08/10/2025

 Quick post on the week ahead and the tropics

I hope y'all read my winter thoughts that I posted Friday night.

Today marks the 1st day of a region wide heat wave thats gonna last through Tuesday. 

Today Monday and Tuesday are going to feature scattered clouds and  mostly dry conditions with only a slight chance for a few isolated showers or rouge thunderstorms. Temperatures are going to be very warm with high humidity. So the heat index will become very oppressive. Tuesday night Into Wednesday a prefrontal trough will move across the region bringing the chance for isolated to scattered rain showers and thunderstorms. The  actual cold front will come through Wednesday night through Thursday. This will bring a better chance for widespread scattered rain showers and thunderstorms Some of these thunderstorms could be strong too severe. The cold front will be pushing east on Friday, Lingering morning rain showers should give way to clearing skies as the day goes on Behind the departing cold front we will have cooler temperatures and much lower humidity levels for Friday and over the weekend. For friday and Saturday We will still be under the influence of a weak draft That will keep the risk for isolated showers and a few thunderstorms in this forecast. High pressure will move in overhead on Sunday, providing a mostly dry day. These conditions will continue for Monday.

Tropical Atlantic

The conditions over the Atlantic remain quite similar to what I went over several days ago. With the disturbances in the Atlantic basin behaving pretty much as I indicated a few days back. Early last week I mentioned the tropical wave that would be coming off from the west coast of Africa And how I felt that had a very good chance becoming Erin.

The next two names on the Atlantic hurricane list are Erin and Ferdinand.

We do have a large area of disturbed weather with a  wide field of circulation moving across Florida into the eastern Gulf of America. The surface temperatures in the GOA are very warm and shear over this part of the Gulf is fairly low. Atmospheric moisture is moderately conducive for some development out of this. Given the atmospheric conditions, I think this area warrants continued vigilance.

Invest 96L

This disturbance in the central Atlantic Is dealing with quite a bit of dry air Which is greatly inhibiting development. Wind shear over invest 96L is almost nonexistent and is below 10 knots. While this combined with the warmer water is favorable for development that dry air is going to continue to be an issue. In fact to dry air Looks to increase over the next 24-48 hours. This should further inhibit any development out of 96L. Giving the conditions I expect 96 out to likely dissipate over the next 48-72 hours. Regardless of any development Invest 96L Should continue to stay in the open Atlantic ocean and not pose any land issues at all. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) is giving 96L a 20% chance of development over the next 7 days.

Invest 97L

This wave just came off the Coast of Africa and is the one I was talking about the other day. 97L and the wave still over Africa behind it are in a much more favorable atmospheric moisture environment than 96L. Conditions look to become quite favorable over the next 3-4 day with wind shear remaining low and sea surface temperatures that are very warm. The steering wind configuration in the Atlantic show that this should stay south of 96L and continue to head west towards the Caribbean or even possibly the northeast Caribbean and towards the Bahamas. It's way too early to try to talk about a more definite track. I do expect this to become a tropical depression within the next 72 hours. With conditions looking to be very favorable over the western Atlantic basin. This has a good chance of becoming a tropical storm during the next 96 to 120 hours. There is a good likelihood this could become the 1st hurricane of the season. Which would fall in line with climatology;  as we typically see the first hurricane in the Atlantic around August 11. Based on the long-term average. 

Model probability chart.

The NHC is giving this 2 day development odds of 40% and a 80% chance of developing over the next 7 days.