00:00Well, we are tracking the forecast feed in tropical mode right now.
00:04The forecast feed is beginning to shift focus a little bit into the area around the Caribbean
00:09and the Gulf as we're getting into that time of the year here.
00:12June is almost upon us.
00:14The hurricane season for the Atlantic is about to begin.
00:16We are already about, what, 11 days into the East Pacific hurricane season.
00:21No storms yet.
00:22But we are looking at homegrown development potential.
00:26And as we take a look at the graphic here, you can see that when we do see often some
00:31early season activity,
00:33when we do see it, it tends to form near home as opposed to those late summer, early fall storms
00:40and maybe August, September, early October that traverse the Atlantic
00:44as there's just too much shear and a lot of dry air in the early part of the season out
00:48that way.
00:49So this is kind of a schematic here that Bernie developed and it shows an exaggerated view
00:54and sometimes it's not so exaggerated.
00:56In this case, it's a little more exaggerated than the current pattern where the jet stream
01:00or the southern branch of the jet comes all the way down to the Yucatan.
01:03Now, this time around, it's kind of camping up near the Gulf Coast.
01:08But this, at least conceptually, shows the interaction between the subtropical jet
01:14and tropical moisture.
01:16And if this dip in the jet stream can sit, sometimes we say it marinates over that warm, humid, tropical
01:23air
01:23over the Caribbean or the Gulf long enough without too much movement,
01:28then sometimes we can get an area of low pressure to form.
01:31Sometimes it's the form of a gyre, a big zone of low pressure spinning over the Central America.
01:36In this case, it would be borne out of a disturbance.
01:40It's a chunk of moisture that's going to be drifting north that we will be tracking.
01:44And overall, the water is warm enough.
01:47We often look at 80 degrees or so as kind of the minimum required to support development here.
01:56And you can see, I'll get myself out of the way so you can see the full graphic.
01:59Most areas here, at least south of maybe a latitude of Interstate 4 in Florida, are generally 80+.
02:06Let's get into the models here so we can show you what we're looking at.
02:09I'm going to clear up my mess there.
02:11And we're going to take a look aloft.
02:14Slightly different schools of thought here between the GFS and the European
02:18regarding what goes on with this area of low pressure.
02:22Now, I'm going to plot a big L there.
02:26It's probably a little overblown because it's not a mature storm system.
02:30But what you can see, actually, is at, with this depiction, you can see some of these wind barbs.
02:38And there is a general hint of some circulation here.
02:42There's generally an area, even though it's not closed circulation, it's not a cohesive area of circulation.
02:48But that area of increased moisture, in the world of the GFS, the door is open for this to come
02:55almost directly north through Cuba.
02:58And remember, we're talking about also the potential for subtropical moisture to sit under a dip in the jet stream.
03:05Here's the dip in the jet stream.
03:06There's going to be another cold front that blitzes off the east coast late in the week.
03:11And that's going to shove the subtropical jet a little farther south so that it's kind of not far from
03:18some of this moisture.
03:19And what goes on after Saturday?
03:20You can see there's still a dip in the jet stream.
03:22And they generally do link up.
03:24It's maybe not happening fully.
03:27But there is a connection here between this area of low pressure, weak zone of extra moisture.
03:33And there's a secondary piece of that that does stay behind, east of Roatan and eastern Honduras.
03:38But by the time this interacts with that upper level wind field and that trough aloft, that trough aloft is
03:46already eastbound.
03:47And you can see by Saturday and Sunday, it's already, the base of that trough is pretty swiftly moving east.
03:53And what that would do is it would pull this out to sea and it would remain disorganized, way too
03:59much shear.
04:00But there would still be this moisture that hangs back that we need to keep an eye on here into
04:04the days to come.
04:05And that may begin to bleed north and in a delayed fashion late next week would send some extra rainfall
04:11into south Florida.
04:12Now, the European is different.
04:15The European actually has a stronger influence of a little bit of a high pressure center to the east.
04:20And it's kind of a westward extension of the Bermuda Azores High and kind of extended a little bit farther
04:27west as well.
04:28So that acts as somewhat of a roadblock and it diverts that to start.
04:33But instead of it coming directly north into Cuba, it diverts it a little farther west into the Gulf.
04:38And then that comes north and it helps to feed extra moisture back up into the central Gulf Coast.
04:44Mobile has had over 15 inches of rain in the first 25 days of May.
04:49In Mobile, 15 inches of rain.
04:51It's a lot of rain there in Mobile, Alabama.
04:53So this would actually continue that theme into early June.
04:57And then it would get scoured away and the upper level low sweeps it out to sea.
05:02So here's another way to depict this.
05:04Precipitable water, if you were to take all the moisture in the atmosphere and basically lead it to come down
05:09to the ground in precipitation, you'd have this much rain.
05:12You could see the scale on the right.
05:14But the maroons, the deep maroon, that's the moisture-rich air and that hint of magenta.
05:18So the GFS, it pulls north and it will bring some heavy rain to Florida on Tuesday, Wednesday, south Florida.
05:24Not sustained, but it'll help to fuel some scattered strong storms and some heavier rain.
05:28The European, it certainly gears up farther west.
05:32Remember, we had more of that push, that directing wind that would shove this a little farther west with the
05:39European.
05:40So on, say, Tuesday, midday, big difference.
05:44In the GFS, the axis of heaviest moisture is right over western Cuba into the Florida Keys.
05:50In the European, it's hundreds of miles farther west over the Yucatan and Cozumel and up into the central Gulf.
05:56So that's something to keep an eye on.
05:58How does that play out?
05:59Well, with rainfall, and again, this is just an estimate of potential rainfall through late next week.
06:05You can see the axis of heaviest rain, eight inches over western Cuba, and then an extra kick into Florida.
06:13With the blue zones, they're missing some of those plots.
06:16Localized areas of six or more inches of rain.
06:18That's with the GFS.
06:19With the European, it certainly sings a different tune, where the center of this axis is right back up into
06:25Mobile with another seven or eight or nine inches of rain, and not nearly as much into Florida.
06:30So those are some things that we're tracking here with the forecast feed.
06:32Regardless, we're watching the tropics.
06:34We're watching this increasing zone of moisture.
06:37If the GFS is right, then we're looking at Florida.
06:41If the European is right, extra moisture comes to Louisiana.
06:44I would bet against this becoming a named storm, but some risk of tropical rain and wind coming into the
06:50southeast into early June.
06:52That's your forecast feed.
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