00:00In tonight's forecast feed, we want to take a look at the tropics here.
00:04Hurricane season is not over yet.
00:06We still have another month and a half to go, as again, it doesn't end until the end of November.
00:11Now, it does tend to be a case where the activity tapers off, ultimately, usually dropping down to near zero around or after Thanksgiving.
00:20But we do have to keep an eye out for two areas right now.
00:23One is far more interesting than another, but I do want to briefly address two areas of concern.
00:28And you can see we're highlighting two bubbles here on the satellite loop.
00:34And again, we do have this small chance of subtropical development out of a system that may actually drop southeast from Nova Scotia and kind of meander around the North Atlantic.
00:43But it would not be an impactful storm for the U.S.
00:46We're far more interested in this tropical wave that is westbound through the tropical Atlantic.
00:52That's the kind of thing we have to keep an eye out for this time of the year.
00:54But briefly, we are highlighting both of these areas for potential development here.
01:00And in the short term, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, some risk of development here for this northern disturbance.
01:07And just while we're in the neighborhood before we totally abandon this storyline, just to address why we have the yellow zone on there.
01:13Again, it could become a subtropical system.
01:16You might say, what is a subtropical system?
01:18I'll get myself out of the way here so you can see all the words.
01:22And overall, a subtropical storm is a storm that has some characteristics of both a tropical warm core system and a non-tropical system born out of the boundary between warm and cold.
01:33And again, we have these non-tropical systems.
01:36Sometimes we call them nor'easters.
01:38Sometimes they're wintertime North Atlantic lows with a cold core.
01:42And subtropical storms have kind of characteristics of both of these.
01:45So, again, they tend to be a little more disorganized than a true tropical system.
01:49And they have more cold air in their core.
01:51So, again, that's what that one zone of potential concern is about.
01:55But regardless, if this were to form, it would probably meander way out to sea and then eventually get scooped up by some wind.
02:02And it would not be a hazard for the U.S.
02:04But our greater concern by far is this area of low pressure.
02:08It's a tropical wave.
02:09It's westbound right now.
02:11And it's pretty far south at this point.
02:13You'll notice if we look at the core of this and kind of follow it west here, it's down around 9 degrees north latitude.
02:19We typically have to be north of 10 degrees north latitude for there to be enough spin in the atmosphere in the first place to produce a tropical storm or a hurricane with the broad circulation that can begin to form.
02:31But, again, this is an area certainly of concern.
02:34And as we take a look at our time frame for this, as we watch this tropical wave that's still out there a bit move west,
02:41if it organizes.
02:42Now, there are some questions.
02:43We're going to show you.
02:44There are questions about this path.
02:45If it stays south, it would be into a zone here where it could organize into a tropical system,
02:51probably around the time frame of next week, October 20th to the 24th.
02:56So it's not going to happen quickly.
02:57Let's look at the models here and take a look at what we can see.
03:01First off, that system that could become a subtropical system, you can see it drops south from Nova Scotia.
03:08And, again, it could organize into a subtropical system.
03:11But regardless, it's going to get scooped up by the upper level winds and go out to sea.
03:15European model here, similar to the GFS.
03:18There's not much debate out there.
03:19There's way too much west to east flow in the atmosphere up that way and enough of a dip in the jet stream to scoop this up.
03:26So our concern is really much more tied to this tropical wave.
03:30There it is in the GFS model.
03:33As it moves west, you can see here we go into Saturday.
03:37It is Sunday.
03:38Keeps it pretty far south here, barely north of 10, maybe 11 degrees north latitude by the time we get to Sunday night, Monday morning.
03:44It's still out there, though, and it begins to drift a little farther north.
03:49In this case, the GFS still keeps it intact Tuesday, Wednesday.
03:54You'll notice the west to east flow is fairly weak, so it's a slow mover Wednesday into Thursday.
04:00Here we get into a situation where there could be, again, Wednesday into Thursday, where you begin to see this ramp up a little bit, organized.
04:09But it begins to drift north, and then there are concerns that, or the thoughts that, most likely, it would get scooped up by this steering flow.
04:19Take a look at the steering flow.
04:20This would be next Sunday.
04:22You can see pretty good steering flow around the base of that storm system.
04:26Now, if we take it a little farther out here, there are some questions, potentially.
04:30Could it miss the connection with that trough?
04:33In this case, it would not miss the connection with the trough.
04:35When I say the connection, this trough would be enough and deep enough to scoop it out to sea.
04:39And this would ramp up into, certainly, a decent named storm, probably a hurricane, but it would be out over the west central Atlantic and way far from the U.S., even east of Bermuda.
04:48A second opinion on this, by the way, here is the European tracking or tropical wave.
04:52This one pulls north of 10, near 12 degrees north latitude, much more rapidly the early part of the weekend.
04:59But it motors west a little more swiftly, and you can see it's still intact.
05:05And this is a little bit more concerning.
05:07Here you have a developing system, 15 degrees north latitude, right over the east central Caribbean late next week in the European world.
05:15And this makes a move into an area near Honduras or Belize with some concern.
05:19So what a difference.
05:20There's the European.
05:21There's the GFS.
05:22So a world of difference between the GFS and the European that comes in a little farther north initially and then moves farther to the west after hooking a little more abruptly to the north.
05:34So, again, some thoughts and concerns about this before we totally leave the models.
05:40I wanted to briefly take us back to the wind shear product.
05:43And here you can see in the GFS world, again, there's a lot of protection for the U.S. with the GFS here.
05:50Strong wind shear that if it pulls far enough north, it would be shutted out to sea.
05:55And somehow if it were to miss that, the concern zone would be down into the gulf.
06:00And there still would encounter some shear out there in about a week.
06:04So that's going to be a concern that we have to keep an eye on for this system in the days to come here.
06:09And our forecast feed will continue to track that through next week.
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