Eyes shift to southern Gulf of Mexico for next potential storm

Fay and Hanna have dissipated, and the Atlantic will be quiet for a week or so, then the long-range models begin hinting at something brewing in the Bay of Campeche in the southern Gulf of Mexico. If this ends up developing into the ninth named storm, the next name on the list is Isaias. But it's a looong way off.

As of the Wednesday morning cycle, the 1000-member Google Deepmind ensemble gives this a 27% chance of becoming a tropical storm late next week, and of those members, they show a 60% chance of it becoming the season's first hurricane and even a 22% chance of reaching major hurricane intensity (Cat3+). Other AI and conventional ensembles agree with a decent chance of something forming here in 7-10 days. There's a LOT of uncertainty of course, but the signal in the models is there.

Image from https://tcatlas.org/realtime_ir.html

This area is not as favored for development in early October.as one might think, at least for storms that eventually reach hurricane intensity. The last one that did so was Milton in 2024, then Roxanne in 1995, then Fern in 1967. It's a very short list.

Just for curiosity's sake, I ran some preliminary homogeneous track and intensity verification statistics on the meager activity so far this season. This covers Arthur through Hanna, and you can see on the charts that there are actually ZERO 5-day (120-hour) verification times, but it's what we've got. All six of the 4-day (96-hour) verifying forecasts come from Fay.

For track, the Google Deepmind ensemble mean (GDMI) leads the pack overall, then it gets a bit more noisy. The National Hurricane Center's forecasts (OFCL) were very closely aligned with GDMI except for the six forecasts for Fay when the model was superior.

For intensity, it's definitely a mixed bag, but the thing I see is the two consensus aides, HCCA and IVCN, did the best overall. The Google Deepmind ensemble mean was quite good too, but lost a little bit of ground on the 4-day forecasts of Fay. Also worth noting is that the HWRF hurricane model (HWFI) beat the NHC's average forecast error at every lead time -- none of the other hurricane models did that (HMNI, HFAI, HFBI, CTCI).

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Fay lingers, Gonzalo dissipates, Hanna forms

The title of the post makes it sounds like there is a lot of activity.  There isn't.

Fay is a stubborn tropical depression that isn't strengthening or weakening, Gonzalo dissipated about 1.5 days after it formed, and Hanna formed on Monday morning in the north-central Atlantic. It too is forecast to dissipate within a couple of days.

Image from https://www.polarwx.com/tropical/

There is no hint of real activity in the long-range models, so we will likely make it well into October without a single hurricane, and then the odds start dwindling quickly if the Caribbean is shut down due to the El Niño-induced strong vertical wind shear there.

It would be unprecedented in the satellite era and even in the past century to have a hurricane season with no hurricanes. In the past century (1926-2025) the fewest number of hurricanes in a season is two, and that happened in 1930, 1982, and 2013. Among those three years, only 1982 and 2013 were during the more reliable satellite era. So even if this season manages to crank out a single hurricane, it would still be a record.

Just to provide some additional context, the record number of hurricanes in a season is 15, and the average is 7. Today is actually the climatological date of the 5th hurricane formation.

The track map through today is shown below, keeping in mind that Fay and Hanna are still active tropical cyclones... barely.

Whenever the next storm forms, the next name on the list is Isaias. In 2020, the last time this list of names was used, Isaias formed on July 30.

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September will end and still no hurricane this season

There's not too much to report in this post, so it will be brief. Fay is a dissipating tropical depression, and since my last post on Thursday, Gonzalo formed and dissipated near Cabo Verde.

12-hour infrared satellite animation from September 26.

Gonzalo was the 7th named storm of the season, though it only lasted for two days. In fact, there have been named storms for a TOTAL of 13.25 "named storm days" this season, which is 27% of average for the date.

Amazingly, the hurricane drought continues with nothing in the foreseeable future.  No hurricane season has gotten this far along without a hurricane in the past century, and during the more reliable satellite era (mid-1970s), the previous record latest first hurricane formation was September 11.

With both Fay and Gonzalo active as tropical storms on September 25, it became the most active day of the entire season so far, in terms of both named storm activity and Accumulated Cyclone Energy. The ACE is up to 10.4% of average for the date. If nothing forms in the meantime, it will slip to 9% of average on October 8.

Looks like I picked an easy year as my final year for writing this blog!

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