Monitoring tropical wave developing near the Caribbean
AccuWeather's Bernie Rayno monitors the Atlantic basin where potential tropical wave may occur as it heads towards the Caribbean islands while battling dry air, which affects development.
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00:00There it is, I have it circled. This is around 50, I'm coming up on 52, 53 degrees west, about 13 degrees north.
00:08Still a couple of days away or to the east-southeast of the islands.
00:12Now, we showed you this chart yesterday. This is a kind of a different look at this system.
00:17It's kind of a flow chart and what has to happen for this to develop.
00:22And there are two main hurdles that this tropical wave is going to be facing.
00:27The first is the dry air. Is it going to survive the dry air? I think it is.
00:32Now, it's not going to develop, but I think it's going to be able to move through this dry air.
00:38It's not going to develop, but it will still have some semblance of organization.
00:42So, I think it's going to clear the first hurdle.
00:45Here's the second hurdle and this is the one that is going to be the trickiest.
00:49Where exactly does this system move in relation to Cuba and Hispaniola?
00:54If it goes right across those islands, it will likely not survive.
00:58And if that's the case, it will then dissipate.
01:01However, if it can move around the islands, whether it's to the north or to the south and survive,
01:07then the answer is yes and you go to this step.
01:10And this is where we could have some problems.
01:13Could become a storm near Florida as we head toward the weekend.
01:17Now, that could be in the eastern Gulf of Mexico or it could be in the southwest Atlantic,
01:20but the time frame would be this weekend.
01:24I think it's going to clear this hurdle.
01:26This is the question mark.
01:28And if it survives that, then we could be looking at a storm as we head toward the weekend
01:33as that system moves to the north and west.
01:36Now, there it is. We're talking about the dry air.
01:38I have it circled and you can see the dry air that is surrounding it.
01:41However, I don't see any dry air coming in and around where that wave is,
01:46at least where we see most of the convection.
01:48So, that tells me it will likely be able to survive the dry air.
01:52It won't organize, but it will hold its own.
01:56Then as it moves toward the islands, a couple of things going on here.
02:00I think the dry air is going to start dissipating.
02:02And the other thing that we're going to see is less wind shear.
02:05Now, it's already in an area where it doesn't have a lot of wind shear.
02:08It's denoted by that light purple shading.
02:11And you'll notice that in the eastern Caribbean and over the Lesser Antilles,
02:15there's not a lot of wind shear.
02:17So, if we can get rid of that dry air and the wind shear remains light
02:21and the forecast is for the shear to remain light,
02:24then I think this system could organize a little bit.
02:27That would be as we get into Wednesday and Thursday as it nears Puerto Rico.
02:32And then this is the second hurdle.
02:36And that will be Thursday night into Friday
02:38as it comes in contact with Cuba and Hispaniola, depending on where it goes.
02:42But as I mentioned, if it gets past this hurdle
02:46and gets into the eastern Gulf of Mexico or the southwest Atlantic
02:50in this vicinity, there are favorable conditions
02:54for at least organization and development
02:56in that there's going to be abundant moisture and low wind shear.
03:00So, we're going to continue to track this system throughout the rest of this week.