It's Thursday, August 25th and normally
in hurricane season at this time of the
year we'd be talking about at least
something brewing in the tropics.
But we haven't seen anything or named
storms since the 3rd of July and that
was Colin and that's even debatable.
That was a tropical system.
As we look across the tropics,
not a lot going on.
We are watching a couple of areas.
One is this wave of low pressure that's
moving across the Windward Islands.
Right now the conditions are not
very favorable for development,
but as it works its way through the
Caribbean here, maybe South of Jamaica.
And a stop in Cuba over towards
Central America,
there is about a 20% chance of
development within the next 5 days.
You notice it's not very well organized,
hardly any convection or hardly
any thunderstorms with it.
So that's one area that we're watching.
And then just coming off the coast of Africa,
there's another wave here just South
of the Cabo Verde Islands that has
about a 10% chance of development
over the next couple of days.
And even that only has a 20% chance
of development over the next 5 days
to the areas that we're watching now.
You might be wondering, well,
why haven't we seen anything
really developing?
One of the biggest reasons had
a drought here like we have in
many areas around the world.
But even in Africa we see some drought
conditions and we continue to see this
plume of dust in the atmosphere and
that inhibits tropical development.
Even though the water is warm and
the wind shear is fairly low,
this dust is very, very dry.
Need that warm moist air to get the
development of a tropical system
and we just haven't seen that.
So that's really been in.
Exhibiting every single one of these
waves as they come off the coast of Africa,
they expect the moisture from the warm
moist water or from the water below it.
And we're just not seeing that
development with these tropical systems.
That could change here over the
next several weeks as we get closer
to the peak of hurricane season.
But right now we still have a lot
of dust out there.
One thing that is working in favor of
tropical development is the wind shear.
And we've had seen some wind
shear fairly strong as we've gone
late July through August,
but now we're starting to see.
Some of that wind shear lesson
just a little bit here.
Through the Intertropical Convergence Zone,
we have seen the stronger wind
shears just off towards the north
and as we move into the Caribbean.
One of the reasons we think that
system might have the potential
for a little bit of development is
because once again there is light
wind shear and that's expected for the
next several days now looking back.
So far this hurricane season we've
only had three named storms.
We haven't even had a hurricane.
They've all been tropical storms and it's
very rare to go all the way to Labor Day,
which is in early September,
and not have at least a hurricane.
But so far we've only had
three tropical named systems.
They've all been tropical storms and even,
as we mentioned Colin,
just a little bit iffy on that
storm now since the satellite era,
that's 1960, there have only been two
years we've had where we have had no
name storms in the month of August.
That's 1997 and 1961.
So if we can get to the end of August,
this will be only the third time
since 1960 that we've only had
that we haven't had a single name
system in the month of August.
And prior to that going back to the 20s,
there were two other years.
So if we we might have missed
something back in those days when
we didn't have the satellites.
But at least on the record,
there have only been four years that we
haven't had a named system in August
and since 1960 we've had only two years.
So again this is very rare now the most.
Consecutive date for of.
In season where we haven't had a named
system is 61 days and that was back in 1999,
June 19th through August 17th.
So we're getting close to
that record as well.
And then finally something to remember,
the peak of hurricane
season is September 10th,
19 and the major hurricanes,
those are category 3-4 or five.
After August 20th,
it was very to get a major
hurricane before August 20th.
So we're just starting to really get
into the peak of hurricane season and
that runs right in there really late
August all the way to early October with
the actual peak peak on September 10th.
Now, where do we typically see tropical
systems develop in the month of August?
Well,
first area is here in the Gulf of
Mexico and we see those storms.
They can affect areas of Mexico
up through southern Texas are
all along the Gulf Coast states.
The second area is down here in the
Caribbean and it sort of takes the
similar path across the Yucatan,
across Cuba or back here into Mexico.
And the third area, and it's a broad area,
we see that here off the SE coastline
all the way towards the coast of Africa.
So again,
these are the areas.
That we typically see that development
in the month of August.
So we look ahead towards September
very similar to the systems
affecting the US East Coast.
So we'll of course continue to monitor
the tropics fairly quiet for now,
but again,
we're just starting to enter
the peak of hurricane season.