- 11 months ago
This is an in-depth Met Office UK Weather forecast for the next week and beyond.
Could Gabrielle impact our weather this weekend? Plus, why has hurricane season been so quiet?
Bringing you this deep dive is Met Office meteorologist Honor Criswick.
Could Gabrielle impact our weather this weekend? Plus, why has hurricane season been so quiet?
Bringing you this deep dive is Met Office meteorologist Honor Criswick.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Hello there and welcome to this week's Deep Dive. My name is Anna Krizwick. I'm a meteorologist and presenter here at the Met Office.
00:07Now we had a fair amount of rain over the weekend, some weather warnings in force, and now the weather's turned dry, settled, and it's felt quite chilly during the first part of the morning.
00:17That is all down to high pressure, very much dominating our weather today and over the next coming days.
00:23But what we'll find is as we head into Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, that this area of high pressure will eventually move its way towards Scandinavia, move its way towards the Baltic Sea.
00:32So we'll start to see a slight change in our wind direction.
00:36So today and yesterday we had more of a northerly, northwesterly component to our wind, so we got more of an Arctic maritime air mass crossing us in the UK.
00:44Things have felt chillier, we've even had some frost in places.
00:47In fact, yesterday, all four home nations actually dropped below zero degrees Celsius, particularly in any rural spots, and it's likely we'll see those similar conditions over the coming days.
00:59Now as we head into tomorrow, you'll notice already this area of high pressure starting to drift its way eastwards, situated to the northeast of the country.
01:07A front does try and edge its way into the northwest, but because it's pushing into that area of high pressure, it doesn't really get very far and it doesn't really amount to much.
01:16So still, once again, tomorrow, many areas seeing a dry, settled day, sunny spells, but once again, it could still be a fairly chilly start, particularly in the west.
01:24So once again, some frost in places, potentially some mist and fog, but clearing quite readily through the course of the morning.
01:29So that's tomorrow.
01:31Now as we head through into Thursday, once again, high pressure still continuing to push its way eastwards, and we're starting to see a change in our wind direction.
01:39Remember, winds around an area of high pressure, they move in a clockwise direction, so if we follow the aziza bars round, starting to see more of an east.
01:45Next, southeasterly component to our wind.
01:48Now what this can do is pick up some moisture from the North Sea, so we could see a bit more cloud, particularly across south and southeastern parts as we head through into Thursday,
01:57particularly during the morning, breaking up a bit more into the afternoon.
02:00Some of this could be thick enough to produce the odd isolated shower.
02:03You'll be very unlucky if you catch one, though, I think.
02:06And then on Friday, once again, high pressure still pushing its way eastwards.
02:09We're starting to see some developments starting to push in from the west, but through the bulk of the day, remaining dry and settled once again.
02:16But just with our change in wind direction, it's likely we'll see a bit more clouds, so things aren't going to feel as chilly during the morning.
02:24And also a change in wind direction, so a slight change in our air mass, no longer getting that northerly flow of air.
02:29So things probably won't feel as chilly in the morning by the time we reach Friday.
02:33Let's take a look at temperatures then, because they have been of interest, particularly this week, as things have felt a bit cooler during the morning.
02:43But daytime temperatures are actually OK.
02:46They're not really changing that much, roundabout average for the time of year.
02:50Mid to high teens for many areas, the warmest often being across the far southeast, where we might just push in to the high teens in these areas.
02:58But particularly in the start of the week, even though temperatures have been fairly similar, because we've had that quite brisk northerly wind, things have felt that bit cooler.
03:05So we'll start to feel that change through the end of the week, even though temperatures themselves aren't really changing.
03:11And let's take a look at minimum temperatures too, because particularly across northern and western areas, that's where they have dropped just below freezing,
03:20and mostly in rural areas under any prolonged clear periods.
03:23But most towns and cities, which is what these temperatures are representing, have stayed around the mid to high single figures, low double digits.
03:30But you can see in Scotland, for example, we did just drop into the mid single figures, so feeling chillier here.
03:36But heading into Thursday and Friday, things are starting to turn that little bit milder, but elsewhere, not really changing too much.
03:43So the weather itself is going to be fairly similar, dry, settled, sunny spells, perhaps a little bit more cloud across the skies towards the end of the week.
