00:00There's the east coast of the United States, there's the west coast of Africa, and there's our tropical rainstorm right now approaching 30 degrees west, about 17 or 18 degrees north.
00:10Now, here's some bullet points over the next couple of days.
00:12Slow organization into a tropical storm, that'll be by midweek.
00:16Then look for rapid intensification later this week, and then early next week, so about a week to eight days from now,
00:25the hurricane, and we think it will, will be located east-northeast of the Bahamas.
00:31All right, with that, I want to bring in our hurricane expert, Alex DaSilva.
00:35And Alex, you know, when we're looking at these systems, when we're looking at development,
00:40water temperatures typically are warm enough for development.
00:43Of course, the warmer the water is, the more likely or the more fuel there is.
00:47But the two main things we look at that can change this time of the year is dry air and wind shear.
00:53Let's take a look at the water vapor loop this morning, and there's the dry air located north and west of our tropical rainstorm.
01:00Yeah, most of the dry air is actually ahead of the tropical rainstorm.
01:04There was a big plume of dust that came off of Africa out in front of this tropical rainstorm.
01:08But you can see around the tropical rainstorm, not a whole lot of dust to be seen in and around the tropical rainstorm.
01:14If it can keep most of this dust out in front of it, it may be able to build a core.
01:19And once it builds a core, then usually these tropical systems can do a pretty good job of fending off a lot of that dry air.
01:26Let's talk about wind shear.
01:28I wouldn't say conditions are perfect right now, but it's not all that bad either.
01:33Yeah, certainly this is the least amount of wind shear I think we've seen this entire tropical season.
01:38And you'd expect that heading into the month of August, especially the middle of August.
01:41But you can see all this light purple across most of the main development region as those arrows are going through.
01:47That is areas of low wind shear, and so that is very favorable for tropical development.
01:53It has to go through a little bit of patch of higher wind shear, but you can see most of that track has very little wind shear.
01:59And this is why we're concerned that especially as it approaches the islands to the north of the Lesser Antilles,
02:04this is where we could see some pretty rapid intensification.
02:07Which is the AccuWeather iPath forecast right now as we get into the latter half of the week.
02:14Now, you and I know there's always forks in the roads with these storms where it could go one way or the other.
02:21One thing that we have noticed that this track continues to the west, slightly northwest through most of this week,
02:28but I think the first fork in the road is that time frame Sunday into Monday where a lot of the computer guidance,
02:35or most of them, start turning this to the north.
02:38And that's where we have some questions.
02:41Yeah, I think confidence is pretty high, in fact, that this will be in around that area on Saturday.
02:46It's going to be driven west much in part by the Bermuda High.
02:49So it's going to be on a westward course for much of its life here.
02:52But like you just mentioned, by the time we get more into that Sunday-Monday time frame,
02:57there's a lot of questions that open up.
02:59Which position is the Bermuda High to the east going to be in?
03:02And then there's going to be a cold front that's going to be sweeping off the east coast,
03:05but it's going to be weakening as it does so.
03:08So the question is, will that cold front be strong enough to help it steer it out to sea?
03:12Or will the storm just kind of barrel right through the cold front and keep moving to the west?
03:17There's many different opportunities, many different features to watch.
03:22There's also a dip in the jet stream we're going to have to watch coming into the east as well.
03:25So there's like three different players here on the ball field that's going to be steering this
03:30once we get into late week and into early next week.
03:33It's almost like the game of dominoes.
03:35We get to that point and there are three paths.
03:38Which way is it going to click?
03:40You had mentioned then the next fork in the road,
03:42and I think this is another critical time frame.
03:45And Tuesday and Wednesday, we're watching another dip in the jet stream
03:49moving from the midwest to the northeast.
03:51And then, depending on that trough, that's going to have a lot to say on where this is going to go.
03:57Yeah, the first scenario, this would be the best case scenario,
04:00that the storm would be steered away from the United States.
04:03If the trough is a little stronger, a little bit faster, it'll just bump the storm out to sea.
04:08It'll just push it right out to sea, like what we would typically see
04:11during a lot of these recurving storms.
04:13However, if the trough is a little bit slower, then the storm can come a little further west.
04:20And that can allow it to get maybe closer to the Carolinas,
04:22maybe just off the northeast coast, and then certainly towards Atlantic Canada.
04:27So this would obviously be the much more concerning scenario, scenario number two.
04:31And right now, you know what, it is, we haven't cleared anybody along the eastern seaboard, Alex,
04:38but climatology in the pattern kind of favors that if there's a direct impact,
04:43it would most likely be North Carolina on north.
04:46Yeah, that's the way it looks like.
04:47A lot of these storms tend to kind of recurve to the north and to the east.
04:50So, you know, the entire east coast needs to at least be keeping an eye on it.
04:54But if there's areas that might be a little bit more vulnerable right now,
04:58like you said, it would be from the Outer Banks north, certainly eastern Canada.
05:02That area is even more vulnerable, I think, with this particular setup.
05:06And regardless, rough surf rip currents mid to late next week up and down the eastern seaboard.
05:11AccuWeather lead hurricane expert, Alex Da Silva.
05:14Alex, thanks for joining us here on AccuWeather Early.
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