Watching the tropics

AccuWeather

AccuWeather's lead hurricane expert Alex DaSilva was live on the AccuWeather Network on Aug. 5 to discuss the latest on the tropics.

Transcript

00:00Joining us right now is AccuWeather lead hurricane expert Alex Da Silva.

00:04And Alex, I know maybe some people are feeling it's been a slow start to the hurricane season,

00:09but when we look at kind of what's considered normal with historical averages as far as number

00:15of storms, we're right, actually we're a little bit early. Yeah, by the numbers, we're actually

00:19a little bit ahead of schedule. We just had our fourth named tropical system right now,

00:23and the average for the fourth named one is August 15th. Now, the first hurricane,

00:28we usually don't see till August 11th, so we haven't seen one yet, but we might hear in the

00:34next couple of weeks as it looks like the tropics are really going to be picking up here.

00:38They certainly are. That might even be an understatement, Alex, because we have a lot

00:43that we are watching. Break it down for us. We have homegrown development and tropical waves to watch.

00:49Yeah, there's a lot going on on this map, so I'll draw your attention to the one of most concern,

00:53or the one of, you know, up first, essentially. It's the area off the southeast coast. This is

00:58the area that's like first up on the list of concerns. This one could impact the southeast

01:03August 7th to the 9th, so this is the one that we're most concerned about in the short term,

01:08and then a little bit longer term, we're looking mainly out in the Atlantic. A couple of tropical

01:13waves getting ready to come. One already came off of Africa, and the next one will be coming off in a

01:17couple of days. We're getting into that type of time of the season where we really have to watch

01:22these waves closely. Yeah, this is really kind of the pivotal point. We've been only looking at

01:26homegrown development thus far, so take us through what we're seeing on satellite. This is one of the

01:31more immediate things that we're watching. Yeah, this is for the southeast coast feature here,

01:36so got a little area of spin here north of Hispaniola. This is going to be moving into the

01:40southeast and essentially joining forces with a stationary front that's draped across the southeast.

01:46That, I think, is going to cause pressures to lower over the next couple of days. We're probably going

01:50to get some sort of development down there, whether that be a tropical depression or a low-end tropical

01:55storm, but it looks like it's going to be bringing a lot of rain to portions of the southeast by late

02:00week. Yeah, either way, that impact to be on the lookout for, it's the rain, it's the flash flooding,

02:05which, of course, we've already been seeing. Now, Alex, there's a couple factors that we look at

02:10when we're seeing, okay, how likely is this to develop? Let's talk about the warm ocean waters first.

02:16Yeah, look at all this orange and all this red on the map here. This is sea surface temperature

02:21anomalies. So essentially what that is, it's how warm or how cool it is from average. And so

02:26everywhere where you see these darker colors, these darker orange and yellows, indicate temperatures

02:30above average. And so that's why we're concerned that we could see some development here over the

02:35next couple of days because the waters are so warm, especially right off the east coast. That's where

02:40we have the Gulf Stream waters that go right up along the east coast. Those waters are even warmer

02:45warmer. And so that is really the concern is that this could try to get organized. We don't expect

02:50this to become a hurricane or anything like that, but it could get organized into a depression or

02:55a tropical storm. And that just means it will be able to bring even more rainfall to portions of

02:59the southeast. Yeah, we all know even a tropical storm, it can bring some big impacts. All right,

03:04let's talk about those tropical waves that we're watching. Yeah, one is way out just near the Cabo

03:09Verde Islands, just emerged off of Africa yesterday morning. It's going to be moving west across the

03:14Atlantic Basin. It's got some hurdles to overcome. It's got some shear. It's got some dry air that

03:20it's going to have to overcome. But by the end of by next week, we do think that there's actually

03:24going to be a high chance of tropical development as this comes across the Atlantic Basin. Looks like

03:30it will turn to the north, though, and should move north of the islands. Yeah, at all. It relates to

03:37the Bermuda high, but it also relates to wind shear. That's something we're watching closely to see if

03:42really anything develops with all of these. Yeah, this is why we don't expect anything to

03:46develop here in the near term. We do have a high risk of development, but it's several days from

03:51now. And that's because it's in a pretty hostile environment right now. There's a lot of shear,

03:55a lot of dry air that it's dealing with right now. But over the weekend into next week, I think it's

04:00going to get into a slightly better environment for intensification. And then we could see some slow

04:06organization from there. All right. AccuWeather lead hurricane expert Alex Da Silva. Thank you again

04:11for joining us.

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