03:53But with that change in wind direction, there's just going to be that different feel to the weather.
03:57So not feeling quite as chilly, but overall by the afternoon, probably feeling quite similar to what it has done earlier in the week.
04:03How about the weekend? That's when we could start to see a bit of a change.
04:08So let's go ahead and take a look at our bigger picture once again, and head our way into Saturday.
04:16Now we've got this system here, obviously high pressure, no longer dominating the weather quite as much, drifting its way more eastwards.
04:23That's allowing a system to come through, and it may potentially bring some rain, particularly across the west, but there's still actually quite a lot of uncertainty over the weekend.
04:34Why is that then? Well, it's all thanks to this area of low pressure here.
04:39This is currently Hurricane Gabriel, and this is where it approximately will likely sit as we head through into Saturday.
04:48And it's probably going to track more towards the Bay of Biscay, moving into parts of Spain and Portugal.
04:55It might actually bring some potentially quite impactful weather across the Azores, heavy rain, strong winds.
05:01It could even still be classed as a hurricane as it moves across the Azores.
05:05And it's been quite a slow-moving feature, actually.
05:09If I turn the jet stream back on, it's not really being picked up by the jet stream.
05:15And it's kind of, that means it's kind of drifting its way, if I just play this through.
05:21Here it is down here.
05:22It just kind of drifts its way across the Atlantic, and it's been with us for a fair few days now.
05:28And it's likely tracked just continuing its way east-north-eastwards towards the Bay of Biscay.
05:33So, overall, it's unlikely, it's around a less than 5% chance, actually, but we'll go more into that in a moment,
05:42of this system actually tracking its way across the UK, bringing us some stormy conditions.
05:48Very, very unlikely to do that, less than 5% chance.
05:51It's highly likely that it'll actually move towards parts of Spain and Portugal,
05:55but it is still having an impact on our weather.
05:59So, I'm just going to switch this off and turn on our air mass temperatures.
06:05Because, well, actually, if I just switch the rain back on for a moment,
06:08you can see that this Hurricane Gabriel is still linked with this frontal system
06:13that is moving its way in from the west as we head into Saturday.
06:17So, the low itself isn't, but this frontal system moving through is linked to this area of low pressure.
06:22And what we find with these systems, obviously, areas of low pressure moving in an anti-clockwise direction.
06:29We've got high pressure to the east moving in a clockwise direction.
06:32This all fuelling that south-to-southwesterly flow as we get into Saturday.
06:36So, we'll start to see a little bit of warm advection just pushing into parts of the southwest,
06:41parts of western Wales as well.
06:44And what we find with warm advection is that it can sometimes just throw up a bit of a ridge.
06:48That's ahead of the trough that's pushing this system or pushing any areas of low pressure in from the west.
06:54And so, with a ridge of high pressure starting to build across the southwest,
06:57that means any rainfall that's associated with this feature probably won't become too heavy,
07:03particularly as it continues to drift its way eastwards into the southeast of England, for example.
07:08So, because of this warm advection taking place, all due to Gabrielle just sitting further down to the southwest,
07:15throwing up that ridge, there's a chance that this feature may not be quite as intense, perhaps,
07:21as it does so initially as it moves in from the west.
07:24But it's still tricky to forecast.
07:26Obviously, the track of Gabrielle might change slightly,
07:29and that will change where the ridge could potentially be or if it forms at all.
07:32So, that's adding to the uncertainty over the weekend.
07:36What we can find as well, as this system is linked with this front that's moving across,
07:43just switch that off,
07:44is that it can, in a way, buckle this system and turn this more into a waving feature.
07:50So, that means some areas, particularly in the west, it's looking likely,
07:54could see some quite persistent downpours through much of the day,
07:57and actually across the east and southeast, they won't see much rain at all,
08:01and it's probably going to be similar to what we'll have earlier in the week,
08:04dry, sunny spells, mostly settled.
08:07But if that waving feature doesn't quite buckle as much as we perhaps thought,
08:11then this system might continue to push its way eastwards,
08:13and actually eastern areas might start to pick up some of that rain.
08:17So, forecast confidence is probably slightly higher than what it was yesterday,
08:21all thanks to more ensemble members agreeing a bit more about the track and intensity of Gabrielle.
