Matt Lanza

One-sentence summary

There are a couple things down the road to monitor, but in the near-term Invest 96L is beginning to run short on time, as generally dry air and wind shear hinder it from organizing.

Happening now: Invest 96L struggling

One of the things that has stood out to me personally this hurricane season so far (and granted, it’s still early) is that modeling has been very hellbent on at least 3 or 4 systems developing that have never gotten past the invest or depression stage. It indicates to me that there is some sort of disconnect between what makes meteorological sense (what the models would depict) and reality. It’s clear that there has been some sort of inhibiting factor that is limiting storm development this season. So far.

Invest 96L is another feather in that cap, as it is struggling this morning, despite odds as high as 80 percent for development yesterday.

Those odds are down to 50 percent this morning, and quite frankly, we’re going to run out of time. 96L has been dealing with a lot of wind shear of late, and that surely is not helping matters. It seems to also be embedded within a residual Saharan air layer pocket, which means it’s also struggling with some dust and drier air.

Whatever the case, if 96L develops or not, its future is pretty clear that it will turn out to sea and run out of time to develop by about Thursday or Friday. It will not impact land.

Elsewhere, the next few days look quiet.

The medium range (days 6 to 10): A wave to watch, maybe

If we squint, maybe the tropical wave emerging off Africa today and tomorrow has a chance to do something. This will plod west over the next several days, unlikely to develop, initially. If we look at the day 9 forecast for the upper air pattern over the Atlantic, a sprawling area of high pressure is expected to focus near and just south of Bermuda.

This will likely force any tropical wave to initially go south and west toward the Caribbean. Thereafter, there are many questions. You can see another high over Texas on this European ensemble forecast above. Options would include the wave staying in the Caribbean if either high pressure can check in stronger or something “splitting the gap” between the two high pressure centers as explicitly shown above. Or something else. It’s early. So we’ll keep an eye on things and see if this becomes actually something to watch or just another tropical wave that fails to find a home in the Atlantic.

Fantasyland (beyond day 10): GFS going wild

Yesterday, the 12z GFS model brought a healthy storm into the Southeast U.S. after developing it from some sort of shenanigans off the Southeast coast. Interestingly, it repeated that overnight and brought a storm into the Gulf. That won’t happen as shown, but I am wondering if some of this is just the models failing to “resolve” the tropical wave shown above. Any ensemble support for development in Fantasyland seems to be connected to that wave. So the activity showing up here may be linked to what we see in the medium range. Either way, it appears things may get at least a little more active here, though how much so remains to be seen. Admittedly, I am a bit more intrigued by <waves hands> all this than I have been by much this season. We’ll keep watch.

One-sentence summary

A pair of tropical systems have a chance to develop in the Atlantic, but both will scoot out to sea and not be a direct impact land.

Happening now: Invests 96L and 97L

As expected, the tropical wave in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean is on its way to potentially developing later today or tomorrow. This wave is now tagged Invest 96L. Meanwhile, off the North Carolina coast, we have Invest 97L, which is a vigorous area of thunderstorms with a lesser chance of developing in the next day or so.

Regardless of development, both systems will move out to sea, and neither is a threat to land. Even Bermuda should see only fringe effects at worst.

Why are we confident that both systems will turn out to sea? A quick look at the upper levels of the atmosphere shows that both systems have a pretty easy exit path away from land.

Invest 96L

The area we’ve been watching since last week out over the open Atlantic took on the Invest 96L tag over the weekend, meaning it became an area to investigate and we got some additional model data on it to look at. This really just confirmed what we already had confidence in, that this system was likely heading out to sea.

On satellite this morning, 96L doesn’t exactly look exciting, though I’ve seen worse looking storms upgraded, so we’ll see what the NHC finds in the next day or two. The 80% probability from the NHC seems perfectly fine here, because there’s a good chance it will develop, but it’s definitely not a guarantee. The ceiling on this system looks like lower-end tropical storm so not a huge deal. It will struggle due to wind shear and sinking air. It has about 3 or 4 days before it’s outta here.

Invest 97L

Admittedly, it’s 97L that looks most interesting this morning.

There’s a hint of spin to it as it moves northeast, but this is more like a nor’easter than a tropical system in terms of how it’s developing (the formation process is being driven more by fronts and atmospheric dynamics than warm waters and heat). While that’s primarily a technicality, it’s all moot as this is heading out to sea. This could graze Bermuda with some thunderstorms as its trailing cool front approaches and stalls near the island. Aside from that? Not much to this.

The medium range (days 6 to 10): Pressing reset

A period of calm is expected to take control of most of the Atlantic basin this weekend and early next week, and we do not expect any storm activity as the atmosphere sort of presses the “reset” button. For the most part, this calm is expected to last into…

Fantasyland (beyond day 10): Still calm? Perhaps.

We don’t see anything of note right now on any modeling that indicates things will pick up at the end of the 10 to 14 day period. Last week, we were hinting at a potential ramp in activity for mid-August. Some of the support for a more conducive background state seems to have faded some, as the Pacific side heats up. There would be two primary ways to generate activity should that be the case, since an active Pacific generally means a quieter Atlantic. First, you’d have to watch close in for something, say, in the Gulf or just off the coast. Second, with a good bit of storminess ongoing in Africa, that could potentially get something to flare up in the far eastern Atlantic in time. But we have plenty of time to watch.

Early August and everything after

Which brings me to what I wanted to touch on more today. Where do storms usually form in the first third of August?

The Gulf is a hotspot in early August, with numerous storms historically forming there. We also tend to see flare ups near the Lesser Antilles, as well as a peppering of storm origins across the Atlantic. So where do you look in early August? The Gulf, the Leeward & Windward Islands, and across the Atlantic.

