ORLANDO, Fla. – The National Hurricane Center continues to carry a low chance of tropical formation right over our state.
Now, despite the yellow “blip” (as I enjoy to call them) blanketing the Florida peninsula, what this indicates is the potential for something to try and spin up on either one of our coastlines.
What we have here is a CLASSIC “home-grown” type of tropical set up. Note that I didn’t say tropical development or storm. That part is still fairly uncertain.
But, when looking at the mechanics and what we have to work with over the next seven days, I do anticipate SOMETHING will probably be perched off of one of our coastlines causing a bit of ruckus and inconvenience for your upcoming Fourth of July weekend.
First - let’s talk home-grown. This term is specific to the start and ending phases of the hurricane season. Why? This is when we usually have weak cold fronts working their way down through the east and southeast U.S. You need a particular pattern to drop it over open water, where it then starts to fester.
Think of it like an unchecked cut or wound. You let it fester, you don’t clean it, wash it, cover it, it becomes infected.
If you couple very warm waters with leftover energy provided by the tail of a front, things can start to bubble and eventually turn into a storm. It all lies in that tail specifically.
Next time you’re in the pool, I want you to slide your arm fast across the surface of the water. If you watch closely, at the end of your fingertips you’ll probably see some sudden whirlpools spin up before quickly moving away from your hand. That’s what we have going on here.
Water temperatures off either of our coastlines are up there. Anywhere between 85-89 degrees Fahrenheit can be found up and down the peninsula shores. Plenty hot to produce some tropical thunderstorms.
High up in the atmosphere, toward the top of where we can observe weather, we’ve got a trough helping to push this area of frontal action down through the southeast. So this will give us a little nudge in the vertical motion department. It’ll add lift to the environment, helping further push showers and storms to grow.
Just like the analogy of leaving a cut untreated, if you leave these ingredients over very warm water and beneath favorable upper atmosphere conditions, you can develop a tropical cyclone. A cyclone doesn’t necessarily mean a full-fledged storm or a hurricane. We are NOT anticipating a hurricane by any means to come of our current set up.
That’s where things get tricky. There are a number of things that could go wrong for our little local system. If too many pockets of showers and storms try to form up, there will be too much energy spread out over a large area. Nothing will ever “consolidate,” or cram together, to pack into a tightly wrapped circulation like you see in a tropical storm.
If the front gets hung up mainly over land, then you never see the tail end percolate over open water.
If the front pulls away too quickly, or loses its support from the upper levels early on, then the area we’re monitoring for tropical low pressure won’t quite get its act together.
These cold front-induced formation areas are never a slam dunk forecast. They’re very tricky! It’s not like watching a tropical wave over the Atlantic slowly simmer before coming to a boil as a named storm.
Regardless, I say again, I do fully think something will be there. What it precisely looks like, you’ll have to check back with us over the next several days as we dial in this forecast for you. We highly encourage you have secondary and even back up plans to your back up plans for the weekend ahead.
Summer vacation travel is in full swing, and a decent majority of us will probably get the Friday of Fourth of July or at least the following Monday off, opening up room for extra holiday festivities.
We’ll be watching what the rain showers try to do once we wander into early Friday morning. There will be ways of dodging impacts, especially whether this “thing” decides to try and rotate off our west or east coast.