08:26But actually, there is still some uncertainty,
08:28even though the weekend's only a few days away.
08:30But what I can tell you is that we'll likely see a slight change on the weekend.
08:35So, it's likely that we'll start to see some rain push in from the west,
08:39but it's just more central, eastern parts of England.
08:42There's still that bit more uncertainty there around the weather.
08:45So, Hurricane Gabrielle not affecting the UK in as much as it's moving across us,
08:51bringing wet and windy, stormy weather,
08:52but it is having an impact as it's situated so close to us.
08:56Now, hurricane season has actually been fairly quiet.
08:59We had the peak of the season earlier into last week.
09:03Actually, the peak is probably the first couple of weeks of September.
09:06It's been fairly quiet,
09:08but there's currently some more disturbances going on in the Atlantic Basin,
09:12Gabrielle being one of them and potentially a couple of others.
09:15So, I got in our hurricane expert, Julian,
09:18to talk about this in a bit more detail.
09:21So, hello, Julian.
09:23Thank you for joining us on this week's Deep Dive.
09:25You're a familiar face to our audience.
09:27I'm sure everyone is glad that you're back.
09:30Let's talk hurricanes.
09:31So, this season was forecast to be above average,
09:36but it's been relatively quiet,
09:38bearing in mind that it's the first couple of weeks of September
09:40that is usually where we see the kind of peak of this season.
09:44But so far, we haven't seen a lot of activity, have we?
09:47It's been relatively quiet.
09:48I think we can see that if we go to this first image,
09:52which shows all the Atlantic tropical cyclones for so far this season
09:57up until this last week.
09:59Now, we have got one at the moment, Gabrielle,
10:01which we'll talk about in a bit.
10:03But this shows all the storms prior to that.
10:06So, early in the season,
10:07we had some kind of weak, short-lived storms
10:10like Andrea, Barry, Chantal, and then there was Dexter.
10:14But the one which really kicked the season in was Hurricane Erin,
10:18which was in the first part of August.
10:21And that's the first of what we call a Cabo Verde-type hurricane.
10:24So, it's one which develops near the Cabo Verde Islands,
10:27which is over here just off Western Africa.
10:29And it forms from an African easterly wave,
10:32which is the kind of disturbances which are the spawning ground
10:36for tropical cyclones through the season.
10:39Now, Erin moved across the deep tropical Atlantic as a tropical storm.
10:43It didn't actually develop too much.
10:45Maybe that's an indication of the issues that we might discuss in a moment.
10:50And then it was when it got just north of the Caribbean
10:53and on this part here,
10:54it explosively deepened into a Category 5 hurricane
10:57and then turned and came across the Atlantic,
11:01became an extra-tropical storm,
11:03and headed off in the north-easterly direction.
11:06In fact, it was Erin and then the one following it, Fernand,
11:09which sort of brought an end to our summer weather
11:13because they kind of perturbed the jet stream
11:18and led to that breakdown in the warm, dry weather
11:20in the last week of August, which we saw.
11:23But that was, as I said, the last week of August.
11:25And since then, there was absolutely nothing.
11:28Now, there's several thoughts as to what's caused that
11:31because we would normally, during the first week of September,
11:34the first couple of weeks of September,
11:36see quite a lot of activity.
11:39And there's possible reasons for that.
11:42Firstly, the Azores high.
11:44Now, the Azores are up here, in here,
11:48and there's normally a kind of persistent area
11:50of high pressure in this area.
11:52Now, we think that the Azores high was a little bit stronger
11:55and pushing a little bit further south than usual during that period.
11:58Now, with the winds circulating clockwise around a high-pressure area,
12:02it was dragging in this northeasterly flow
12:04off the west coast of Africa down into the deep tropics.
12:08And it was bringing drier air and air which was much more stable.
12:11So it meant that any storm clouds,
12:13which tried to develop in this zone,
12:16didn't have the energy, didn't have the moisture to really get going.
12:19So that was one possible reason.
12:21Also, the West African monsoon itself,
12:24which is where you get a lot of rain and moisture
12:28coming off West Africa in the easterly waves,
12:31was a lot more suppressed than usual.
12:33So there have been easterly waves coming off Africa,
12:36but they're not so potent as they have been in some other seasons.
12:40They're drier and less amplified.