We are entering the ramp up of hurricane season. Accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) for the season to date is quite high, thanks mostly to Hurricane Don. We’re over 16 units of ACE right now for 2023, which is almost twice as much as normal for the end of July. Remember, ACE is a stat that factors in the wind speed of tropical systems and for how long they maintain that intensity, and we sum it over the season (hence: accumulated). Far from perfect, but it gives you a sense of where the season compares to prior seasons in terms of activity.

But, it’s important to note that we still have about 92 percent of hurricane season from an ACE standpoint still in front of us. It remains early. That said, by the end of August, we jump from today’s 8 percent of the season climatologically complete to 30 percent. We ramp things up in a big way after the first third of August. So, the fact that it’s looking fairly calm to start August is great news, but we’ve got a long way to go. Fingers crossed!

One-sentence summary

We continue to see the potential of a system developing in the open Atlantic heading into next week, but it will likely struggle through Monday or Tuesday and no land is threatened by this system.

Happening now: Tropical wave in the Atlantic no better organized today

Today’s National Hurricane Center outlook shows the wave in the Atlantic as having 60 percent odds of developing now, up from 40 percent yesterday.

We are still a couple days away from this happening. If you look at satellite this morning, well, it’s not exactly organized, although it’s a lot more active looking than it has been the last couple days.

Over the next 2 to 3 days, this wave should slowly organize. It will continue west-northwest and eventually turn more northwest and then north before getting to the islands. One very significant inhibiting factor for this system will likely be wind shear, which is extremely strong ahead of the wave and is expected to remain strong into this weekend.

Wind shear will probably act to limit the system’s initial development through Monday. By the time the shear relaxes, the disturbance should be comfortably out at sea and away from land.

In summary, very, very slow organization is possible through Monday, but the wave will also begin to turn out to sea so that when it does have breathing room to possibly organize further it will be safely away from land.

Elsewhere, the NHC did re-tag the old Invest 95L in the far western Caribbean (heading toward the Pacific) and the upper level disturbance near Florida again this morning, but odds of any development are near zero at this time.

The medium range (days 6 to 10): Nothing new

For now, everything seems quiet looking next week. We’ll watch to see that open Atlantic wave likely turn north and northeast out to sea. Aside from that one system, there’s nothing we see on our radar that has much potential. We’re likely entering a brief period of calm now.

Fantasyland (beyond day 10): The calm before the storms, maybe

We start to scour the ensemble members this time of year for hints of activity. Remember that ensembles are just models run roughly 30 (GFS) to 50 (Euro) different times with initialization tweaks to give us a realistic spread in outcomes. As a meteorologist, you’re looking for any sort of hint of activity within that spread to try to hone in on something. We see nothing notable right now. As noted in yesterday’s post, we do expect things to pick up some around the 10th or so of August. That thinking has not changed.

We may post briefly to update the Atlantic system this weekend. On Monday, we’ll update the status of the season to date and talk more about early August.

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One-sentence summary

The odds of an eastern Atlantic tropical wave developing have increased to 40 percent today, but while it’s worth watching (especially in Bermuda), for now it seems most likely to turn away from the Caribbean and America.

Happening now: We’re still a few days away from the next Atlantic wave’s development window

If I showed you a satellite image of the Atlantic this morning, and I asked you to identify the area you would be most interested in monitoring for tropical development, I would assume that you’d pick the one near Florida.

While that is certainly beefy looking, it’s being entirely driven by an upper-level low, not a surface-based system. Tropical development is unlikely to nil in that case. Though, this will hopefully do something to temper the outrageously warm water temperatures surrounding Florida right now. That said, modeling is actually latching onto the tropical wave located this morning around 30°W longitude. If we look at that on satellite, we’re probably all giving it the Larry David treatment.

But! As we go through the next few days, this area is expected to consolidate some and become a little better organized. It will track generally west or west-northwest. Modeling insists it could develop. There is actually very good agreement between the GFS and European operational models and their ensembles (which are 30 to 50 different runs of the model with various initial tweaks) that this will develop, albeit not in a huge way. That aside, this is arguably the best agreement we’ve seen since Don formed. In my estimation, models have tended to be rather aggressive with development in the main development region (MDR) and Caribbean this year. So, while odds of development are on the increase and there’s good model agreement on this, we’ll see. Model odds of development over the next week are probably closer to 80 or 90 percent, but given recent struggles, the NHC estimate of 40 percent seems much more realistic to me.

Anyway, development of this system will likely be slow as it comes westward over the next 3 to 5 days.

The medium range (days 6 to 10): That tropical wave (should) swim with the fishes

One other thing that the models are in good agreement on right now is that whatever happens with this tropical wave, it is likely to turn northwest and north and eventually out to sea, missing the Caribbean and the U.S. Never say never, but that’s comforting for now. I would argue that there’s good reason to watch this if you are in Bermuda though just in case.

Beyond this wave, there’s nothing terribly exciting to focus on in the tropics through day ten.

Fantasyland (beyond day 10): All good for now

Quite frankly, it’s almost disturbingly quiet on the models right now out in the extended range. It does seem like we’re entering a briefly hostile background period in the Atlantic beginning around the first day of August. This is due to background activity associated with the Madden-Julian Oscillation and convectively coupled Kelvin waves. I won’t get into the heavy details here, but you can read and learn about the MJO and hurricanes and convectively coupled Kelvin waves here. Eric Blake at the NHC is a great forecaster, and this presentation that the WMO has online is really useful. All that to say that I would suspect that things pick back up again after August 10th or so.