Environmental influences on the rapid intensification of Hurricane Opal (1995) over the Gulf of Mexico

[...]the question arises as to why the ECMWF (and to lesser extent the NCEP) analyses yield BV outflow solutions supportive of jet-trough-hurricane interactions whereas the model forecasts based on these analyses were woeful. At issue is how to obtain the benefits of the high spatial and temporal resolution GOES-8 WV winds in a modern four-dimensional data analysis and initialization scheme, given that the uncertainty of the level assignment of the wind vectors can exceed the vertical resolution in the operational prediction model.