Activity starting to ramp up in the Atlantic Basin

AccuWeather

AccuWeather's Alex DaSilva was live on the AccuWeather Network on Sept. 18 to discuss the latest on the tropics.

Transcript

00:00Alex, finally the drought's over in the Atlantic Basin as Gabrielle formed yesterday.

00:08Caught me by surprise. I wasn't expecting that to happen.

00:11But, you know, we've been talking about how conditions over the next couple of days haven't been favorable for development.

00:17And when we look at the structure of Gabrielle, you can see why we made that statement.

00:21Yeah, I was a little surprised that the storm was able to get organized yesterday with all that wind shear and all that dry air,

00:27which is still around the storm as we speak right now, really getting blasted from the west right now by pretty strong wind shear.

00:34So all of that convection, all of those showers and thunderstorms are located east of the center of circulation.

00:40Essentially, the swirl, it's basically a naked swirl right now.

00:44There's no showers or thunderstorms around the center of circulation right now.

00:48But it's still maintaining a pretty strong, at least circulation right now,

00:55despite all of this dry air that you can see here with that orange and yellow color.

00:59Yeah, and it's in an area of just where we've seen wind shear all year in the Atlantic, north of 20 degrees north,

01:07right along north of 20 degrees north, you can see all of that dark purple.

01:11And a lot of people ask us, well, Alex, what does wind shear do?

01:16How does it weaken a tropical system?

01:20Yeah, this is the analogy I love to use.

01:22It's like a stack of pancakes.

01:23So you picture a stack of pancakes, and you want your stack of pancakes to stand nice and tall.

01:28That's how tropical systems are.

01:29They want their thunderstorms to go straight up into the atmosphere, be nice and tall, not disrupted.

01:34But when we have wind shear, which is a change in wind at different levels in the atmosphere,

01:39it can push that stack of pancakes over, and then they all fall on the ground.

01:43So it's kind of like that with tropical systems, where if you get that tilt, those thunderstorms can't develop properly,

01:50and then you don't have really an intensifying storm.

01:52And that's what we're seeing right now with Gabrielle.

01:55And so that's why any intensification here in the short term is likely to be gradual.

02:00I think by the time it gets closer to Bermuda, the conditions do get a little bit more favorable for development,

02:06and it likely will become a hurricane.

02:07But it should pass east of Bermuda.

02:10It was a couple of weeks ago, Alex, that me, you, and the crystal ball meteorologist Joe Lumberg

02:16took a look at the longer range and decided, you know, the area to keep an eye on for development also will be in the Caribbean.

02:25Yeah.

02:26Again, I think conditions should get a little bit more favorable in the western Caribbean

02:29and maybe far southern Gulf here as we head towards the end of the month here.

02:33And we are actually tracking a tropical wave that could actually make it into that area.

02:39So here's the area we're watching, just west of the Cabo Verde Island, so well, well away from the United States.

02:44This is going to slowly move its way west.

02:46I don't think it's going to develop until, you know, it gets into the Caribbean,

02:50or at least that's when it would have a shot to develop.

02:52It's too hostile, I think, right now where it's located.

02:55But we have to watch it.

02:56It's going to kind of go incognito, I think, all the way through.

02:59But then, once it gets into the western Caribbean, those conditions, if it can survive that journey,

03:05do get a little more favorable.

03:07And so that's why we're outlooking that potential.

03:09This wouldn't be until late next week and into next weekend, so far out.

03:13To put a button on this, we do have a tropical wave coming off Africa, by the way, on Friday.

03:18We're going to keep an eye on that as well, Alex.

03:20Yeah, that's the next one to come off.

03:22It should be coming off tomorrow morning or so.

03:24So this one, you know, might have slightly better conditions than this other wave that we just mentioned.

03:30But conditions right now do favor it to make a turn to the north.

03:33But again, plenty of time to watch that one.

03:35AccuWeather lead hurricane expert Alex DeSilva, thanks for joining us here on AccuWeather Early.

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