once again overwhelm Tomas and hopefully finish it off for good. Thursday afternoon computer model forecast tracks for Tomas.
