ORLANDO, Fla. – We saw it coming, and it looks like it’s here.
An area of disorganized showers and tropical thunderstorms is starting to get its act together to the immediate east and northeast of the Lesser Antilles.
This is a tropical wave that came off the coast of Africa late last week, and has been moving westward mainly for a few days now.
It was attached to some very broad spinning in the mid levels of our atmosphere, and now looks to have finally detached from the intertropical convergence zone. Because of this, we’re starting to see a focusing of energy and rotation here.
Now as of 11 a.m. Thursday, the National Hurricane Center has given this the title of Invest 90L.
Remember, for those of you sort of new to tracking the tropics alongside us, these invest characterizations don’t mean a new storm has developed, but it warrants investigating by the National Hurricane Center and potentially recon crews to get a little more info on what this is anticipated to do.
The numbering is simply a way of archiving and identifying these individual features. This is simply a way to identify different areas the NHC is monitoring and running higher resolution computer modeling for.
After you go through numbers 90-99, the chain starts all over again. Since we have 99L back to the west of our new invest, that’s why we’ve come right back to the beginning once more.
Formation chances are still steady, with the same percentages from the 8am outlook:
- Two-day chances - 50%
- Seven-day chances - 70%
However, I fully believe we’ll continue to nudge those two-day chances upward, as most computer models are in agreement this could become our next tropical depression at a minimum into this weekend.
Going forward we’ll see if recon crews are tasked to fly into this area, and we’ll also start to receive the HAFS, Hurricane Analysis Forecasting System, computer models for Invest 90L.
As of now, your key takeaways are:
- Seems very possible this develops into Tropical Storm Fernand
- It is going to stay away from Central Florida, following right up behind Erin as it paves the way for both of them.
Invest 99L is our previous invest still on the board closer to the central tropical Atlantic. Chances are slim this organizes much further the next few days, but I will be keeping an eye on it once it enters the Caribbean.