00:00I do want to let you know that yesterday, Labor Day, we did not have a named storm.
00:07We didn't have one last Labor Day either.
00:09Now, Labor Day fluctuates certainly every year, but it's always in early September, right, within the first week.
00:14That's the heart of the hurricane season.
00:16So a bit of an anomaly here, back-to-back years, last year and this year, of not having a named storm on Labor Day.
00:23Just to show you, it's a little rare.
00:25The last time that happened was the hurricane seasons of 1991.
00:30One in 1992, by the way, just as a, did you know, that September 4th, 1990, which is on Thursday,
00:40day after Labor Day, 1990, is when years truly started his career as a meteorologist, myself and the crystal ball meteorologist, Joe Lumberg.
00:48Love to see it.
00:49Now, someone that's joined AccuWeather a little earlier than me, or a little later than me, probably wasn't born.
00:55Let's bring him on in, our hurricane expert, Alex DeSolvi.
00:59In fact, Alex, the first time I think you and I met was in 2020 at the AMS conference in Boston.
01:07You and I met, and you followed me on Twitter, and we communicated then.
01:11And now, here you are with me asking you questions.
01:15How about that?
01:16Yeah, it's funny how things work out.
01:18Yeah, it is.
01:19All right.
01:20Tropics have been quiet, but things are starting to heat up a little bit.
01:25Yeah, over the last few weeks, we've been talking about how we expect things to really start to ramp up, especially towards the end of that first week of September, and then throughout the rest of the month.
01:33And it looks like we're starting to get into that phase right now.
01:36A couple tropical waves out there, and the one to watch is going to be the one all the way to the east.
01:40It just came off of Africa about a day or two ago.
01:42So this is the one, I think, that's going to develop into our next named storm here.
01:47Looking at the water vapor, there is some dry air in its way, but you can see there is quite a bit of green on the map there in that circled bubble there.
01:56So it does have a moisture pocket as it's moving to the west here.
01:59Now, here's the thing.
02:01It looks to me, let's take 20 degrees north, right?
02:05And I have, that's the line that goes just north of Hispaniola and in the southern Cuba.
02:12You follow that to the east.
02:14Seems like if you're north of that line, you have some stronger wind shear.
02:17But if you stay south of that line, and we're talking about that tropical wave, the wind shear looks much lighter.
02:23So there's a window here.
02:25Yeah, and this is to be expected.
02:26As you go more into the heart of the hurricane season, overall, you do expect that wind shear to decrease.
02:31And this is going to be moving into an area of much more favorable winds for development.
02:35And so that's why we're going with a high risk of development.
02:37We've been saying, we've been very concerned that this is going to develop here over the next couple of days here.
02:42We have the fourth through the sixth, but I would lean early on this time frame, probably closer to the fourth when it could get developed.
02:48Looks pretty good right now.
02:50The big question is going to be how far south is it able to stay?
02:53If it's able to strengthen up a little bit more, a little bit quicker, it's more likely going to be pulling more to the north.
02:59We see stronger storms typically hang on more of the northern sides.
03:04If it stays on a little bit of the weaker course, then I think it could be a little bit more of a problem for the northeastern Caribbean,
03:10as it would have more of a westward trajectory.
03:12Either way, though, regardless of if it impacts the islands, as of right now, it looks like it would turn away from the United States.
03:20But we need to watch it very, very carefully.
03:22And Alex, you're even more concerned as we move beyond this time frame that some of the atmospheric conditions that you look at argue that things can get very busy second half of September.
03:36Yeah, indeed, that's what it looks like.
03:38We have this little midsummer lull that we're dealing with right now.
03:40But this storm is going to come through, and I think it's really going to essentially prime the pump here for more tropical waves behind it.
03:46A lot of times you get these front runners.
03:48They kind of clear out that dry air in front of it, and then that allows more of those tropical waves to come across and to develop.
03:54So I would expect, you know, kind of this tropical wave train, as we call it, coming from Africa to get pretty active here as we move into the middle of the month.
04:02Really quickly, we have next name, by the way, is Gabrielle.
04:07So we think there is a suitor for Gabrielle with this area.
04:12All right, Pacific, this is Tropical Depression 12E.
04:15You feel pretty strong this will be a storm later today.
04:18Yeah, it should be by 11 o'clock Eastern time.
04:20We'll have to see.
04:21But, yeah, this is going to be moving to the north and to the west here.
04:23It should intensify into a hurricane at some point.
04:26But the big question is there's kind of a split.
04:28Right now we think it's going to hook back towards the Baja because it's going to feel a weakness in the high pressure over the western part of the country.
04:36But there is a scenario where it just gets blocked out, where the storm essentially just gets blocked.
04:40That high pressure is too strong, and it just meanders off the coast.
04:43That would be the better case scenario for the United States because if it's able to turn in like what we're currently expecting,
04:49some of that moisture will get pulled into the southwestern United States.
04:53And we could see some showers and thunderstorms and some localized flooding.
04:56So the better case scenario would be if it stalls off the coast and over that cooler water and just falls apart.
05:02But we have to watch that very, very carefully, as it definitely is possible that we could see a plume of moisture
05:07coming into portions of the southwest and in western Texas as well.
05:10AccuWeather lead hurricane expert Alex DeSilva, thanks for joining us here on AccuWeather Early.
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