ORLANDO, Fla. – Melissa is spinning south of the island of Hispaniola working feverishly to better organize and begin the intensification phase called to happen by all of our computer models and the latest NHC forecast.
We’ll be spending an extended period with Melissa as it wanders north and eventually slowly angles back toward the west, absolutely ravaging Jamaica as it does so. The ceiling for its peak intensity is fairly high pending it fully takes advantage of the favorable conditions it has to work with in its local weather environment.
Regardless, a brutal situation is setting up for our islanders to the south of the state of Florida.
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As Melissa strengthens and eventually gets yanked out of the Caribbean Sea, we’re left to wonder - is the season over? Are we done tracking these recurving, weird systems?
The season hasn’t behaved as you’d typically expect during a cool neutral ENSO let alone a flourishing La Nina in the tropical Pacific. We also didn’t realize nearly as many total named storms as a few official organizations predicted before the season started in June.
Will we wrap up and close the doors on the tropics after Melissa fades or is whisked away into the North Atlantic?
While you may be ready to say bon voyage and get on with the HOLIDAY season, computer models and long range projections may have other plans.
Melissa is working with some quality upper-level forcing. This means we’re seeing focused rising motions and a buildup of moisture throughout the Caribbean and near to Central America.
Stronger cold fronts and troughs reaching down from the south and east United States are disrupting some of the traditional flow we’d see under this setup in the tropics, but some could say this is the Central American Gyre trying to show itself as we get into the Halloween holiday and rock through the first week of November.
It’s right around this time where upper-level patterns and computer model ensemble members highlight we could see another spin up in the west/central Caribbean.
While the probability of this happening is fairly low, especially looking two weeks give or take into the future, the overall look can’t be ignored.
Tropical waves are dwindling big time off the coast of Africa. This time of year, the Sahelian monsoon action that will produce these easterly waves really winds down. The general area of convergent winds where the waves will travel westward is also losing latitude, retrograding south because of the changing seasons.
There are still a couple of weak features trying to come toward the Lesser Antilles and the Caribbean. One of them is being captured by models as a potential developer. This would occur likely between Nov. 5 through the 12th, when the overall weather picture looks its best.
Again, the likelihood Nestor tries to develop in the same general area as Melissa is slim for the time being, but it’s not impossible. My favorite saying goes, ‘Is it doable? Yes. Is it the most likely outcome? Probably not.’
Just know we’re still watching. If you hearken back to last year, we actually had a very busy end to the season with a record-setting major hurricane named Rafael and a few other notable names with Sara rounding us out after the early-model scare tactics depicting another major hit to us in Florida.
So development isn’t impossible, just the way conditions are shaping up seems like a pretty low outcome for the time being. The hurricane season officially ends on the calendar come Nov. 30.