Tracking twin tropical waves

AccuWeather

AccuWeather's Geoff Cornish details two systems in the Atlantic that are likely to form into weekend storms.

Transcript

00:00After our long quiet spell, things have sprung back to life and now we have a major hurricane

00:08on the map in the form of Gabrielle. We're a little more interested though about what follows

00:14Gabrielle because there are two tropical waves. One of these will very likely become Umberto

00:19this weekend. Depending on which one becomes the organized storm, we may see some near southeast

00:26coast impacts. Let's take a look at what's going on right now as we kick off our forecast

00:31feed. Here's the water vapor loop. We have two healthy tropical waves. One of these, to

00:35his credit, Bernie Raynaud was tracking late last week and talked about how this one was

00:40certainly one to watch even though it was up against some very dry air. It did survive

00:45the weekend and instead of entering the Caribbean, it's taking a path a little farther, maybe

00:49a west-northwest trajectory, just far enough north that it will be kind of lifting barely

00:54north of the Caribbean. Another one, strong prospect for development, following on its

00:58heels, generally in a similar fashion. So as we take a look at the details here, we can

01:04kind of take a look first at the westernmost wave. And if this is the one to organize, this

01:09would be a potential impact near the southeast coast. We've got to keep an eye on this one.

01:15If this is the one to organize though, it may actually be a day or two later than the window

01:19of opportunity for the system farther to the east. So we're looking at September 26th.

01:24So check the watch here. Looking at today is the 22nd. So the 26th takes us to Friday,

01:30Saturday, Sunday. This is the time in which our forecast team believes that this could

01:34organize. And wind shear is going to limit the organization into Wednesday. I'll show you

01:39that in just a few seconds. But there are favorable conditions Thursday into Friday in this area.

01:44And it could be off the southeast coast this weekend. If we see impacts near the southeast,

01:49maybe it would be Sunday, Monday near the Outer Banks, maybe just offshore. We've got to

01:54keep a close eye on this. It will be a system that will be making some kind of a sweeping

02:00turn to the north. We'll look at this with the models and their assistance here in just

02:04a few seconds. But farther east, the other tropical wave, pretty robust. Here it is on

02:08the infrared satellite loop here. Kind of a twin right now to its neighbor to the west.

02:13This one, we're going with a high risk of development. And the 24th is Wednesday. So this, even

02:19though it's farther east, may have an earlier window of opportunity Wednesday, Thursday,

02:24Friday, and into Saturday here with some potential. Now I'm going to switch us over to the models

02:28here. And you're going to see some model disagreement. So just one thing right off the bat here. This

02:34is Gabrielle. We can basically ignore that. Gabrielle's a big storm. But again, it's going to be moving

02:39east and it will not be our issue. So we're a little more interested in this impulse and this

02:44impulse. We're looking at the little bit of spin in the atmosphere. And I'm going to initially

02:48take us forward here with the GFS, the American model. You can see our two systems. Here we

02:54go into Wednesday afternoon and evening. Neither of these in the GFS world have organized, but

02:58they're still moving west. We'll continue to track this farther west. And overall, Saturday

03:04and into Sunday, you'll notice that the GFS, the American model, does not really spin up

03:09the eastern wave, but it certainly does the western wave. And you can see if we were to take

03:15this literally, it would make a real close pass to the outer banks. But then it would weaken.

03:19It would not be a strong storm. It would be something we have to keep an eye on though.

03:22And there's some strong winds here near the immediate coast. So that's the GFS, the European

03:27model solution. Again, this thing that may draw your attention. That's Gabrielle that's

03:31out of here. But as we take you farther south, you'll notice our two tropical waves. In this

03:36case, the eastern one, Friday, becomes much more dominant. We may see some organization farther

03:41west as well. But as time progresses through the weekend, you can see we may see both organized,

03:47but the eastern one would be the dominant one. And this would likely become Umberto. I'm going

03:52to switch gears over to one other product that could be a little bit more instructive for us.

03:58And again, as we switch back over here, we'll go back to the full screen. Here we have the wind shear.

04:04And if we go to 2 a.m. Saturday, it's kind of a point of disagreement among the models.

04:08Here's the GFS. Wind shear is a little stronger here in the eastern part of the region. That would

04:14probably keep that eastern wave in check. Meanwhile, there's a window of opportunity

04:19closer to the Bahamas. That's the GFS. In the European, a little bit of a disagreement.

04:23And you can see less wind shear out in the area where we might see the eastern wave organized and

04:29also limited wind shear farther west. So again, in both cases, we got some things to track. And I'm

04:35going to go back over to the final graphic here in our model, out of the models, back to our

04:42summary graphic here, just to kind of bring this home. We're watching both areas for potential

04:46development. The one that may organize a little earlier stays east. That would probably not be

04:50a land impact, but we got to keep an eye out for what the GFS, the American model would suggest,

04:55could become an organizing system at the end of the week into the weekend, might sideswipe parts of the

05:00east as it would then maybe get closer to the Carolinas and then head out to sea. Perhaps.

05:05We'll have more details all week long here on the forecast feed.

05:13All right. Another answer to the question, do we see US impacts from

05:17hurricane season in the next couple of weeks?

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