Atlantic remains on summer break, so we check the pulse of other seasonal factors heading toward August

Headlines

  • The Atlantic is expected to remain generally quiet through the end of the month before activity likely picks back up in early to mid-August.
  • Sea-surface temperatures in the basin have resumed warming after a bit of a pause.
  • La Niña is technically not here yet, but there is no reason to think it won’t play a big role in the remainder of hurricane season.
  • Seasonal activity is still expected to be quite a bit more active than normal.

Atlantic slumber continues

No tropical development is expected over the next 7 to 10 days as a continued dust-clogged Atlantic and sinking air in the background suppresses activity. There is a wave emerging off Africa today that a handful of ensemble members give a miniscule chance of development to in about 6 or 7 days, but that seems unlikely and not a concern.

Widespread Saharan dust in yellow, orange, red, and pink is dominating the entire eastern half of the Atlantic Ocean. (University of Wisconsin CIMSS)

How long is this sleep going to last? It’s not uncommon at all for late July to be dormant in the Atlantic, so don’t get too excited. We are still only 6.1 percent of the way through hurricane season using accumulated cyclone energy as a measure. It does appear that conditions will become gradually more conducive to activity again after August 5th, and that’s not just me looking at climatology either. The background state looks to be a good bit less hostile in early August, which could translate to some action before mid-month. I would anticipate a very active mid to late August period right now.

But trouble lurks beneath

After Beryl, one of the common questions was “will this lower water temperatures finally?” And the answer was, “Yes, sort of — along its track.” Even that was minimal, and any benefits we’ve enjoyed from Beryl’s cooler wake have since faded into oblivion. If you look at the Gulf of Mexico specifically, water temperatures have resumed warming, particularly in the central third of the Gulf, where they had not been too terribly warm in June and early July.

The Gulf is again approaching record warm levels. (Kim Wood/University of Arizona)

The Caribbean? Record warm again. The Atlantic Main Development Region? Approaching record warm levels again. Basically, everywhere you look that matters, water is near record warm levels in the Atlantic. So any hope we may have had that things could meaningfully change this summer appears to be fading. Expect near record warm water to be with us over the peak of hurricane season in the Atlantic.

What’s the deal with La Niña?

Coming into this hurricane season, one of the big factors for a busy season besides really warm water was La Niña. To this point, however, the La Niña event has mostly been mediocre, at least when you look at the key ENSO 3.4 region water temperatures, which we use to truly define El Niño or La Niña. Here’s the ECMWF forecast for ENSO from May and where we’ve verified.

So far, the sea surface temperature anomalies have tracked with the warmest outliers in the ensemble forecast envelope for La Niña. (ECMWF)

To understand more about what’s happening now, I encourage you to read NOAA’s excellent ENSO blog from last week. In terms of hurricane season, we still expect La Niña to get going next month or in September, but perhaps the pace will be slower than expected earlier in hurricane season. I would argue that most of this “is it or isn’t it La Niña” banter is not particularly important for the rest of hurricane season. The eastern ENSO region is already well into La Niña thresholds, and with a slow drop in SSTs resuming to the west, expect ENSO to behave mostly like La Niña and support an active hurricane season.

The bottom line? All systems seem to be a-go for an active peak of hurricane season.

Deep slumber in the Atlantic should allow everyone to exhale for a little bit

Headlines

  • The Atlantic will remain quiet for the foreseeable future.
  • Though there are no specific risks, if you had to watch somewhere through month’s end, it would be close to home, in the Gulf or off the Southeast as a wetter, cooler weather pattern takes shape.

Atlantic dormancy

As noted last week, post-Beryl, things are quiet now in the Atlantic. I’ll point you to Michael Lowry’s daily newsletter today to explain why, but in a nutshell, we’re in a hostile background state to tropical activity right now.

The Atlantic basin is coated in dust and mostly middling disturbances. (College of DuPage)

The Atlantic is dealing with plentiful Saharan dust and dry air, which tends to inhibit tropical development, in addition to the hostile background state of generally broad sinking air.

