00:00Joining me right now is AccuWeather lead hurricane expert, Alex DaSilva.
00:04You know, Alex, Labor Day is always a day, almost every tropical year, hurricane season,
00:11that you're at least tracking something in the Atlantic, a named storm.
00:16But boy, right now it's quiet.
00:18But, you know, there's no question we're in the heart of the hurricane season
00:21as we get into late August and into September.
00:24Indeed we are.
00:24And Labor Day, of course, always falls somewhere around the beginning of September here.
00:28And the statistical peak of the hurricane season is around September 10th.
00:33So you would, of course, expect there to be something going on.
00:36Again, Labor Day is right at the top of this peak here, basically.
00:39And so usually we have a depression, storm, or hurricane somewhere across the Atlantic Basin.
00:44Last year we did not.
00:46And this year, if we don't have any development by the holiday,
00:49it would be the first time in over 30 years you have to go all the way back to the 1991, 1992 hurricane seasons,
00:55the last time we went to two consecutive Labor Days without a named storm in the basin.
01:01You know, one of the main fuels for hurricanes, of course, ocean water temperatures here.
01:06A couple of things that are really eye-popping on this map.
01:10These are the ocean water temperatures.
01:12Let's begin in the Atlantic.
01:14And you can see a lot of the blue off the east coast of the United States.
01:19Yeah, that was actually from Hurricane Aaron.
01:21You can see it kind of almost follows that same path.
01:23When you have very powerful hurricanes, they mix up the waters a lot.
01:27We had waves of 40 to 50-plus feet with Aaron.
01:30And so that really mixed up some of that cooler water from beneath to the surface.
01:34We call that upwelling.
01:35But since we're still fairly early in the hurricane season, those waters have already started to rebound.
01:40And I think in the next week or so, they're going to be back to near levels that they were at before Hurricane Aaron moved through.
01:45We haven't seen anything in the Caribbean or of consequence in the Caribbean or even in the Gulf right now.
01:56And that's a problem.
01:58Yeah, it certainly is.
01:59I think that's a tinderbox ready to explode, I fear.
02:02The Gulf is exceptionally warm.
02:04And you hear us talking about ocean heat content.
02:06That's essentially how deep into the ocean those warm waters extend.
02:10That's the second warmest on record only following last year.
02:13And, of course, you remember some of the big-time hurricanes that we saw last year.
02:17Helene and Milton really exploded in the Gulf.
02:20So my fear is that as we go into the heart of the hurricane season, we're going to have to watch the Gulf very, very carefully.
02:26And the Western Caribbean, too.
02:28Because if anything is able to get in there, if there's low wind shear, it will become a major hurricane.
02:32I have very little doubt about that.
02:34We are tracking a few tropical waves for you here this morning across the Atlantic.
02:39Although, at the current time, nothing that really is too concerning.
02:46No, nothing right now, which is certainly good news.
02:48A lot of dust, lots of dry air across the Atlantic Basin.
02:51We talked about this midsummer lull, and I think we're here.
02:54The next tropical wave coming off of Africa will be coming off on Sunday.
02:58So we'll have to watch that.
02:59That'll be the next wave to come across that I think we're going to have to at least keep an eye out for.
03:03All right, AccuWeather lead hurricane expert Alex Da Silva.
03:07Alex, thanks for joining us here on AccuWeather Early.
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