ORLANDO, Fla. – June 1 is fast approaching, which means the hurricane season is knocking on our door.
But could we see something in the tropics sooner than that?
With hurricane season coming up quick, this is also a breeding ground for clickbait and inaccurate information. Our computer models don’t exactly help in this department either.
If you follow any weather source, especially on social media, you’ve probably already stumbled across a share or two involving a major hurricane spinning up before we even get into the month of June.
While there is some science rooted behind this, don’t fall victim to bad information.
This is the time of year where not only should you button up your plans for hurricane season, but also lean on a trusted weather source to get you through the season safely.
Personally, I’ve already seen a few largely-followed pages plastering the worst-case images of some of our model runs all over social media. Be leery of who’s trying to relay you quality content and who simply wants your engagement.
But again, there is some science and reality rooted to what’s going on this time of year.
We are watching a small signal in the Caribbean Sea to our south. It is a small signal, can’t emphasize this enough, but it is a plausible signal.
Some long-range forecast ensembles — groups of individual computer model members — are trying to highlight the potential for an early-season spin up somewhere in the south or western Caribbean. There is a rather huge fork in the road.
Others are also pinpointing the East Pacific as a source region for our first tropical cyclone attempt of the year.
From a big picture perspective, we are expecting the Madden Julian oscillation to march its way across the Pacific Ocean into a more favorable phase to support thunderstorms and moisture over Central America.
That’s where the fork comes in.
We’ll likely see an overall increase in moisture, a decrease in wind shear and naturally a nudge in overall lift that occurs over Central America. But where this all really focuses remains to be seen and can’t be precisely predicted this far out.
We could very well see a spin start to form in the Caribbean Sea, but crash ashore somewhere in Central America and cross over into the Eastern Pacific. This is what we saw with Tropical Storm Sara last year, which was once slated to cut across our state as a major hurricane. Three days before that took place, everything changed.
Does it seem likely we get our first named storm before June starts? No. But is it possible? Oh, yeah! We’ve had several tropical storms develop before the calendar start of the hurricane season.
Beryl, the anomalous Category 5 hurricane of 2024, taught us, especially me, don’t ever try to bottle up Mother Nature and expect her to play by the rules we try to use to encapsulate the atmosphere.
So be aware of who’s giving you accurate and safe information, and those who just want to boost their algorithm before the real action begins to take place.