With 83 days down and 100 to go, it’s been a weird first half of the Atlantic hurricane season. Storms have been reluctant to form and the ones that have come have gone seemingly as quickly.
As we’ve discussed in previous newsletters, overall tropical activity as measured by the seasonal yardstick Accumulated Cyclone Energy (or ACE) is a mere 13 percent of where it typically is by this time of year.
But as weird as the season feels, with over 80 percent of typical tropical activity ahead of us, including three in four hurricane formations, history tells us not to get caught flat-footed by the whims of Mother Nature.
Even if this season underperforms expectations, it only takes one hurricane to make for a bad season. It’s a good reminder each year, but especially salient this week on the 30th anniversary of Hurricane Andrew’s landfall in South Florida, the first named storm during an otherwise quiet hurricane season.
Looking out across the Atlantic this week, the main story is a tropical disturbance that rolled off Africa late last week and continues to plod westward through the eastern Atlantic.
Over the next few days, the system will likely struggle, as others have, with a tongue of dry and stable air intruding from outside the tropics.
Clockwise flow around high pressure steering to the north will keep the disturbance on a steady west-northwest course toward the northern islands of the Caribbean – including Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Island – by early next week.
With a full week until it reaches the islands, we’ll have plenty of time to follow here in South Florida, but given the time of year we’ll want to keep an eye to it. As we’ve discussed in earlier newsletters, even dormant disturbances deserve a little more attention in late August.
Continue reading...
As we’ve discussed in previous newsletters, overall tropical activity as measured by the seasonal yardstick Accumulated Cyclone Energy (or ACE) is a mere 13 percent of where it typically is by this time of year.
But as weird as the season feels, with over 80 percent of typical tropical activity ahead of us, including three in four hurricane formations, history tells us not to get caught flat-footed by the whims of Mother Nature.
Even if this season underperforms expectations, it only takes one hurricane to make for a bad season. It’s a good reminder each year, but especially salient this week on the 30th anniversary of Hurricane Andrew’s landfall in South Florida, the first named storm during an otherwise quiet hurricane season.
Looking out across the Atlantic this week, the main story is a tropical disturbance that rolled off Africa late last week and continues to plod westward through the eastern Atlantic.
Over the next few days, the system will likely struggle, as others have, with a tongue of dry and stable air intruding from outside the tropics.
Clockwise flow around high pressure steering to the north will keep the disturbance on a steady west-northwest course toward the northern islands of the Caribbean – including Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Island – by early next week.
With a full week until it reaches the islands, we’ll have plenty of time to follow here in South Florida, but given the time of year we’ll want to keep an eye to it. As we’ve discussed in earlier newsletters, even dormant disturbances deserve a little more attention in late August.
Continue reading...
