TROPICS UPDATE: THURSDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2019

THERE IS A SLIGHT CHANCE THE MOISTURE SURGE MOVING FROM THE SOUTHWESTERN CARIBBEAN TOWARD THE SOUTHERN GULF OF MEXICO MIGHT DEVELOP INTO A TROPICAL DEPRESSION. OTHERWISE NOTHING IS THREATENING IN THE TROPICS.

Some of the computer forecast models indicate that the moisture surge moving across Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula from the southwestern Caribbean to the extreme southern Gulf of Mexico might become a tropical depression before it gets absorbed into a strong cold front that will move off the Texas coast late in the weekend. In any case, the odds are high it wouldn’t amount to anything, except to provide more moisture for the cold front.

That front is forecast to stay west of Florida, so no relief from the unusually humid weather is in sight.

A significant shift in the wind related to a previous front will lower the afternoon temperatures late this week, but the moisture levels in the air will continue near summertime levels. Normally by this time of the year, a cold front has pushed the tropical air south, but the long-range computer forecast models do not show any such fronts for the rest of the month.

Elsewhere in the tropics, the atmospheric pattern is not conducive for tropical development.