If you had to watch for something…

What should we watch for over the next week or two? We have to ask the question, right? The answer is nothing in particular. I always tell people to never just ignore the tropics in summer because stuff can sneak up on you. To that end, I would say it’s probably best to keep at least a side eye on the Gulf or off the Southeast coast in case something homegrown could develop, be it from a cluster of thunderstorms or a tail end of a cool front. That isn’t an uncommon way to spin something up, and in fact the overall weather pattern looks conducive to cooler and wetter weather near the Gulf Coast over the next week or two.

European ensemble mean forecast rainfall as a percentage of normal over the next 15 days shows much of Texas set to receive 200 to 400 percent of normal rainfall, and above normal rain over much of the Southeast. (StormVista Weather Models)

That’s some impressive rainfall across a lot of the South, including north of 300 percent of normal in Texas. To be abundantly clear, above normal rain near the Gulf does not mean anything from a tropics standpoint, but if I were watching one thing in particular over the next couple weeks, that would be it. A very low risk to be sure, but never quite zero.

I’ll stop it here for today. Our next update will be Wednesday. As long as time allows, we’ll also talk a bit about water temperatures and La Niña development, and I also want to go back to Beryl and touch on the obvious fallacy of “it’s only a category one.”

Southeast low to trigger some flooding in the Carolinas as the Atlantic enters sleep mode

Headlines

  • A weak low pressure system off the Southeast coast is unlikely to develop.
  • It will bring locally heavy rain between South Carolina and South Jersey today and tomorrow.
  • The rest of the Atlantic is entering slumber for the next couple weeks it seems.
  • Our next update will come Monday.

Stormy Southeast

Low pressure off the Southeast coast only has about a 10 percent chance of development over the coming days before it scoots ashore. But it will be a decent rain producer from New Jersey into South Carolina, with a slight risk of excessive rain and flooding (level 2 of 4) for these areas today and tomorrow.

A slight risk of excessive rainfall stretches from just north of Myrtle Beach into South Jersey tomorrow. (Pivotal Weather)

This will produce a fair bit of rain, especially in North Carolina, where some flash flood warnings and advisories are already in place this afternoon. Anywhere from 3 to 5 inches of rain is expected from Wilmington, NC north through Virginia Beach over the next few days.

Rain totals of 3 to 5 inches are likely for much of eastern North Carolina into the Virginia Tidewater. (Pivotal Weather)

While flooding risk is elevated, the good news is that development seems unlikely from this. No significant tidal flooding is expected at this time either. Everything should exit after tomorrow, and it will be back to periodic rain chances going forward.

Atlantic enters slumber

The three week tropical weather outlook from the Climate Prediction Center (CPC) is quite quiet for the Atlantic basin.

Tropical cyclone activity is not especially likely in the Atlantic basin for the remainder of July. (NOAA CPC)

We seem to be entering a period where dust and sinking air dominates much of the basin. Sinking air and dust tends to suppress thunderstorm growth and development. This inhibits tropical systems from forming. Most of the rising air in the background of the atmosphere is over the Pacific right now, hence why development odds seem higher in that basin, both east and west. Does that mean nothing will form? No. It’s entirely possible that something could still develop over the next 2 to 3 weeks, but it would likely be more sudden and close to home than long tracked like Beryl was. For now, let’s just enjoy the fact that quiet is expected, because it would seem to be that August will see the switch flip back to “on” for the Atlantic.

With quiet weather generally expected, we will take Friday off as we continue to have limited power and internet here in Houston. We’ll return with our next update Monday. Enjoy the weekend.

Beryl brings nasty weather to the Northeast, while the Southeast gets grazed by a weak system

First off, I want to just thank folks that found The Eyewall or used The Eyewall during Beryl. We set all sorts of traffic records for our relatively new site, and we’re hopeful that the information offered was useful. I was hoping to post yesterday, but both Eric and myself have had storm damage to contend with and I finally lost internet yesterday. I am fortunate to be on generator power but as you can imagine it’s a little chaotic still.

