V-Blog: Andrea Pulls In Smoke, Recon

UPDATE: The NHC started up their Model Spread [JessePedia] of Andrea again today, another sign that they are interested in the storm once again. The remnant low pressure system is already taking off to the Northeast this afternoon.

UPDATE: The NHC says: "AN AIR FORCE RESERVE RECONNAISSANCE MISSION THAT WAS SCHEDULED FOR THIS AFTERNOON HAS BEEN CANCELED DUE TO RESOURCE ISSUES..." Well, there's your tax money at work. Help me out here, guys. If I know JB, watch for similar comments on his Pro blog. If anyone has any inside knowledge of what went wrong with this recon flight, let me know.

UPDATE: Added map, video blog and note on pressure decrease from NHC below. No word yet on recon. At right: AccuWeather.com RadarPlus Satellite / Radar / Winds / Lightning strikes at 8 AM.

ORIGINAL POST:
It wasn't just me who noticed that the remnants of Subtropical Storm Andrea was acting up yesterday -- Henry (PREMIUM | PRO) and Frank (PREMIUM | PRO) also published blogs about it. And yesterday afternoon, The NHC [JessePedia] issued this statement:

We eagerly await another statement from them regarding the recon. They did note in their morning discussion that the pressure of the system has fallen overnight, probably due to Buoy #41010 which dipped from 29.73 to 29.67 last night, but then rebounded this morning. At 8 AM, former Andrea's circulation is hidden by large thunderstorms in her western eyewall, so it's hard to tell by the Visible Satellite how healthy her circulation is. Nearly 500 lightning strikes have been detected by ADCRP during the last two hours in those storms.

Another interesting tidbit that you can see on the NASA satellite images: Former Andrea has pulled the massive amounts of smoke from the Florida fires around her backside. This is interesting, I'm not sure a tropical system has ever been co-located with such heavy smoke. Clouds form, of course, from smoke and dust particles in the air, but dust can sometimes hinder hurricane development, but that may have only been to their dry, desert origin, so I'm not sure what we might see out of this, but it bears watching. Here's what it looks like:

How can you tell fog and smoke apart on the satellite? The video blog below explains. You can also use observations from airports (see Georgia and Florida 8 AM obs from our Pro site) to confirm the locations. Note that many are reporting both smoke and fog this morning.