Keeping an eye on the tropics as November begins

Storms in the Caribbean could organize into a named system in the first days of November.

Transcript

00:00Now, this is radar data near some land masses, and then some of this is actually supplemented

00:05by satellite data that kind of estimates what radar might produce if there was a whole radar

00:10network across the Caribbean.

00:12And look at all this rain over Puerto Rico.

00:14This has been a very wet week here, big weather pattern change in Puerto Rico, many reports

00:19of flooding and flash flooding here ongoing in parts of Puerto Rico.

00:22It may not be a named storm, and it is not a named storm, but we're dealing with some

00:26high impacts here regarding floodwaters impacting portions of many roads.

00:31This morning, here we have another area of flash flooding, and also up into the city

00:36of San Juan, emergency management reporting Puerto Rico Route 24 impassable and closed,

00:42an area here, again, facing some high water and more power poles, electrical lines on

00:47the pavement obstructing the area there, maybe because of a combination of wind and some

00:53flooding.

00:54The flooding has been the big story there.

00:55Now, when we look at the wind shear and the mid-level flow, upper-level flow in the atmosphere,

00:59look at all the purple.

01:00This is prohibitive for development here.

01:03This is good to see, but it's going to be only a short-term issue for some parts of

01:07the map.

01:08We do expect to see wind shear prohibit any additional development near the Texas coast

01:12and the Louisiana coast.

01:13We're getting late in the season, but we are concerned about some of this area here, closer

01:17to Nicaragua, south of Jamaica, where there's not a whole lot of shear.

01:20The shear may ease a bit near Jamaica in the days to come.

01:25And a lot of the time in November, we get storms that take a pretty interesting path.

01:29They come in east to west, driven by those trade winds.

01:32But once they reach a certain latitude, approximately as far north as Cuba, the westerly winds drive

01:36the bus.

01:37And instead of taking them into Texas, they go the opposite direction, and the steering

01:41flow takes them out into areas near the Bahamas, sometimes Florida, and out into the Atlantic.

01:46And we very much see that historically here with storms that move as far north as Cuba

01:50and then beyond.

01:51We need to keep an eye on Florida, because if development happens as far west as an area

01:55near Cancun at the end of the weekend or early next week, it could drift north, and it could

02:00be a factor and an issue for areas of south Florida.

02:04More likely, we might be facing issues into Nicaragua and Honduras.