Active Atlantic Basin but forecast models struggling with consistency so any tropical cyclone impacts on the USA remain unclear. hurricane recon aircraft to investigate wave east of the Lesser Antilles Tue. afternoon. A center of circulation is not well-defined, therefore the storm continues under investigation.
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If it is north of the Hispaniola, then it will have better chances of organizing and strengthening, feeding off the warm waters around the Bahamas and low wind shear.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center says the storm’s maximum sustained winds Thursday are near 70 miles per hour (110 kph) with a turn toward the west-northwest and a decrease in forward speed expected on Saturday.
“It appears more likely that the storm will reach Florida and then go poof over land, or reach Florida and then continue westward into the northeastern Gulf of Mexico”.
Check The Palm Beach Post radar map.
While no watches or warnings have been issued, forecasters say parts of Hispaniola, the Turks and Caicos, and the southeastern and central Bahamas should be on the lookout for flash floods and mudslides triggered by heavy rain and winds during the next couple of days.
But its lack of a defined center failed to earn it tropical status by the hurricane center. The long-range model has it moving northeast and becoming a tropical storm by around next weekend.
Wind shear is the change in direction/speed in height, it inhibits the storm from having a favorable developmental cycle by cutting the convection forming in the upper levels.
A NOAA P3 hurricane hunter aircraft and crew are investigating the storm this morning on a mission that left Tampa around 2 a.m.
The strong wave that moved off the coast of Africa over the weekend became tropical depression #7 Monday and is now tropical storm “Gaston”.
“As we get closer, we’ll know more”. “It’s a more complicated situation with the system not being developed and there is a lot of uncertainty”.
At 4:45 pm EDT Wednesday, 99L sprawled out over a area 1,000 miles across. The GFS model has finally re-entered the “game” as the model is trending toward a stronger system but is still over the place on its solution & definitely weaker than the European & several other models.
“Two of our three reliable models for predicting tropical genesis, the ECMWF and UKMET, continued to show development of 99L into a tropical storm by Friday in their latest 12Z Wednesday runs”, Masters wrote in a blog late Wednesday.
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During the first part of next week, a path north of Florida, just off the Atlantic coast of the United States is likely to be blocked, according to AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Bernie Rayno.
