Tropical Storm Jerry to pass near Leeward Islands on Thursday night

Of the two areas of interest that I highlighted in my previous post last Friday, the one in the deep tropics formed and became Tropical Storm Jerry on Tuesday morning.  Jerry is the tenth named storm of the season.  The other area that was approaching Florida never did develop (and was not really expected to).

On Wednesday afternoon, Jerry is located about 600 miles east of the Leeward Islands and is cruising to the west-northwest at 23 mph. From the satellite image above, strong vertical shear is evident: the low-level center of circulation is exposed and off to the northwest of the coldest cloud tops (the dark red blob in the middle of the image). That northwesterly shear will only relax slightly in 1-3 days which is Jerry's opportunity to reach hurricane intensity.

A tropical storm watch is in effect for the northern Leewards, where tropical storm conditions could arrive on Thursday afternoon and then persist into the night as it makes its closest approach.

After that encounter, it should turn toward the north on Friday when it's forecast to intensify to the season's fifth hurricane. This will put Bermuda on alert... the island that just took a direct hit from Category 2 Hurricane Imelda last Wednesday.

If Jerry does indeed take this track, it would follow the large majority of previous storms this season -- I shared a track map of the season so far in Friday's post. It seems there's a primary reason for that. On the map below, I'm showing the surface pressure anomaly averaged over the August 1 - October 6 time period, and what really stands out is the Azores High has been stronger than normal, but also more condensed in the east-west direction. We see that area of below-average pressures between Bermuda and the U.S. east coast, and that has allowed long-track storms to turn north well before reaching the U.S. More commonly, the Azores High's influence extends further west toward Bermuda.

For some name history, Jerry is still an original name from the first set of six rotating lists... it first appeared on a list in 1983, so this would be its 8th incarnation, but the hypoactive 1983 season only reached the "D" name.  The tracks of the previous seven Jerrys are shown below just for reference. Jerry 2025's track will probably end up looking A LOT like Jerry 2019.

Elsewhere across the basin, things look quiet for the next several days, but when the time comes, the next name on the list is Karen (which is also an original name from the 1983 list).

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