12:43And also, there's a third possible reason for the suppressed activity,
12:48and that's wind shear over this part of the Atlantic.
12:51Now, wind shear is when the winds vary as you go up through the atmosphere.
12:56And if you get kind of stronger winds at the top than at the surface,
13:00then it can act to shear off any developing storms.
13:03And that was certainly prevalent in this area.
13:06So probably a combination of all those three things
13:09led to this quiet spell.
13:11But the quiet spell has ended now,
13:12and we do have some activity in the Atlantic.
13:14Yes, because it was similar to last year, you were telling me earlier,
13:18where we had a bit of a quieter spell,
13:20and then all of a sudden it started to ramp up,
13:23and we saw a few storms.
13:24Yes, that's right.
13:25We were expecting a very, very active season last season.
13:28Yeah.
13:28And we got well behind in September with that level of activity.
13:32But then the back end of the season,
13:33through late September, right through October,
13:36and into early November, was really active.
13:37And so it kind of picked up after that,
13:39and we kind of caught up.
13:41And we ended up having an above-average season,
13:44although not quite as above-average as we thought it might be
13:47earlier on in the season.
13:49But so things might be starting to change now this season.
13:52We've got Hurricane Gabrielle, which is this one, if I'm right.
13:55That's right, yes.
13:56And then a couple of other disturbances.
13:57Yes, what's happened?
13:58I mean, Gabrielle developed some days ago,
14:00down in the deep tropics here.
14:02It was a tropical storm in this zone.
14:05And again, it struggled.
14:06When it was in the deep tropics,
14:07it struggled to really get itself together.
14:09It was a weak tropical storm for many days.
14:12But it's only when it moved up into this zone north of the Caribbean
14:15that it suddenly strengthened.
14:17And over the last couple of days,
14:19it's been a Category 4 hurricane close to that now.
14:24And it's starting to turn around and head off into the mid-latitudes.
14:29Yes, we do need to make a note of these two areas of cloud here,
14:33just to the east of the Caribbean.
14:34And we'll mention those in a moment as to possible further developments.
14:39But of interest at the moment is what's going to happen to Gabrielle
14:42because it has turned and it is heading off
14:45in a more kind of easterly direction now.
14:47Yes, and we think that's linked to the sea surface temperatures.
14:51Well, certainly the rapid strengthening there has been
14:54in the last day or so of Gabrielle, maybe.
14:57This plot shows the sea temperature anomaly,
15:00so it's the difference to average.
15:01And you can see across the deep tropical part of the Atlantic,
15:05the anomaly is, there's not much of an anomaly, basically.
15:09There's a few pockets of below average,
15:11there's a few pockets of slightly above average,
15:12but not much difference.
15:14But once you get up into the subtropics
15:16and up into this, almost up into the mid-latitudes,
15:19the sea temperature is a lot higher,
15:21as shown by the yellows and reds.
15:23Sea temperature is a lot higher than they normally are this time of year.
15:27And certainly when Gabrielle got into this kind of zone,
15:29and that was when it really strengthened because it's hit areas of high sea temperature
15:35and also the atmospheric conditions have been right for it to develop in that way as well.
15:40Yes.
15:40But then the key thing is what happens next.
15:42And we've got, I think, a forecast plot,
15:45forecast plot, which shows us what might be happening next.
15:49Now these plots show ensemble tracks from the tropical cyclone.
15:54So if I start on the far left here,
15:57this shows, we've taken three ensemble models.
16:00Ensembles are where we run the model many times
16:03and get slightly different solutions.
16:05And there's three different models here.
16:07There's MOGREPS, which is the Met Office Ensemble System,
16:09ECMWF, the European Centre,
16:12and the NSEP, the American model.
16:14And you can see that this is where Gabrielle is now
16:17and the possible tracks.
16:18Now one thing to note, particularly from this,
16:21is that it's keeping a long way south.
16:23It's got an easterly motion
16:26and heading towards the Azores,
16:27which is in this area here.
16:30Now sometimes hurricanes,
16:31when they move into the higher latitudes,
16:34they gain latitude quite quickly,
16:36they engage with the jet stream,
16:37and then can kind of race across the Atlantic really quickly.
16:41Now the models are saying
16:42that's not likely to happen with Gabrielle.
