Sunday Night Update: Hurricane Felix strengthened rapidly today, reaching category 5 status this evening. Just to get a sense of the strength of this storm, when NOAA recon planes flew into the storm earlier today, they found lightning in all quadrents (usually something we only see in hurricanes that are truly exploding in intensity) and graupel (small frozen water droplets/hail that can were obviously large enough to damage the plane), and ultimately had to abort the mission. The plane also recorded a 1mb drop in pressure per mile when flying into the storm. That will make your ears pop like CRAZY!!! Felix should level out in terms of winds Monday, and continue fluxuating in intensity between strong CAT 4 or CAT 5 until its landfall.

There is little change in the forcasted path--- Felix should continue west-northwestward towards Northern Honduras and Belize. There is still a slight chance that Felix will move far enough north to make a US landfall in Texas after its initial landfall somewhere in Belize or the Yucatan.




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On the home front, a strong ridge of high pressure has moved into the area, and there is no indication that anything other than sunny skies and warm temperatures will persist well into the future. Temperatures will start to get up there to around 90 by Labor Day, and stay in the upper 80s through the week with no rain in the forecast.




On to the tropics, where things are starting to heat up again:

Felix: Hurricane Felix (winds sustained at 70mph on Saturday) will continue to move west-northwestward towards the southern Carribean. Most of the models keep the storm well south of the Gulf Coast and take the storm into the Yucatan Penninsula, however some models have begun to shift northward. Trends will need to monitored.

98L: This system has strengthened significantly today, and should reach tropical depression status by tonight or tomorrow. It is far to early to tell, but 98L has a chance to be threat to the east coast by next week.