A good chance of storms will stay in the forecast as abundant tropical moisture looms across the region. Daytime heating along with impulses from a nearly stationary front draped over the northeastern part of the state and the lack of high pressure ridging will all conspire to keep our chance of getting wet well above normal through the weekend…and maybe into next week.Â
Next week should be an interesting one provided the disturbance east of the Windward Islands gets more organized. Today the disturbance appeared to be getting more concentrated on the southern part of the tropical wave that it has been following. The northern part of the wave however, has had a fair bit of dry air and Saharan dust intruding which has been a mitigating factor for development of most waves this season. Development with this system will become likely if it can separate itself from the dust. Unfortunately, the tropical models I looked at today develop this system aggressively (but the models have a lot of climatology (not as much current meteorology) built in), but there is the distinct possibility for development into something more than a category 1 storm prior to threatening the Gulf.   To boot, high pressure may not be strong enough next week to protect us from Gulf intruders so as we said yesterday, we’ll be keeping a very close eye on this potential system.  Incidentally, the next named system will be “Ernestoâ€. Elsewhere, Tropical Storms Debby in the far Eastern Atlantic is likely to recurve in the open Atlantic.Â
Rob Perillo