The tropics stay calm this week

The pesky disturbance we have been watching for the last several days finally moved ashore without further organization or development. Its remnants are drifting north along the South Carolina coast. The system is still producing a band of very heavy thunderstorms, however.

Over the next day or so, what’s left of the disturbance will get swept away and merge into a front pushing south.

The tropics remain covered with Saharan Dust. Some fairly robust disturbances are forecast to move off Africa, but the long-range computer forecast models dry them out, so they don’t amount to anything. For now, nothing shows up of any concern.

South Florida is in a regime of high humidity and very light winds at all levels of the atmosphere. This type of pattern can result in heavy, slow-moving thunderstorms. The cells that develop are powered by the strong July sun, and since there is very little wind flow to move them along, they can dump a lot of rain in one location.

Beware of the possibility of localized flooding over the next few days.

A series of upper-level disturbances and a push of Saharan Dust are forecast to pass over the southern Florida peninsula through the rest of the week, so more thunderstorms are expected to develop some days, and fewer others. The best guess is that the dust will dry out the atmosphere about Friday.

Normally, the effects from Saharan dust begin to wane in August, especially after the middle of the month. For now, the dust is our friend.