16:44It will move a lot slower and further south,
16:47so not engaging with the jet stream.
16:49And we are likely to see some impacts in the Azores.
16:52The likelihood is Gabrielle,
16:55and it may still be a hurricane even when it does so,
16:57move across the Azores
16:58and produce some very strong winds and heavy rain.
17:02Then after that, you can see the lines
17:04and this shows a probability plot.
17:07This shows just the individual lines.
17:09They kind of spread out,
17:10which is an indication of uncertainty.
17:13Now actually, yesterday,
17:14if you looked at a plot like this yesterday,
17:16it was even more spread.
17:18It's narrowed a bit now,
17:20and the highest probability outcome
17:22is that a weakening storm,
17:25it will probably become an extra-tropical storm by then,
17:28will head towards possibly Portugal, Spain,
17:31or up into Biscay.
17:32And actually, this plot on the far side
17:34shows the forecast of intensity.
17:37And you can see from that that the top plot is wind,
17:40and it's on a downward trend.
17:41The bottom plot is the central pressure on an upward trend,
17:44so that indicates the storm is likely to be weakening.
17:48So what we expect,
17:49and these tracks here are all kind of late in the weekend,
17:53even into early next week.
17:54It's quite a long way ahead.
17:55We expect Gabrielle,
17:59or a weakening version of Gabrielle,
18:00to be somewhere sitting out here,
18:03and may eventually make a landfall,
18:06but we don't think it will be severe
18:08in terms of winds at that time.
18:11Certainly, the intensity forecasts show
18:14that it should be a weakening system by then.
18:16We can't rule out the very small chance
18:18that it could take a track a little bit further north,
18:22which would be closer to the UK.
18:23But at the moment, the most likely track
18:26is this heading towards the more southern parts of Europe.
18:30Yeah, it's unlikely to kind of move through the UK
18:34as an actual storm, isn't it?
18:36But there's a chance that just from it moving
18:37even to the south of us,
18:38that it could have an impact on a front
18:40that's coming over on the weekend,
18:41which is why we've already spoken about
18:43quite a lot of the uncertainty for the weekend weather.
18:45So even though it's not crossing the UK,
18:47it's still having an impact for us.
18:49It is often the case that the hurricanes
18:52which cross the Atlantic,
18:54occasionally they will make a direct impact on the UK.
18:57A lot of the times they don't.
18:58They might whiz up towards the north, towards Iceland,
19:01or as this one, head down towards southern Europe,
19:04but may still cause uncertainty in the forecast,
19:07in other aspects of the forecast for the UK,
19:09and that looks possible for this weekend, yes.
19:12Yeah, so we've got another plot here.
19:15It's not one we usually show,
19:16but it helps kind of describe the eastern,
19:20sorry, the easterly, African easterly waves.
19:23I was getting my words about it up there.
19:25Yeah, I thought I'd introduce this one for the deep dive
19:27since we've got a bit more time to discuss it.
19:31Yeah, it's called a Hohmoller plot,
19:33and so if I can go through the various aspects of it,
19:35first of all, time goes from longest ago at the top
19:39down to most recent at the bottom,
19:42so here we've got early September.
19:44The black line is actually now, so that's today,
19:47and the bottom half is the forecast from the Met Office model,
19:52and what the colours are showing are the tracks of easterly waves.
19:57You can see the map here with the kind of cut-out map
19:59which is showing the zone it's talking about
20:01from Africa through to the Caribbean here,
20:03and the stronger colours are where we have stronger easterly waves,
20:08and this just illustrates nicely what we've seen recently
20:11and what we're seeing at the moment
20:12because they're not always very coherent.
20:15You can see they're a bit muddled earlier in the month.
20:18There's nothing really strong,
20:20and then we had Gabrielle, which is this wave here,
20:22which came through here.
20:23Now, you see it appears to just go from the map.
20:28That's because it moved northwards out of the zone
20:31which the map is dealing with, if you like.
20:35So that's Gabrielle,
20:37but then we've got these other two strong waves here,
20:39and you can see where they intersect the black line.
20:41That shows where they are now,
20:42so you've got one here which lines up with this spot here on the map
20:45and one here which lines up with this spot here on the map,
20:48and those are the two disturbances that we saw
20:50in the satellite image earlier,
20:52and particularly the one which is further west.
