Watching northern Gulf of Mexico for tropical development

Over the past several days, a persistent blob of disturbed weather has been drifting westward across Florida and is now centered over the northeast Gulf of Mexico.  The National Hurricane Center has had this in their outlook since Wednesday morning. Now tagged as Invest 91L, this disturbance is likely to become Tropical Depression 2 soon, or perhaps Tropical Storm Bertha.

It is forecast to track generally westward across the Gulf over the next 5 or so days, sticking very close to the coastline.

The water temperature under and ahead of the disturbance is quite warm (almost record warm for the date), with anomalies up to 2°C at its current location.

https://bmcnoldy.earth.miami.edu/tropics/sectors/

This system does not have a lot water to work with, nor a lot of time over open water, so significant development is very unlikely, but that won't stop it from producing a lot of rain near and over the northern Gulf coast. This map shows the 5-day accumulated rainfall forecast, and although the heaviest totals are shown over water, it wouldn't take much of a nudge from this to place those higher values over land.

Climatologically, the second named storm forms on July 15, so if this manages to become Tropical Storm Bertha, it would be very close to average in the season.

Stay tuned to https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/ for updates and new watches and warnings.

Finally, thank you to all of the people who contacted me after my previous post announcing that this would be my final year of writing these posts... 1996-2026. I really appreciate the outpouring of kind words, especially from those who have been following for the whole three decades!

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