Pac Cup and Vic Maui Hurricane Avoidance Query Strings

Hey guys

All @ mentions are instagram mentions.

@ErdenEruc and I will have a more detailed discussion on hurricane avoidance in the pacific later this month. Cliffs notes though, when avoiding the hurricane track, move orthogonal to the storm track(90°) towards greater windshear and lower sea surface temps.

But for now, as a fellow Pacific to HI Crosser this year, I wanted to share the text forecast strings I will be using for saildocs.

One important note and it is critical enough to put it in all caps below:

DONT USE GLOBAL MODELS FOR HURRICANE/TS LOCATION AND TRACK. This was a contributing factor in the case of El Faro.

GFS 16 has a thermal anomaly and places the storm track more easterly of the storm location. ECMWF puts the storm further south and west of the storm position. So,

so DONT USE GLOBAL MODELS FOR HURRICANE/TS LOCATION AND TRACK.

Here are the strings I use

sub FZPN03.KNHC - NHC eastern north pacific discussion 0N to 30N
sub FZPN02.KWBC - NOAA eastern north pacific discussion - 30N to 90N
sub EVPN06.jpg - Sat for eastern north pac(objective measure of the storm location)
sub PYBA01.tif - Surface analysis enpac

sub PYFA06.tif - tropical Surface analysis

For tropical depressions, storms, and hurricanes, we use the following where ‘#"‘ is the storm number. We are already on storm 3(Celia) and the ‘A’ storm and ‘B’ storms both came from the GoP and intensified rapidly:

THESE GPS LOCATIONS ARE WHAT YOU SHOULD USE FOR HURRICANE LOCATIONS AND TRACK PERIOD.
sub epac.disc#
sub epac.pub_advis#
sub epac.tech_advis#

I hope this helps avoid the confusion caused by the numerical representation:

send WTPZ23.KNHC

send WTPZ22.KNHC

send WTPZ21.KNHC

send WTPZ33.KNHC

send WTPZ32.KNHC

send WTPZ31.KNHC

where 2 or 3 dictates the forecast type and the last number will rotate from 1 to 9.

But once the storm dissapates you can use:

unsub epac.disc#
unsub epac.pub_advis#
unsub epac.tech_advis#

Finally, whether its Lenny from @johnkretschmersailing book “At The Mercy of the Sea” or Joaquin from @rachelmslade s story “Into the Raging Sea” that directly covers the topic of models versus hurricanes, these storms are nothing to be messed with, and NHC is the global authority on position.

I worked with Nikolai Maximenko of @universityofhawaii on @erdeneruc s crossing and he made me aware of this as we steered @erdeneruc around Linda.

He mentioned that NHC has a better infrastructure and more sensor data than anyone else out there for liability reasons. You really see this when outside of the NHC coverage area as forecasters use probability models for tracks and you get different tracks from different reporting agencies, but more about that in a later post with Erden.

I hope that helps fellow pac cup and vic maui navigators better understand how to avoid hurricanes successfully.