{"id":51464,"date":"2016-10-08T06:06:17","date_gmt":"2016-10-08T10:06:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=51464"},"modified":"2016-10-08T06:06:17","modified_gmt":"2016-10-08T10:06:17","slug":"forecast-hints-that-hurricane-matthew-could-loop-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=51464","title":{"rendered":"Forecast Hints That Hurricane Matthew Could Loop Back"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

By JOHN SCHWARTZ
\nThe New York Times<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Is Matthew really going to loop back and hit Florida again?<\/em><\/p>\n

That is the question raised by the five-day forecast cones<\/a> for the storm from the National Hurricane Center<\/a>. The curving path you often see with a storm, heading up the coast, takes a very different path here, and droops like a candle that\u2019s melting in the middle.<\/p>\n

Photo<\/span><\/p>\n
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<\/div>\n<\/div>
Credit<\/span>National Hurricane Center<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This forecast is unusual, but not unique. Hurricane Ivan<\/a>, for example, also looped the loop back in 2004.<\/p>\n

Photo<\/span><\/p>\n
\"\"<\/p>\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>
Credit<\/span>National Hurricane Center<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Christopher W. Landsea, science and operations officer at the National Hurricane Center, said that the Bermuda high, a persistent zone of high pressure that steers many hurricanes westward across the Atlantic, is also largely responsible for blunting Hurricane Matthew\u2019s progress toward the north. The Bermuda High, he said, has re-formed to the north to shunt the storm southward.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s fairly uncommon, but it does happen every once in a while,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

If the storm does loop back around, however, expect it to have weakened substantially. The current forecast calls for the hurricane to be reduced to nothing more than a tropical depression, with wind speeds of no more than 40 miles per hour, Dr. Landsea said. But he warned, \u201cOur wind-speed forecasting skill is less than our storm-track forecasting skill,\u201d so \u201cwe don\u2019t want to make any assumption that there\u2019s not going to be any impact when it comes back around.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marshall Shepherd, director of the atmospheric sciences program at the University of Georgia, said in an email response to questions that while there have been loops before, this one is \u201cstill neat and rare to see.\u201d He also predicted that \u201cif the high is strong enough, the clockwise steering flow will loop the storm (likely weakened) back to Florida.\u201d<\/p>\n

That other storm in the Atlantic, Tropical Storm Nicole, is still too far to the east to interact with Matthew much, Dr. Landsea said, and it is unlikely to affect the United States.<\/p>\n

___
\nhttp:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/10\/08\/us\/forecast-hints-that-hurricane-matthew-could-loop-back.html?_r=0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51464\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}