00:01We've had a very unusual hurricane season with a long pause and then a really, really busy end to September.
00:07Here we are. October is upon us.
00:10And October is one of the three busiest months of the hurricane season behind September and August.
00:16And there is more hurricane activity ahead of us, most likely this season.
00:21So we're not done yet, but we want to see what's next.
00:24Imelda, we know where that's going after crossing the area near Bermuda tonight.
00:28Tough night in Bermuda. It's going to go out across the North Atlantic and lose its tropical characteristics.
00:33So just for some perspective on where we stand with the hurricane season, let's take a look at the big picture here and, again, some of the graphics.
00:43So as we take a look at how things stand, we can take a look at the calendar, more or less.
00:50And I'll get myself out of the way so you can see more clearly where we expect to be for the next couple of months here with regard to history and climatology.
01:00And here we are, October 1st, kind of making a dashed line down to that point on the histogram, if you will,
01:07that shows historically where the most frequent storms fall on the map in terms of the calendar.
01:14And there's still a lot of activity to fall through the final third of the hurricane season.
01:19Certainly, we're stepping past the peak, but as we look quickly back where we've been, we've seen a lot of action.
01:26But the unusual thing has been no activity in the Gulf, at least since Barry,
01:32and no activity whatsoever for the whole season this year with at least the Caribbean, the true Caribbean,
01:40south of Cuba, east of the Yucatan, out to the islands, all the action in terms of named storms as a named storm
01:46have been north or, in Barry's case, west of there.
01:50But we are still concerned about what the future may bring as there's a path in which storms could enter the Caribbean.
01:57And that's the area with untimed warmth where we could get into trouble in the Atlantic.
02:02So, again, Imelda crossing Bermuda, heading out.
02:05Here we have former Hurricane Umberto.
02:07And we're watching the tropical wave train, so we're really more interested in the tropical waves leaving Africa.
02:14And I wanted to point out all this wind shear.
02:18Here, Bernie put this graphic together earlier today.
02:20And we've been kind of regarding 15 degrees north latitude as the dividing line here, more or less,
02:25between where there's a lot of shear to the north and not much shear to the south.
02:30If tropical waves drift the least bit north, they're going to get sheared apart.
02:33And you can see they will be in this deep purple zone.
02:38And that's where there's just inhospitable wind shear to protect the U.S. from any landfall.
02:44You can see on the key there, that deep purple.
02:46But if they stay south, that's the route through which they could potentially avoid the strong wind shear,
02:51remain intact, and enter areas like the Caribbean, perhaps.
02:54So we're watching one of the tropical waves.
02:56And it's not going to organize quickly, but as this eventually gets out offshore,
03:00it'll begin to enter this yellow zone here.
03:02We're between the 5th and the 8th.
03:04I'm going to make myself disappear here for a moment just so you can see more clearly.
03:07The area between way, way east of the islands and out to the Azores almost,
03:15between October 5th and 8th.
03:16But again, remember, if anything drifts farther north, it just gets sheared apart.
03:20And any surviving storm system, any tropical wave that gets a little bit more traction,
03:24would have to stay south in a big way.
03:28So look at all the shear out here, these bright colors.
03:30And just to make the map, I know this is a chaotic map.
03:33Here's the African coast.
03:35Here we have Nova Scotia.
03:36In the U.S., there's Cape Cod.
03:38Florida, once I draw Florida, it'll be a little more obvious here.
03:41And again, the tip of the arrow is Florida.
03:43So all these bright colors, that is very strong wind shear.
03:46That's like an insurance policy against a landfalling storm in the short term.
03:50This is a map for Thursday morning.
03:52But even the yellows here, strong wind shear in various different directions,
03:56north of 15 degrees north latitude.
03:58But we're going to go out a bit.
03:59Let's go out to about a week.
04:00Let's go to Wednesday of next week.
04:02Still, this is a good thing to see.
04:04Strong wind shear protecting the U.S. from any landfall for the next week for sure
04:08with this setup here.
04:10And we are still, again, we got a lot of time to go.
04:13So into mid-October, we still have six to seven weeks left in the hurricane season
04:17after October 15th.
04:19One thing that we're a little concerned about, Tuesday, October 14th here, for example,
04:24you begin to see a decrease in wind shear off the East Coast.
04:28So here again is Florida, the tip of the arrow.
04:30So east of the Bahamas, we get into this area where there won't be as much wind shear.
04:35And that could be perhaps a path for something to survive.
04:39But one thing that we like seeing in this example is this barrier of strong wind shear
04:43over the central or east central Caribbean.
04:46But moving forward, you can see there is a period of time in which there is less wind shear
04:52in this area here around the Gulf.
04:55And in fact, this model actually does spin up a couple of storms in that area.
04:59So I'm going to switch over to another depiction.
05:01Instead of looking at wind shear, this version of the models, here we're looking at the present
05:06time.
05:06We're looking at this big trough absorbing Imelda, carrying it out to sea.
05:12But we want to draw our eye on this area here, out over the area near the African coast
05:18and through the main development region, south of, again, 15 degrees north latitude.
05:23If we watch a few of these tropical waves, here we go out to Monday or Tuesday afternoon.
05:28Here is the tropical wave that we're concerned about in the world of the GFS computer model
05:32and now the European computer model.
05:34In both cases, still pretty disorganized, but there it is.
05:37You can still track it.
05:38Let's go out a little farther.
05:39The GFS brings it into the Caribbean, still tracking it.
05:43This is the 10th, 11th, 12th.
05:45It actually begins to pull it north near Cuba.
05:47And here we get into trouble with the linearity of less wind shear over Cuba on Tuesday, the
05:5314th of October.
05:55And, you know, if we take this literally, it actually brings a hurricane near the Florida
05:58Keys, then into the Gulf farther south.
06:01Here's the European, just another opinion.
06:04Tuesday, still tracking that tropical wave.
06:06This is where we paused last time and checked it out.
06:08We're going to carry that forward in time.
06:10And here it spins it up more abruptly over the leewards.
06:14And if we carry this out forward in time, it gets shunted south by a ridge of high pressure.
06:20So a lot of questions out there, but we need to keep an eye out for areas around the Caribbean
06:25in about a week and a half to two weeks.
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