Bill-To-Be: 50 kt Flight Level Winds

LATE REPORT 8:45 PM
Although the NHC has not officially announced it yet, they have flipped the designation from Invest 91L to AL02 indicating that it’s a boy! We should have advisories on Bill shortly.

ORIGINAL POST
From the 7 p.m. CDT Tropical Weather Outlook from the NHC:

Surface observations and preliminary data from an Air Force Reserve Unit Hurricane Hunter aircraft currently investigating the area of low pressure located about 200 miles southeast of the middle Texas coast indicate that the center has become better defined since earlier today. If these trends continue, advisories will be initiated later this evening on Tropical Storm Bill.

In fact, the Air Force reconnaissance plane investigating Invest 91L has found 50+ knot flight level winds in the southeastern semicircle about 30 miles east of what appears to be a nearly calm center. This would translate into about a 45 knot tropical cyclone, or about 50 mph.

Here is the latest recon data showing the approximate center with a B and highlights the 50 knot flight level winds in a yellow circle.

The system certainly is not well organized, with a broad center, but this may be enough organization for the NHC to go ahead and designate the system as Tropical Storm Bill shortly.

The center is somewhere near 27.0N and 94.2W. This is 160 miles southeast of Port Lavaca TX. The system should be onshore by 7 a.m. somewhere near Matagorda Bay, which is between Houston and Corpus Christi TX.

Category: Tropical