August 9, 2023 Outlook: The wave train continues to roll along in disorganized fashion

One-sentence summary

The near-term is quite quiet, and while there are a couple things to watch beyond the weekend, there’s nothing of any serious concern at the moment.

Happening now: Really nice for August

Things are quiet, and they’re expected to remain so over the next 3 to 5 days, with no areas of any real concern, and nothing rogue on any modeling. If we look at satellite this morning there are at least a couple areas that stand out. Certainly the storms over Missouri are notable. There is storminess off the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic coast, a disturbance north of Hispaniola, and another tropical wave entering the Windward Islands.

None of these areas looks particularly menacing though from a tropical development sense, and we expect the next five days to be storm-free.

The medium range (days 6 to 10): Next candidate for development emerges off Africa

The next period should start with a tropical wave in the Bahamas that will likely scoot toward Florida and the Gulf around day 6 (next Monday or Tuesday). A rather aggressive shot of dry air dropping south into the Southeast should act to really inhibit any development of that wave.

My guess is that tropical wave will either be dragged northwest into the coast in between the Bermuda high and the Texas heat dome, or it will get shunted off to the south and west toward Mexico. Or it may just end up getting dismantled. Regardless, no development is expected.

Behind that wave, we should see another one moving into the Antilles without much organization. Behind that wave another one should be emerging off Africa this weekend, and we’ll see where we are at the end of the medium-range period. The Euro ensemble (50+ runs of the same model with various tweaks), as it has been much of summer with main development region (MDR) waves is rather aggressive in developing this as it comes across the Atlantic, reaching about half to two-thirds of the way across by day ten. The operational Euro is emblematic of this, and you can see that on its day 9 forecast it shows modest development just east of the Lesser Antilles. This map shows what we call vorticity at 700 mb, about 10,000 feet up in the atmosphere. Vorticity can tell us where atmospheric disturbances are or how “robust” they are. You’ll periodically hear this referred to as “energy in the upper atmosphere” by some meteorologists.

Anyway, this shows that on day 9 there is one wave gradually approaching the Caribbean islands and another emerging off Africa.

The Bermuda high is expected to weaken a good deal by days 8 to 10 or so, which might imply the escape hatch out to sea will be open. Still, it’s 10 days out so we have a world of time to watch this evolve, should it even develop at all. As noted, the Euro has had an aggressive history this summer in the MDR, and it has not exactly worked out, so I’m not as confident as that particular model is in development.

Fantasyland (beyond day 10): No signs of anything specific for now

The good news about the fringe forecast period is that there is no real sign of anything specific showing up in modeling that we can point to and say “we might need to watch this.” Maybe, maybe that next wave off Africa has a chance to be the next one to watch. Maybe. You choose your words carefully this time of year, so we’ll keep watching.