After a long stretch of silence, it’s looking like Atlantic hurricane season may awaken once again. Two areas to watch have been outlined on National Hurricane Center outlooks, including one that could become a problem for the Caribbean or Gulf of Mexico next week.
The disturbance, located over the central tropical Atlantic, has a 40 percent chance of development according to the Hurricane Center. It’s rather disorganized right now, and different weather models simulate varying degrees of intensification.
By early next week, it will be closing in on the Lesser Antilles, the island chain that separates the open tropical Atlantic Ocean from the Caribbean Sea, perhaps as a tropical depression – the precursor to a tropical storm.
Behind it, another tropical wave has been highlighted by meteorologists as having at least a low chance of eventual development. It’s more likely to stay out to sea, but it bears watching nonetheless.
The 2024 Atlantic hurricane season roared in like a lion, but has been unusually quiet as of late. In late June, Beryl became the southernmost, and earliest-forming, Category 4 on record in the Atlantic. By July 1, it was a record-early Category 5, as well as the fastest-intensifying storm on record in the Atlantic before September. Beryl eventually clobbered Houston with 80 to 90 mph winds.
Since then three other storms have formed, including Debby, which unloaded flooding rains from Florida to New York, and Hurricane Ernesto, which swept through Bermuda. But that was on August 17. There haven’t been any named storms in the past ten days.
Looking ahead, any storm that forms will have exceptionally warm water to draw energy from. Waters over large parts of the tropical Atlantic and Caribbean Sea are record-warm. The warm oceans serve as high-octane fuel for nascent storm systems.
The next storm to form will be named Francine.
– – –
A system to watch
On Friday, the main system to watch was about 1,300 miles east of the Leeward Islands. It was just a tropical wave – an area of showers and thunderstorms around a weak zone of low pressure. But that low pressure was strung out, with no obvious tighter packet of spin. In fact, the system had yet to even acquire any broad rotation.
Weather models suggested the system was associated with a very diffuse axis of spin, oriented northwest to southeast. Over the weekend, the southern batch of that spin may consolidate. That could help the wave organize into a tropical depression, or low pressure system, before reaching the Lesser Antilles.
Thereafter, if the system organizes, it will enter the Caribbean. That’s when it would be slated to strengthen more substantially and could become a concern for the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba, the Yucatán Peninsula and/or Jamaica.
Later next week, there is a scenario that could bring the system into the Gulf of Mexico. That would be a red flag for forecasters, since the Gulf is teeming with near record ocean heat content that could fuel a serious storm.
That would be predicated on a storm reaching the Gulf – a highly uncertain outcome considering a storm hasn’t yet formed. There are many hoops to jump through between now and that hypothetical, so while it is a possibility that should be monitored, it is not a likelihood. Some models project this system, if it develops, could avoid the Gulf entirely and instead head due west toward Central America or curve north toward eastern Florida and/or the Bahamas.
– – –
A second system in the Atlantic
The other area to watch – which the Hurricane Center estimates only has a 20 percent chance of development – is located just south of the Cabo Verde Islands, having just moved off the coast of Africa.
It may begin to slowly develop next week. If a storm forms earlier, however, it will be more likely to curve to the north and out to sea, avoiding land.
(c) Washington Post
