ORLANDO, Fla. – We’re at the tail end of hurricane season.
Halloween decorations have come down and Christmas lights are popping up left and right through the neighborhood, but we are still talking about the tropics.
As you can see above, National Hurricane Center has highlighted our newest area of interest and already bumped odds up to a 40% chance of development by this time next week. It is looking more and more likely we will have our next named storm in the south-central Caribbean by this weekend at the earliest.
This has been a prime spot for tropical activity, especially during this backloaded active phase since we departed the month of September. Rafael recently dropped onto the playing field a little over a week ago in the very same spot.
So what’s different between Rafael’s environment and this next potential system? Let’s break it down.
In our last tropical article, we’d mentioned why Rafael was taking such an odd westward path away from our viewing area. If you managed to read that story, you’re likely up to speed on what was likely to happen next: the big pattern flip.
If you look below, you can see we went from a large dome of high pressure over our area to an extension of a cool trough of low pressure that will help bring our temperatures and humidity down.
That temporary great news for us in Central Florida becomes a bit double-edged when we discuss what this does for our area of interest to the south in the Caribbean. It will act to turn the pattern upside down. What steered Rafael away could very well magnetize a future area of low pressure to our south and drag it north.
The trough extending down toward the south opens up a pathway for the system to not only take advantage of additional rising motions in the atmosphere, but to naturally gravitate toward this area of low pressure.
Think of it as the game show “Let’s Make a Deal.” You have three doors before you, and only one will open to reveal the path ahead. That trough over the eastern U.S. will open up the door for our disturbance to try to slide through and move north.
There is another large cold front expected to come through the eastern half of the country shortly after this initial push of cooler, drier air. That’s the key in terms of determining if this future feature could head our way or completely disappear thanks to the fresh batch of shear and dry air associated with our fall front.
The two back-to-back fronts will alter the large-scale steering pattern for this tropical low pressure and possibly scoop it up into the Gulf of Mexico on a course for us in Florida. As opposed to Rafael, which went the opposite direction of all historical data, this possible solution would coincide precisely with (unfortunately) what usually occurs this time of year if there is a tropical feature developing.
The next named storm will be called Sara.
Hurricane season ends Dec. 1.
Stick with your Pinpoint Weather team as we track this day by day to keep you as informed as possible. We will be hosting live tropical updates every weekday at 11:30 a.m. EST for your situational awareness on this up-and-coming story.