20:57The forecast shows it continuing in the deeper tropics,
21:00possibly across this zone just north of the Caribbean
21:04up towards the Bahamas,
21:05so that's definitely one to watch.
21:06So I thought it was interesting to show this
21:08to illustrate how these easterly waves
21:10track across the Atlantic during the season,
21:12and we can match them up, if you like,
21:15with the satellite image
21:16and with the systems that we're trying to track
21:18into the forecast.
21:20Okay, I think I'd need to stare at this for a bit longer
21:22to get my head around it.
21:25But I get the general gist.
21:27So we've got Gabrielle,
21:29possibly two other disturbances,
21:31and we've got the track here.
21:33I did have a look at the names,
21:34what they would be if they were named storms,
21:36and it's Humberto and Imelda.
21:39Great hurricane names there,
21:40if they were to be named.
21:42But this is potentially where they could...
21:45It's not the track, is it?
21:46Sorry.
21:46It's where they could form, yes.
21:48It's where they could form, yeah.
21:49Outlook put an output by the National Hurricane Centre,
21:52who deals with all the hurricanes in the Atlantic zone,
21:55and they put these Outlooks out.
21:57They update them every 12 hours
21:58just to show where the existing storms are.
22:01So we've got Gabrielle marked on there.
22:03But also the areas where there's potential development,
22:06and actually on their website,
22:07if you were to hover over these areas,
22:09it would give you a kind of commentary
22:11on what they expect to happen.
22:13But basically what we expect,
22:14these are the two disturbances we saw
22:15on the satellite image.
22:16This one in red,
22:18red means it's got a high probability of development,
22:22and that's the kind of zone they expect it to move into.
22:24So they do expect it to turn northwestwards away from land.
22:29This one here,
22:30not quite such a high probability of development at the moment,
22:33but it may be in a few days' time.
22:35This one, though, we have to watch it carefully
22:37because it could develop somewhere near the Bahamas
22:39or even getting towards southeast USA.
22:43And if that happens and it becomes a tropical storm,
22:46and if it was to become a hurricane quite quickly,
22:48there'd have to be very short lead time forecasts
22:51or warnings of potential land impacts.
22:54So we need to watch that one carefully.
22:56So this illustrates where we expect possible
22:59the next two developments over the next five to seven days or so.
23:02Hmm, okay.
23:03So, yeah, we're starting to see signals then
23:05that things are potentially ramping up.
23:08We've got this as well for the potential other two disturbances.
23:11Yes, what I've done,
23:12I've gone back to the ensemble predictions again,
23:14but this time looking at them in a slightly different way.
23:16This is a snapshot of the five-day forecast
23:19from all the ensembles.
23:21So all the dots represent where an ensemble member
23:24might think a storm might be in five days' time.
23:28So we're talking here Sunday.
23:30And I've circled the two clusters
23:33because they do appear as two distinct clusters
23:35because of those two disturbances.
23:37So basically the models are suggesting
23:40that in five days' time we expect the first storm,
23:43the one further east,
23:44to be sitting just north of the Caribbean in this zone,
23:47maybe south of Bermuda.
23:49And the second cluster in here,
23:52closer to the Bahamas,
23:54and again, as I said just now,
23:56potentially more of a threat of landfall.
23:59So the indications are there
24:00from the forecast models as well.
24:02And actually from this,
24:03you can also see right up in the top corner
24:05all the dots underneath the key there.
24:08That indicates Gabriel
24:09or what might be ex-Gabriel by that time
24:11going across the Azores
24:12and heading off towards southern Europe.
24:15And we've got a satellite image here of Gabriel,
24:17haven't we?
24:18Is this from this morning?
24:19Yes, that's just from this morning.
24:20So it's kind of flickering
24:21because it was going from night time
24:23into daytime, so visible imagery.
24:26But yes, that shows,
24:27you can see the distinct eye.
24:28It's been Category 4 for a while.
24:33You can see it's a little bit lopsided.
24:34There's a little bit of kind of dry air
24:36or sheer impinging on the western side of the storm.
24:39And we think it might have peaked in intensity.
24:42And as I showed earlier with that forecast plot,
24:44we do expect it over the next few days
24:45to gradually weaken
24:47as it moves out across the Atlantic
24:49towards the Azores.
