By the weekend, a large area of disturbed weather (hefty easterly wave) in the central Atlantic had already separated into two distinct areas. The separation occurred in the middle of last week, and this from the same wave I first mentioned on October 1 when it was over Guinea. On Sunday afternoon, the western portion has been upgraded to TS Nana, the 14th named storm of the season. It never looked all that organized, but various satellite tools supported upgrading it. It has since been downgraded to a Depression, and the latest intensity is 30kts and 1007mb. It's located near 17N 40W and crawling WNW at 6kts.
http://einstein.atmos.colostate.edu/~mcnoldy/tropics/hovmoller/atlantic/
As of 15Z today, a new Tropical Depression formed in the eastern Caribbean Sea, between the Dominican Republic and Aruba. Intensity is 30kts and 1005mb, and is expected to strengthen as it heads generally NE over the next 5+ days. In the short term however, steering is virtually non-existent, so it should remain stationary or drift erratically until it gets picked up by an approaching trough in a couple days. It should pass over Puerto Rico on Wednesday evening, perhaps as a hurricane. If this seems like a strange track, it is! Typically, we think of a storm like this heading toward the Yucatan Peninsula or Cuba, but this late in the season, mid-latitude troughs can dig pretty far south and influence tropical cyclone tracks even at 15N. The next name on the list is Omar.
You can follow the storm on radar when it's close enough...
From Curacao: http://www.weather.an/sat_img/radar.asp#
or from Puerto Rico: http://radar.weather.gov/radar.php?rid=JUA&product=N0Z&overlay=11101111&loop=yes
Elsewhere, there's an interesting area of disturbed weather just east of Nicaragua. A large area of cloud tops to -70C (and some to -80C) are just 2-3 degrees offshore and the whole area is moving north. There's an embedded 1006mb Low. This will also be watched very closely... and should it also get named eventually, the name after Omar is Paloma.
Please visit my tropical Atlantic headquarters.
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