We'll Likely Have an Atlantic Disturbance to Follow Next Week

Computer forecasts continue to indicate that a fairly robust disturbance will move off Africa about Monday. The track is forecast to be far enough south that it won't immediately plow into the Saharan dust. There is a reasonable consensus in the various long-range models that the disturbance will track across the Atlantic and be in the vicinity of the northeast Caribbean late in the week.

None of the current projections show a storm of any significance when the system is near the Caribbean. It will have run a gauntlet of intruding Saharan dust, dry air, and only marginally conducive upper-level winds on its trek west.

If it survives with some sort of circulation intact late in the week, there is some evidence that the overall atmospheric pattern will become more conducive for storm development. The long-range computer forecasts that predict an organized system forming—both the traditional forecasts and the new AI models—generally show a track curving near or east of the Bahamas and off the East Coast of the US.

The odds of this happening are still in the low range, but the possibility is interesting because this is the first time that long-range projections have shown a disturbance getting far enough across the Atlantic to potentially develop into a storm. We'll see what happens over the next several days. Remember, the rule: Forecasts for systems that are just developing or are disorganized are subject to larger errors and will often change. This system hasn't even emerged from the African coast, so there's a long way to go.

The National Hurricane Center is not predicting any development over the next 7 days, so we're talking about more than a week from now before anything might happen.

Evidence from the Pacific

The National Hurricane Center has three areas to watch in the eastern Pacific. Each one has a decent chance of developing into at least a tropical depression, and computer model forecasts indicate a good chance they'll evolve into named storms. Two of the systems look to track south of Hawaii, and the third parallel to the Mexican coast.

Over the next few weeks, a number of computer forecasts are predicting multiple eastern Pacific storms.

The possible tie to Atlantic storm development is related to the phenomenon called the MJO. The MJO is a large-scale pulse that slowly revolves around the Earth, alternately suppressing and enhancing storm development. Over the next week or so, forecasts predict that the enhancing phase will cross the eastern Pacific. This might be responsible for the predicted outbreak of organized storms.

If the MJO pulse continues moving west as predicted, it would move over the Atlantic from west to east through the first part of August. This would, broadly speaking, make the atmospheric pattern across the tropics more conducive for development. This MJO forecast adds a little credence to the idea that the Atlantic disturbance might be more inclined to develop a week or 10 days from now.

None of this is surprising, of course. On average, the odds of storm development increase in August and dramatically increase after August 15.

In the Gulf

The disturbance we watched track across the northern Gulf has died out, but the moisture lingers from Mississippi to East Texas. Tropical downpours causing local flooding are still possible. Stay aware.

The moisture should move out after the weekend, but extreme heat will move in. The combination of heat and humidity will likely push the feels-like temperature into the 110°F range. Stay cool.