00:00We've been tracking those severe thunderstorms quite a bit here in the central U.S., but we also want to
00:05keep an eye on the tropics.
00:06The Atlantic, relatively quiet right now. The East Pacific, though, is beginning to spring to life.
00:12We may very soon have our first Western Hemisphere tropical depression, or even named storm, on the horizon, maybe even
00:21at midweek here in the East Pacific.
00:23Let's take a look at what's going on closer to the Atlantic first, just to give you an eye on
00:27this.
00:28I think this often gets a little bit more attention, because these are the storms that tend to impact larger
00:33population centers in the U.S., as opposed to your typical East Pacific storm.
00:36You can see plumes of moisture out there. We've got some action in some parts of the central sections of
00:43the Gulf, also into Central America,
00:45but also lots of dry, dusty Saharan air moving through a big chunk of the Caribbean.
00:52In fact, we're dealing with some of that dry air in a big way here, and the Saharan air layer
00:59here is pretty robust.
01:02We're dealing with a large area with that Saharan dust right now.
01:06And if we, in fact, take a look at the forecast here for future Saharan dust, look at this big
01:13plume.
01:14So this is pretty widespread, pretty robust. Now, we often do see large, robust zones of Saharan dry, dusty air
01:21in the early part of the hurricane season,
01:24really often into July as well, June and July. This is a common thing.
01:28So in this large area, there's going to be extra dry air.
01:31This opposes convective development, and you can see some of this is into that area where there are very few
01:37clouds even into the Caribbean.
01:39So that's something that we're keeping an eye on, and that is another argument against any tropical development.
01:44That's good news. As the data loads here, you can see water temps around normal in the eastern Caribbean,
01:49a little above average, and then more so above average into the Gulf right now.
01:53So warmth is not an inhibiting factor, but you consider the dry air combined with that early season wind shear,
02:02two strong arguments against any development here into the Caribbean or the Gulf.
02:06So through June 16th, we're not expecting named storms to form.
02:11And in fact, areas like the central and eastern Caribbean and Bermuda, and also north of Hatteras,
02:16we're going with a near zero chance for any tropical impacts from organized systems bringing rain or wind,
02:22and a low risk for areas from the central Carolinas all the way down to the Yucatan, western parts of
02:28Cuba,
02:29and the western parts of the Bahamas.
02:31So again, we're really hedging against any short-term impacts.
02:35If we do see organized systems later this month, it would likely come from homegrown development
02:40when we often see a big trough dip into the Gulf, sometimes even into the Caribbean.
02:45Sometimes we have these gyres of big areas of circulation down into Central America,
02:51and sometimes this can help to facilitate some of that with, again, an extra push from north to south on
02:56the west side of that
02:57that can get an area of low pressure to spin up.
02:59But are we seeing that happen in the short term?
03:02No, not really, and there's a lot of dry air out there.
03:04We would need to dip in the jet stream to camp out for probably two days or more.
03:08So we're very confident in El Nino organizing and continuing to strengthen across the Pacific in the equator,
03:17along the equator in the Pacific.
03:19So again, a near 100% certainty of El Nino driving the bus as the biggest dominant driver in Atlantic
03:29hurricane activity,
03:30probably stifling that a little bit because of that correlation.
03:34When we get that warmer-than-average water in the Pacific with, again, weaker trade winds there,
03:40we tend to see more wind shear as a strong correlation in the Caribbean and the Atlantic.
03:45More wind shear opposes development.
03:47It tends to shred storms apart.
03:49So, in fact, we can show you statistically.
03:51When you have a neutral setup, we average about 13 named storms and 7 hurricanes in neutral.
03:58When we have a La Nina, when the Pacific is cooler than average, that's where we've been lately,
04:02we've had this kind of a compromising or almost offsetting polarity to the cooler water,
04:10the Pacific warmer water in the Atlantic with less wind shear there.
04:13Then we see our bigger numbers, like 15 named storms and 8 hurricanes as the average numbers during a La
04:18Nina.
04:19Well, this year, we are locked into an El Nino.
04:22We only averaged 10 Atlantic named storms and 5 hurricanes during El Nino years.
04:28And this is based on the RONI status, R-O-N-I, which is a newer way of looking at
04:34El Nino,
04:35considering a gradual increase in ocean water temperatures everywhere.
04:38So you kind of subtract some of that out of the baseline,
04:42and then you can take a look at some of the water correlations, water temperature correlations,
04:46subtracting out any global long-term water temperature trend.
04:50So here's our Atlantic forecast.
04:53Again, 11 to 16 named storms, 4 to 7 hurricanes, 2 to 4 major hurricanes, and 3 to 5 direct
04:58U.S. impacts.
04:59That would correlate with generally a near to below average year for the Atlantic.
05:05Now, going to the Pacific, we do have something to track here.
05:08In fact, there are a couple of disturbances.
05:10As the data loads, you can see water temps above average there along the equator of the Pacific.
05:15And we're tracking two high-likelihood areas of development, one of these far from land, another one that has yet
05:23to get going.
05:23This is probably going to be the first to go.
05:25This one will probably be the second to go.
05:27It's kind of still entering the bubble here south of Nicaragua and Guatemala and so forth.
05:32Water vapor loop.
05:33I plotted the western first one-to-go bubble on here showing all that moisture, but also some dry air
05:38to the west.
05:39And what we'll likely see out of this one after it organizes, high risk of organization for both of these
05:45systems.
05:45Let me get myself out of the way.
05:47I want to end with some model data here just briefly.
05:50Let's go to the Pacific right off the bat here.
05:52You can see likely that this first one spins up quickly, but will it make it to Hawaii?
06:00The answer is probably not.
06:01You can see the GFS takes it west, and then there's a bit of a roadblock.
06:05And here's why.
06:07It's in this area with less wind shear in the short term.
06:10This would be Thursday.
06:12As it moves deeper into the Pacific, it enters this area where there's just a strong headwind.
06:17And this is going to be Hawaii's protection with this one.
06:20So we're keeping an eye out for that.
06:21We're also going to be keeping an eye out for development a little bit farther down the line among this
06:26zone here south of Mexico.
06:28This will be the second probably to organize.
06:31And as we track that one, it'll be next week when that's more likely to organize.
06:36And it could drift north.
06:37It could drift north into far southeast Mexico.
06:40And conceivably, at least a fragment of that, could enter the Gulf from the land side.
06:45So that's your forecast feed for now.
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