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So Long, Shary; Tomas Tears across St. Lucia

Posted by Andy Johnson under Daily updates

Hurricane Shary weakened to tropical storm strength Sunday afternoon and was also declared extra-tropical by the NHC. A cold to the west of Shary caught up with the storm and the combination of high shear, low water temperatures and the baroclinic frontal system caused Shary to become a post-tropical system.  Post-Tropical Storm Shary will continue to move rapidly ENE  across the northern Atlantic but the NHC has issued its last advisory on Shary.

Hurricane Tomas strengthened rapidly today and winds were sustained at 90MPH at 6PM on Sunday, October 30, 2010 as the system was passing just south of St. Lucia. St. Lucia is a popular vacation destination spot with beautiful resorts and, unfortunately, there have been Ham radio reports of widespread damage on the island. The eye of Tomas moved through the channel between St. Lucia and St. Vincent. There have been lots of damage reports from St.  Vincent, as well as, Barbados, which was the first island hit by Tomas. Tomas is a classic Cape-Verde type hurricane. It is very rare to see a storm of that type so far south and east this late in the year. In fact, Tomas is the first hurricane to pass through the Windward Islands (the part of the Lesser Antilles south of 16N this late in the year since 1724. Tomas is expected to intensify into a major Category 3 hurricane later this week south of Hispaniola. The long range forecast calls for an upper level trough to pick up Tomas and move him northward by later in the week. If the trough does not cause Tomas to recurve he could continue further westward into the Caribbean Sea.

The enhanced GOES satellite image below shows the circular central dense overcast of Tomas when the center was just southwest of St. Lucia. Hewanorra airport on St. Lucia was closed due to flooding. As early as Noon EDT on Sunday, St. Lucia reported wind gusts of 69 MPH. The airport stopped reporting after that and before the strongest winds hit St. Lucia. So, it appears that the worst weather in the northern eyewall passed directly over St. Lucia. Even further north at Martinique winds gusted to 45 MPH and winds in Dominica gusted to 40 MPH. There is also a large convective cluster east of the center of Tomas which will continue to bring heavy rains of 4″ to 8″ across the Windward Islands.

The structure of Shary (shown below) has become elongated northeast-southwest and no longer resembles a tropical structure. As a result, Shary is an extratropical storm now.

 The Martinque radar shown below at 5;30 PM EDT, Sunday, October 30, 2010 shows a clearly defined eye located southwest of St. Lucia. The heaviest curved spiral bands were passing right over the island of St. Lucia at that time.

The GFS model valid Monday at 8PM shown below indicates that Tomas will likely be located south of the Dominican Rebublic with a blocking ridge to the north.

The GFS model below shows that by Friday at 8:00 AM, could begin recurving to the north due to a weakness in the subtropical ridge caused by an East Coast trough.