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Maria skirting Newfoundland; Atlantic very quiet for the moment
Please note that these tidbits do NOT reflect the official forecasts of the National Hurricane Center, and should not be taken as such. While tropical cyclones exist in the Atlantic, the official NHC forecasts will be posted in the lower part of this blog. Please refer to those when making decisions, and heed the advisories and evacuation statements of your local National Weather Service Office.
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Hurricane Maria is about to brush Newfoundland with a few hours of very nasty weather. I have not seen any wind reports within the last 2 hours of anything over 40kts there, so hopefully conditions will not become too dangerous, but hurricane-force gusts are likely right along the coast where the center passes. Maria is racing northeastward at 52mph and will be out of there quickly, probably not too big of a deal for residents there, but still a fairly dangerous storm.
The rest of the Atlantic is dead quiet by mid-September standards. The culprit for this is likely a downward pulse in the MJO which is bringing sinking air over much of the Atlantic right now, which suppresses thunderstorm activity. This is forecasted to reverse to an upward motion pulse within the next two weeks by the GFS and UKMET. The ECMWF stubbornly keeps the MJO in octants that favor downward motion over the Atlantic for the next 15 days, but with the Atlantic still being the warmest ocean basin in the tropics right now, upward motion will likely return to our area of the world for this latter part of the hurricane season.
As the MJO returns, troughiness is expected to set up over New England, and this kind of a pattern has been known to spark development in the western Caribbean in the late season. While none of the models currently show significant development, they continue to show a very wet Caribbean from late next week through the following week, and broad low pressures overall in the area. I have been speaking of the potential for development in this area too long to drop it now until we get through this period where I think it is likely to be attempted. This area should be watched through at least the end of the month, and possibly even into October, because as the Cape Verde season shuts down, the Caribbean will become our biggest focus until the season comes to an end. We just now passed the peak of the season, and the current lull is good but misleading. We still have a long way to go before it's all said and done.
We shall see what happens!
Tropical Atlantic Visible/IR2 Satellite (click image for loop):
Atlantic Tropical Surface Analysis:
200mb Vertical Velocity Potential (green areas represent upward motion associated with the MJO):
Comments
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