More Southerly Track Making It Tough For Storm To Re-Intensify Into Hurricane

Despite weakening for much of the day today, Tropical Storm Ernesto has held together fairly well considering it was moving over land for about 18 hours. Maximum sustained winds decreased to 45 miles per hour during the early afternoon, but the circulation has stayed pretty much intact. There is still a good deal of shower and thunderstorm activity that is producing heavy rains over Mexico and Central America, but there is weakness in the usually stronger Northeastern quadrant, and that is because of the intrusion of dry air.

Within the past several hours, the storm has meandered west toward the extreme southern portion of the Bay of Campeche region of the Gulf of Mexico. The state of Campeche in Mexico itself has been lashed with torrential rains and gusty winds from the storm. Ciudad del Carmen right along the coast along the southeastern part of the Bay of Campeche reported sustained winds of 46 miles per hour with gusts in excess of 58 miles per hour. As of the 4:00 PM EDT Advisory from the National Hurricane Center in Miami, the storm was upgraded slightly to have winds of 50 miles per hour.

Currently, the storm is located 20 miles to the East-Northeast of Ciudad del Carmen so the storm is now over water. Winds remain at 50 miles per hour with gusts up to 65 miles per hour. Minimum central pressure has dropped slightly to 994 millibars, or 29.35 inches of Hg. Ernesto is presently moving to the west at 7 miles per hour so the system has slowed a great deal since it made landfall. The storm has resumed a more westward track after jogging a bit to the south earlier today.

The latest infrared imagery also indicates strengthening taking place over the past several hours with the re-development of deeper convection as indicated by the dark reds on the cloud tops. The question is how long will Ernesto stay over water. Due to its close proximity to land, and a more southerly track than earlier indicated, there is not much room for error for the storm. On the other hand though, the storm is moving more slowly due to an erosion of the upper level ridge to the north of it, and that might be able to still by the storm some extra time to regenerate. Another thing to note about this region of the Atlantic Basin, the Bay of Campeche is known historically to have storms that either move slowly or become stationary due to a lack of steering currents.

The official forecast from the National Hurricane Center as indicated by the 5:00 PM EDT Discussion, showed that the storm should intensify to a strong tropical storm with 70 mile per hour winds, but while the forecast noted the current state of organization, warm waters, and favorable upper level winds in the area of the storm, the NHC stopped short of saying it would intensify into a hurricane again. The forecast track has the storm back over land by Thursday afternoon some 90 to 100 miles to the Southeast of Veracruz along the Gulf coast of Mexico.