Much like last year, the deep tropical Atlantic isn't waiting until August to wake up. If you recall, Bret and Cindy both formed east of the Lesser Antilles in June last year... we haven't had the B or C storms yet this year, but that could soon change. (by the way, the next two names on this year's list are Beryl and Chris.)
There are three features of interest peppered across the deep tropics: Invest 94L is located in the far western Caribbean, Invest 95L is located about 1500 miles east of the Windward Islands, and an untagged disturbance is just east of that and is located about 2400 miles east of the Windward Islands. As of Friday morning, the National Hurricane Center is giving these a 30%, 90%, and 20% chance of development within the week. Invest 95L is poised to become Tropical Storm Beryl this weekend, if not sooner.
If you're thinking this seems like a lot of activity to watch in the tropics for June, you'd be right.
Something that is catching a lot of attention is the ocean heat content (OHC) averaged across the Main Development Region (MDR) -- the MDR term was defined about three decades ago to be the slice of the Atlantic from 10-20°N and stretching from Central America to Africa, and it is where the vast majority of major hurricanes develop. The ocean heat content is a measure of the heat stored through a depth of the ocean, as opposed to the sea surface temperature which as the term implies, is only at the surface. Alarmingly, as of today, the MDR-averaged ocean heat content is not only a record for the date again, it's where it typically would be during the first week of September. This means the ocean out there already thinks it's the peak of hurricane season, yet it's more than two months away.
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| https://bmcnoldy.earth.miami.edu/tropics/ohc/ |
I'll first focus on Invest 95L, or soon-to-be-Beryl. This is a potent easterly wave that exited the African coast on June 25 and has been cruising westward at 15-20 mph. It will continue to track westward and will reach the Lesser Antilles on Monday, likely as a hurricane. For reference, the climatological date of first hurricane formation is August 11.
As Michael Lowry recently pointed out on Twitter, the only other time a storm became a hurricane east of the Caribbean during June was in 1933, the all-time blockbuster hurricane season.
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| https://twitter.com/MichaelRLowry/status/1806172822370226218 |
Once this enters the Caribbean on Monday, there's high confidence it will continue westward through the Caribbean, reaching Central America or the Yucatan Peninsula next Friday. In global model ensembles, there are a few outliers that take it further north, but the trend has been whittling away at those outliers.
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| http://arctic.som.ou.edu/tburg/products/realtime/tropical/ |
Invest 94L will pass over the Yucatan Peninsula later today and into Saturday, then emerge into the Bay of Campeche where it will have about one day to develop. While development into a tropical cyclone is unlikely, it will be a major rain producer in the same areas that got a lot of rain from Alberto a couple weeks ago as it movers ashore near Tampico, Mexico on Sunday evening into Monday.
The easterly wave that's east of Invest 95L is somewhat favored to develop by the global models, and it's also likely to track west toward the Lesser Antilles, reaching the islands just a couple days after it (Wednesday or so). Their proximity to each other complicates the forecast, so for now, it would be prudent to see what 95L does before looking too close at what this will do. Furthermore, there is a large Saharan dust plume immediately north of these two features, so that could also play a big role if any of the dry dusty air gets ingested into their circulations.
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| Enhanced satellite image of the Atlantic showing clouds in gray and dry/dusty air in shades of yellow to red. |
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