The next couple of days will be great!

 Current Surface Chart and Radar

 

Satellite

 

We can see high pressure is sitting overhead and in complete control of the weather over the eastern U.S. Radar and satellite show no precipitation or clouds are interfering with any of this. This is going to be our weather for the rest of the work week. Temperatures will continue to climb and become above average by Friday into Saturday with temperatures in the mid-80s to upper 90’s across the region north to south.  

 On Friday the dome of high pressure will start to shift east, but it will remain in control keeping things warm and dry. But we will be watching a frontal boundary approach from the north and west.  There could be a few showers late Friday night/overnight into Saturday morning for western and northern New York State along with northern New England. But, the bulk of the rain will move into western Pennsylvania, New York State and New England later Saturday and Saturday night.

This will be a slow-moving cold front and will slowly drop through the region over the weekend, this will produce scattered showers and a few thunderstorms with the passage of the frontal boundary, some of these thunderstorms could be strong too severe across northwest Pennsylvania, New York State and northern New England on Saturday, then the rest of the region for Saturday night and Sunday. The biggest danger from these isolated severe storms will be damaging winds and hail. The boundary will be meandering around for Sunday and Monday keeping things unsettled. Monday will see high pressure approaching. This will move in overhead for Tuesday and Wednesday providing dry and nice weather. 

Tropical Write UP

The Atlantic Hurricane season started on Monday. So, this means, I will be posting on the Atlantic over the next six-months. At this time, the National Hurricane Center isn’t showing any area of interest over the next 7 days.

 

I did produce a hurricane season outlook a few months ago. But that is only an educated guess on my part, to give you a general impression of what is likely to happen over the season. Here’s a link to the outlook. 

An average season sees 14 named storms, with 7 of them being hurricanes. NOAA is calling for 2026 to see 8 to 14 named storms with 3 to 6 of them becoming hurricanes. So, a below average to slightly below average season. The reason for the lower numbers is that El Nino is very likely to develop soon, and strengthen. This should help to suppress Atlantic storm activity by increasing wind shear. This year’s El Nino is likely to strong to very strong (super) by late 2026 or early 2027. I’ve been posting on the El Nino a lot so this isn’t new news.

So, what’s going on in the Atlantic Basin?

I’m going to touch on the setup currently in the Atlantic Basin. This will help refresh terms I will use periodically during the coming season.

The Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) is still too far south to allow for storm development, but it is working its way north, as is typical for this time of year. The ITCZ moves north and south seasonally because it follows the Sun; it moves north in the Northern Hemisphere summer and south in the Northern Hemisphere winter. 

The ITCZ is a permanent low-pressure area at the equator that ends up encircling the globe near the equator. and is the boundary zone between the Northeast and Southeast trade winds. This is where trade winds converge and this forces the air up into the atmosphere, forming the ITCZ. All of this leads to increased convection, cloudiness, and precipitation.

Looking at the sea surface temperatures (SST), we can see the SST in the Tropical Atlantic are cooler than they have been the last few years. The SST data comes from a blend of satellite observations, Ship and buoy observations and models performing ocean analysis. The question is, is the input data being skewed in some way? 

The Saharan Air Layer (SAL) we can see there’s a lot of Saharan dust out over the Atlantic, again this is typical for this point in the season. The SAL consist of pocket of hot, dry and dusty air. This comes from, sand and other particulates that is lifted into the atmosphere from the Sahara Desert and then carried westward by the African Waves into the Atlantic Ocean. The hot dry air acts as a cap that prevents the warm moist air above the ocean from rising and mixing the drier air aloft, which help keep the atmosphere stable which acts to inhibit tropical development. Another thing the SAL will do is help cool the SSTs, but in this case, it could be causing the satellite to think the ocean water surface temperature is a little cooler than it actually is.

As I said El Nino is coming and will likely intensify as we move farther into the hurricane season, there is still warm water over the Atlantic Basin. Water temperatures, although not as warm as in recent years at this time of year, are still above average in the western Caribbean, Gulf of America and a large part of the western Atlantic. Currently, temperatures are below average across the eastern Atlantic, but these waters should warm significantly as we move through the summer months.

Is there anything being watched.

On satellite there is a disorganized area of showers and thunderstorms in the Gulf, looking at the wind shear profile and available atmospheric moisture in the Gulf there shouldn’t be any real development in this over the next 4 to 5 days.

There are a few tropical waves over the ITCZ, there is a bigger one that just came off the West Coast of Africa that bears watching. 

I want to thank you for all of you following my post. It is slowly (ever so slowly) growing through word of mouth and all y’all sharing the post. It means a lot. Thank you!

That’s it for today.