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Hurricane Joaquin (2015) took a climatologically unusual track southwestward into the Bahamas before recurving sharply out to sea. Several operational forecast models, including the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Global Forecast System (GFS), struggled to maintain the southwest motion in their early cycles and instead forecast the storm to turn west and then northwest, striking the U.S. coast. Early cycle GFS track errors are diagnosed using a tropical cyclone (TC) motion error budget equation and found to result from the model 1) not maintaining a sufficiently strong mid- to upper-level ridge northwest of Joaquin, and 2) generating a shallow vortex that did not interact strongly with upper-level northeasterly steering winds. High-resolution model simulations are used to test the sensitivity of Joaquin’s track forecast to both error sources. A control (CTL) simulation, initialized with an analysis generated from cycled hybrid data assimilation, successfully reproduces Joaquin’s observed rapid intensification and southwestward-looping track. A comparison of CTL with sensitivity runs from perturbed analyses confirms that a sufficiently strong mid- to upper-level ridge northwest of Joaquin and a vortex deep enough to interact with northeasterly flows associated with this ridge are both necessary for steering Joaquin southwestward. Contraction and vertical alignment of the CTL vortex during the early forecast period may have also helped draw the low-level vortex center southward. The results indicate that for TCs developing in vertically sheared environments, improved inner-core sampling by means of cloudy radiances and aircraft reconnaissance missions may help reduce track forecast errors by improving the model estimate of vortex depth.

Understanding the Unusual Looping Track of Hurricane Joaquin (2015) and Its Forecast Errors