Tuesday, July 12, 2005

N42RF arrived in Costa Rica at about 23 UTC on Monday. The plan for the following two days is to have N42RF have a down day today followed by a 50-hour maintenance on Wednesday. N43RF remained in Jacksonville for some repairs on Monday, and on Tuesday had a down day. It was planning to fly down to Costa Rica on Wednesday. Both P-3's will have a clean slate for flying starting Thursday morning. The ER-2 is not scheduled to fly until N43RF flies.

The forecast situation shows that T.D. #5 has now become Tropical Storm Emily. Emily continues to intensify slowly and move fairly quickly off to the west. It is very far south, close to the northern coast of South America. It appears to be embedded in Saharan Air Layer air, which may be limiting its intensification and causing it to move more quickly to the west than NHC is expecting. As a result, the forecasts continue to push Emily further south, calling for possible landfall in the Yucatan peninsula after 5 days (around Sunday or Monday). Prospects for a P-3 tasking appear diminished as a result of this new track. In the east Pacific, conditions are becoming slightly more favorable. The strong easterly shear from the previous week has diminished somewhat, and the low-level and surface flow has assumed more of a westerly component. There is some evidence that a tropical wave is approaching Costa Rica, though that is not certain in the imagery. No global models have predicted genesis in the East Pacific, yet, and NHC has not indicated any possibility of genesis in the next day.

Rob Rogers
HRD Field Program director