Is Sara going to form in the Southwest Caribbean?

Tropical conditions outlook

Rafael had quite the time in the Caribbean and Gulf. He hit Cuba as a Category 3 hurricane with 115 mph sustained winds. Then briefly weakened to a Category 2. Then Rafael regained major hurricane status on Friday with maximum sustained winds of 120 mph. He then weakened to a tropical storm later on Friday, maintaining tropical storm status into Saturday. On Sunday he became a remnant low over the central Gulf. Then he dissipated today. Rafael tied with Hurricane Kate from 1985 as the strongest Gulf hurricane on record during the month of November.

Now we’re watching another disturbance in the Caribbean just south of Hispaniola, that has a good shot at becoming a named tropical system. The National Hurricane Center, is giving this 2-day development odds of 20% and 7-day development odds of 60%. As this moves generally west it will get tangled up with the with the circulation of the Central American Gyre, which would help this spin up.

This time of year, the tracks of tropical cyclones, often involve cold fronts that move south and east out of the CONUS. That will be the case with this system.  We will have a cold front dropping into the Gulf. The timing of this front and how quickly this system can develop will determine where it ends up tracking.

SST are still very warm in the Caribbean and Gulf, along with a lot of deeper heat potential in the Caribbean. As we get into the weekend and next week wind shear is going to be almost nonexistent. There is some dry air right now, but by this weekend atmospheric moisture will be increasing. All of this would make for very favorable conditions for development.   

If this develops quicker it could be pulled north and then east by a cold front moving off the Southeast. This would have this move over the northeast Caribbean and then out into the Atlantic. If it develops slowly it’s likely the front doesn’t interact with the system and it would likely move toward Central America. There is also a possibility this would skirt the front and then have a chance to perhaps head toward Florida. Right now, all of these possibilities are on the table.

My Hurricane Outlook, has worked out perfectly. Once the season is over, I will post on how the season unfolded and how the numbers worked out.

I made a change in the coding to try and fix the comment problem some have been having. I would like all y'all to try and post a comment on this blog post, if nothing else just say which browser you're using. I may not answer...but it would be very helpful.