Howdy,

Just for the record, I'll verify last week's researcher forecasts:

On Thursday 31 January,  I hesitantly proposed a good monsoon burst over North Australia from about 00 GMT Sunday, 2 February.  This turned out fairly reasonable as seen by the 850 hPa westerly flow and monsoon trough across the north on the TLAPS analysis and satellite image on my web page.

Noel Davidson on Friday 1 February predicted a TC development at about 12.5 S, 125 E.  Andrw Tupper piped in with a prediction of genesis at 14S 119 E.

Looking at the threat map for Chris that I pulled off the WA website, it looks like TC Chris developed at 6am 2 Feb at about 13S 121E... so the these forecasts also weren't so bad.

After one success, I am goiung to quit; but perhaps Noel and Andrew would care to fill us in on some of their reasoning?

Noel Davidson

 GENESIS of CHRIS : The EC went for it!! But there was/were some
interesting large scale dynamics operating that could be used
to interpret the model output.
My suggestion would be : (a) there was good evidence for a re-activetion
of the monsoon (MJO, wave trains at upper and lower levels moving
equatorwards from very high latitudes). (b) Circulations had
developed upstream (west) in the monsoon trough (Francesca), and
so one might expect a circulation to eventually develop downstream
of this seed disturbance. (c) With an amplifying upper trough over the
eastern Indian Ocean, we might expect a convective outbreak
northeast of this feature.    All these developments would
support genesis in the (forming) monsoon trough near to where Chris
developed. [I would speculate that the reason why some models don't
get these events is that, even though the large scale forcing is
accurately depicted, their representation of how tropical clouds
actually work is rather poor].