One of the forecast challenges in Florida is detecting "blobs" of moisture advecting west from the open Atlantic/Bahamas into the peninsula. These areas of increased moisture can indicate a wind surge, and increase nocturnal showers, or provide additional moisture for increased coverage of sea breeze thunderstorms during the day.
Having additional ways of identifying these features is always welcome. In addition to the NUCAPS images of H7 and H85 moisture, I've included temperature, and compared with RAP.
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| NUCAPS H7 Td |
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| RAP H7 Td |
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| NUCAPS H85 Td |
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| RAP H85 Td |
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At 850mb, prevailing flow today is from the east. On the RAP and NUCAPS images above at this level, you can see elongated (white-red extending N-S, such as over S FL and over the eastern gulf) areas of moisture, as described above, moving westward.
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| NUCAPS H7 T |
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| RAP H7 T |
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| NUCAPS H85 T |
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| RAP H85 T |
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When evaluation NUCAPS temperatures, there is good agreement between NUCAPS and RAP when look at relative values. This seems to be the better interpretation of NUCAPS data that I've found so far, rather than looking at absolute temps. We can see from the smoothed out point soundings that literal values are not it's strength. Rather, "Temps at this level are higher over here, than they are over there" is more NUCAPS strength. That still has value in situational awareness.
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| The satellite scene 1830-1915Z during time of NUCAPS data |
The satellite scene has some patches of lower level clouds over FL and cstl waters. There is some cirrus streaming SSE over the eastern gulf.
-Forrest
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