The Atlantic Goes Quiet After Bertha Fades Away

The remnants of former Tropical Storm Bertha have moved into northern Mexico. It's now a weak disturbance over the mountains.

A few tropical downpours accompanied Bertha's trek across South Texas. An isolated strong cell caused some flooding in the southwest suburbs of Houston, and a couple pockets of heavy rain fell outside of San Antonio. Otherwise, rain was light.

Just before midnight Wednesday night, a sustained wind of 75 mph with gusts of about 82 mph were measured on an oil platform about 120 miles south of Cameron, Louisiana. The wind instrument is 75 feet above the Gulf, so that intensity is not from a "surface" wind. But there is a formula to estimate what the official measurement at ground level would have been. The calculation comes out to about 68 mph.

Bertha's backside was producing most of the wind. Even yesterday when the storm was in its dying phase, winds gusted over 40 mph at the coast outside Houston.

The point is, even though strong winds were not widespread with Bertha, there were intense bands, especially over the water. Remember, the system is a tropical storm if it has a well-defined circulation with non-transient winds of at least 40 mph.

LOOKING AHEAD

El Niño continues to create conditions hostile to development across the Caribbean and into the tropical Atlantic, with the water temperatures in the deep tropics abnormally cool to boot. Going forward, we'll keep focused on the warm water band from the northern Gulf across Florida and into the Atlantic as the potential storm zone.

Nothing is forecast to develop for the foreseeable future – into the beginning of August, at least.