Tuesday Update: Tropics Heating Up

Good morning. Now that we are in the beginning of meteorological fall (Sept. 1st) that also means peak hurricane season. As it so happens, we have a lot of tropical activity to track over next few weeks. A system is currently moving into the Gulf which will likely hit the Gulf coast as a strong tropical storm, then we have another storm or two in the Atlantic that needs to be watched closely.

Starting off in the Gulf, tropical storm Gordon is currently spinning up...

This is projected to hit as a strong tropical storm...

This could hit cat 1 hurricane strength before landfall and there is a chance it maintains that strength by the time it hits land early Wednesday morning. We will have to monitor this closely over next 24 hours. Regardless, there will be some impacts for those Gulf states.


Moving on, we then have tropical storm Florence in the Atlantic. 

As recently as yesterday, some models had this Atlantic storm becoming a threat to the east coast, as others kept it safely out to sea...

Since we are tracking something here that is over 7 days away you will see models really flip flop on what will occur.

It all will come down to what steers this storm. If a strong upper level ridge builds like seen below, (red colors) then the storm can get steered into land as seen by low pressure circle off the south coast...

If however that ridging (red high pressure) is weaker, the storm curves out to sea and gets swept away by a trough (yellowish color dipping down into storm)...

Both these images are a one day difference in European model runs. You can see the high degree of shifting from run to run. Also notice the train of storms behind it coming off the coast of Africa. 

Although there is a concerning pattern developing here with high pressure that will be lingering in the north Atlantic, historical tracks are on our side here. In most cases a storm like this should eventually get taken out to sea and not hit land. There have been examples when this did not occur and we had an impact, but I am leaning towards the no hit scenario at this time.

If we had any impacts we are talking middle of next week. 

We will then still have another 2 weeks where other storms can develop in the Atlantic basin that we will have to watch in the period to follow. 


Stay tuned!