24:50I do enjoy a good satellite loop of a hurricane,
24:53I can't deny,
24:54especially being able to see the eye.
24:55Like, yeah, proper nerding out there on that one.
24:58And of course,
25:00we can't not talk about another typhoon,
25:03Ragasa, is it?
25:05Ragasa, yes.
25:05Yeah, taking place near southern China.
25:09Yes, we certainly shouldn't forget this
25:10because this is a significant one
25:12developed some days ago
25:14out in the Philippines Sea.
25:16So here's the Philippines here,
25:17here's southern China.
25:19This is a satellite image
25:20from just a few hours ago.
25:22Again, it peaked at about Category 5.
25:26And in fact, we've actually had
25:28a relatively slow start.
25:31As in, in the Western Pacific,
25:33the storms haven't been particularly strong this season.
25:35There's been quite a lot of them.
25:36And there's been a fair few typhoons.
25:38But this is the first one
25:39which actually reached equivalent
25:41of Category 3 or above.
25:43And actually, it's very unusual
25:44to get this late in the season
25:46without getting one that strong.
25:48But this certainly made up for it.
25:50And it passed over these islands
25:51just to the north of Luzon,
25:53which is the main island of the Philippines.
25:54So it had direct impacts
25:56on some of these islands here yesterday.
25:59It's now out over the South China Sea.
26:01And we can slightly,
26:03but we don't expect a huge amount of weakening,
26:05maybe a little bit more
26:06as it moves towards the coast of China.
26:09And we expect it to make landfall tomorrow.
26:13Between, there's Hong Kong,
26:15there's Hong Kong there,
26:16and there's Hainan Island.
26:18This is the track from the official agency,
26:20the Japanese Meteorological Agency,
26:22in that region.
26:23And they expect it to come in
26:25at a fairly bleak angle.
26:27That makes it very difficult
26:28to pinpoint exactly where landfall might be.
26:30Ah, okay.
26:31But the current expectations,
26:33it will be in this zone,
26:34part of southern China.
26:36But because of that bleak angle of approach,
26:40it will impact a lot of different areas.
26:44So although we might have a landfall
26:45in this zone here,
26:48it'll rake along the coast
26:49and across this part of southern China
26:51and even into this part of Vietnam
26:54in here over the next few days.
26:56So the impacts on this
26:57could last for several days,
26:59certainly very strong winds and heavy rain
27:01across this whole zone
27:02over the next three to four days, we expect.
27:05So the potential there,
27:06I see what you mean
27:07around going around coastal areas,
27:09potential to cause quite a lot of impacts
27:11in a few different areas.
27:12So quite a powerful storm.
27:14So this is the strongest
27:15western Pacific typhoon
27:17for almost two years.
27:18Yes.
27:19I have written down.
27:20That's right, yes.
27:21Yes, we didn't get one
27:23this strong last season.
27:25We had quite a few strong ones,
27:26but this one just topped it all
27:27in the western Pacific.
27:29And yes, I think it was October
27:30of two years ago
27:31was the last time we had one
27:33stronger than this
27:34in the western Pacific.
27:35Yeah, that's why we could not mention it.
27:37Obviously, our focus was on
27:38the North Atlantic,
27:39but it didn't feel right
27:40to not focus it.
27:41I'm going to get this satellite picture up
27:42because I quite like it.
27:44But I think that's everything
27:45we wanted to talk about, Julian.
27:47So thank you so much
27:47for joining me again.
27:49It's always a pleasure to have you on.
27:51And that's it for today's Deep Dive.
27:53So thank you for joining us
27:55up until this point.
27:56And of course,
27:57if you liked the video,
27:58make sure to press the like button.
27:59Make sure to subscribe
28:00if you haven't already.
28:02And if you have any further questions
28:03for Julian or myself,
28:05probably to pass on to Julian.
28:06It's me and Alex Berkhill
28:08on the live this Friday at 12.15.
28:11So leave them in the comments box
28:12and we'll try and answer some then.
28:15But otherwise,
28:15I hope you've enjoyed.
28:16Have a great week
28:17and we'll see you again very soon.
28:18Bye.
28:19Bye.
28:31Bye.
28:41Bye.
28:43Bye.
28:43Bye.
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