New high risk tropical threat for the US

AccuWeather

AccuWeather lead hurricane expert Alex DaSilva was live on the AccuWeather Network on Sept. 19 to discuss the next tropical threat for the United States.

Transcript

00:00Joining us right now is Acuia, the lead hurricane expert, Alex DaSilva.

00:04And Alex, you were part of the team, you and the long-range forecasting team that

00:09upgraded our threat for tropical development, first from a low to a moderate yesterday morning,

00:16and then late in the morning before noon, the decision was made to go with a high risk.

00:21Yeah, I'll tell you, Bernie, the more and more I look at this, the more and more concerned I'm

00:25growing about a potential hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico mid to late next week.

00:30All the factors are coming together, which is why we decided to upgrade

00:34and go high risk for development during the middle to latter portions of next week.

00:38Again, focusing on the Western Caribbean,

00:40that's where the storm's likely to form, and then moving up into the Gulf of Mexico.

00:44Now, everybody wants to know, okay, we get development there,

00:47where is it going to go from there? And we created this graphic yesterday morning

00:52to give people options. And listen, it's not an easy question to answer right now.

01:00There are different avenues for this storm to go.

01:04Certainly, it's going to depend on how deep that trough comes down into the Gulf of Mexico.

01:08Now, that piece of energy is still way out over the Pacific right now,

01:12which makes it very difficult to forecast how deep or how strong that trough is going to be.

01:17So we still have several days to kind of fine tune this. But I will say this,

01:21if it's a stronger trough, it's more likely to pull the storm more north and east

01:25towards maybe the peninsula of Florida or the Big Bend area.

01:28If it's a little bit weaker, that can allow the storm to meander a little bit further

01:31northwest in the Gulf and then maybe threaten more of the northern Gulf Coast.

01:36So a little still some forecasting decisions to be made there.

01:40But the ingredients are there for not only development, but intensification, Alex.

01:47And of course, we always begin with the water temperatures.

01:49Yeah, we always talk about this. We've been saying this since the beginning of the year,

01:52that the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean are the warmest they've ever been.

01:56And this is what is going to add essentially that rocket fuel for the storm.

02:00No problems here in terms of how warm the waters are mid to upper 80s.

02:04And you can see those temperature anomalies there.

02:06Everywhere in orange or red are temperatures above average.

02:10And you can see almost the entirety of the Atlantic Basin.

02:12But you can look in the Western Caribbean there.

02:15That is where we see those more deep orange colors.

02:17That means the temperatures there are far above where they should be this time of the year.

02:21And Alex, it's not just the water temperatures on the surface.

02:24You were telling me that one of the other ingredients we look at is how

02:29deep is the warm water in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean.

02:34It's called ocean heat content. And those numbers are off the charts.

02:39They certainly are. That part of the Atlantic,

02:41Western Caribbean, is the warmest in terms of ocean heat content.

02:44The 80-degree water temperature line extends down 300 to 400 feet

02:50below the surface of the ocean. So certainly very impressive there.

02:53And essentially that's what's going to help to fuel the engine

02:56of what is going to likely become a tropical storm and then eventually a hurricane.

03:00So far this season, one thing that we've seen in the Atlantic Basin is wind shear.

03:04Strong winds aloft that tend to weaken tropical systems.

03:08What we did was we took a snapshot of the winds high up in the atmosphere here

03:13to look at what wind shear is at least forecasted in this area.

03:18And when you look at it, you don't see a lot of white lines,

03:21which means there's not a lot of wind shear.

03:23Yeah, we have the warm temperatures, lots of moisture and low wind shear.

03:27Those are the ingredients essentially to have a strengthening tropical system.

03:30We're certainly going to, looks like we're going to have that

03:33low wind shear across that Western Caribbean area.

03:35And then as the storm moves north, there could be a little bit wind shear,

03:38but it might actually aid in the development of the storm.

03:41Sometimes if you get the wind shear in just the right position,

03:44can actually help to ventilate the storm.

03:46We saw that with Barrel earlier this year.

03:48And so that is the concern that the wind shear to the north

03:52might actually help to ventilate and strengthen the storm once it gets into the Gulf.

03:56Back here with the lead hurricane expert, Alex DaSilva.

03:59Alex, thanks for joining us here.

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