Hurricane Kirk strengthens, Tropical Storm Leslie strengthens, Gulf still unsettled

I intentionally mimicked the post's title from two days ago because almost nothing has changed since then.  Kirk has intensified more as expected, becoming the season's 3rd major hurricane on Thursday (it's not impossible that it clips Category 5 intensity today).  TD13 was upgraded to Tropical Storm Leslie on Wednesday night and it's still following in Kirk's footsteps. And, the mess in the Gulf of Mexico is still a mess with a very uncertain future.

On Friday morning, Kirk is a Category 4 hurricane located about 1000 miles northeast of the Windward Islands.

It will remain over the open ocean for the next 5-6 days and then will approach the British Isles and northern France where fairly major impacts are expected.  It may not technically be classified as a hurricane anymore by then, but it will still be a potent extratropical cyclone bringing destructive winds, heavy rain, and huge surf on Thursday-Friday of next week... similar to Lorenzo in October 2019.

As I pointed out on Wednesday morning, the wave field from Kirk will spread throughout the Atlantic, reaching the U.S. east coast on Sunday, resulting in elevated high tides and increased risks of coastal flooding and erosion.

Tropical Storm Leslie is also forecast to remain in the central Atlantic, and follow right behind Kirk, with a five-day lag.  It should reach hurricane intensity this weekend, and possibly major hurricane intensity early next week.

Then, there's the broad disturbance in the Gulf of Mexico that we've been watching since at least last Thursday. There's not much to look at right now, but NHC is giving it a 40% probability of becoming a tropical cyclone within a week, and the models are still pretty scattered about what to do with it.  

There's general agreement that it will begin to drift east toward the Florida peninsula, with rainfall beginning on Sunday and lasting for days.  It could develop into a tropical or subtropical depression or storm by then, but wind will not be the primary hazard from this; it will be rain.  Several models are now showing a weak low pressure center over south or central Florida on Tuesday into Wednesday, possibly a low-end tropical storm.  The next name on the list is Milton.

The WPC's latest 7-day rainfall forecast is shown below, and it will evolve, but the entire peninsula should be paying attention to this in the coming days -- not just for the flooding potential, but the small chance that it intensifies more than models are currently showing.

For an update on the season's Accumulated Cyclone Energy, through today the 2024 season is at about 95% of average and climbing.  It will cross back above average this weekend.  In terms of storm counts, we've now had 12 named storms, 7 hurricanes, and 3 major hurricanes.  The average number by this date is 11, 5, and 2.

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