I just need to clarify something for readers: We have been mostly “dark” since Sunday, which as I noted in our last post was because our coverage was Houston-specific and our companion site, Space City Weather is intended to focus on that. I just want to make it clear to folks so there is no confusion: If a storm is hitting the Houston area, the bulk of our coverage during the storm will be there. We have an obligation to our local audience there. When time allows, we will cross post to the Eyewall. Eric and I juggle a lot of things with full-time work in addition to this, and perhaps one day we can make this our full-time focus. We’ll see.

Beryl initial reaction

For a category 1 hurricane, Beryl was something to go through. It was informative, as this was personally my first hurricane experience. I’ve been in many storms on the East Coast undergoing transition to tropical storms or extratropical storms and many nor’easters, but I had never been in a bonafide hurricane. It is a unique experience. The rapid intensification started a little later than expected as Beryl approached Texas, which may have spared Houston a category 2 or 3 outcome. Still, there is something to be said about a storm rapidly intensifying at landfall versus a stable or weakening storm at landfall. Beryl fell into the former camp and it showed. We’ll probably touch on that another time because I think that further adds to the nuance of hurricanes and shows the pitfalls of using the Saffir Simpson scale monolithically.

In addition to all the power outages and the damage near Houston, a pretty wild tornado outbreak accompanied Beryl in Louisiana and far northeast Texas as well.

A map of all the tornado warnings issued during Beryl on Monday. East Texas and northwestern Louisiana were hardest hit. (Iowa State University)

Hats off to the folks, especially at the Shreveport NWS office that issued quite literally dozens of warnings to keep people safe. A special thanks to the utility workers in the field right now trying to restore power to the 1.3 million Houstonians without it still.

It’s a lot to digest, and we’re going to give it a little more time and post more thoughtfully than emotionally about literally all the things involved in Beryl, from the forecast and modeling to the impacts to the nuance to Houston-centric questions about preparedness, sustainability, and resiliency.

Beryl’s rain & Southeast shenanigans

Beryl’s remnants are into the Midwest and Northeast today, and there is a moderate risk of excessive rainfall in place for parts of Upstate New York, the Adirondacks, and Vermont. Flash flooding will be possible as that comes north.

Moderate (level 3/4) risk of excessive rain and flooding is in place from the Tug Hill and western Mohawk Valley north into the Adirondacks, Vermont, and portions of New Hampshire. (NOAA WPC)

This includes Utica, Watertown, Burlington, and Montpelier, some areas that have seen serious, devastating rainfall in recent years, so hopefully problems aren’t as serious this time. In addition to excessive rain, there is an enhanced tornado risk today (level 3/5) for similar areas, including much of Central New York. Have a way to receive weather warnings in this area.

A significant tornado risk is in place for much of central New York today, including Ithaca, Syracuse, and Utica in particular. (NOAA SPC)

Meanwhile, the Southeast will be keeping tabs on a weak low pressure system off the coast to close this week. It is not quite together yet, but over the next 2 to 3 days, modeling suggests it organizes a little, tracks along or just off the coast of the Carolinas and eventually out to sea. The good news is that any development should be slow to occur and this will be out of the picture in a couple days. The Hurricane Center has 10 percent odds on it. I might lean a little higher than that, but the ceiling is low on this one. There will be locally heavy rainfall however, and a slight risk (level 2 of 4) of excessive rainfall is in place on Friday as this exits.

Heavy rainfall from a slowly organizing low pressure system will drench areas from northeast South Carolina through southern New Jersey late this week. (Pivotal Weather)

Other than this, no areas of development are noted by the National Hurricane Center today.

Looking out farther in time, the background state of the atmosphere over the tropical Atlantic looks highly unfavorable for tropical development. Modeling is pretty quiet overall with not even many outlier members showing tropical development over the next 10 to 12 days. I think we will close July on a quiet note, given this, with perhaps maybe a slight uptick of risk in just the last few days of the month or early August. But for those of you with plans over the next week or two, we see no concerns for now.