Two features of interest in this post: Tropical Storm Fay and Invest 90L -- which has a shot as becoming the next named storm, Gonzalo.Since my previous post on Monday, Fay actually dissipated on Tuesday afternoon and then regenerated on Wednesday afternoon. It's currently a tropical storm located about 1000 miles west-southwest of the Azores and moving slowly toward the west. It could intensify slightly today, but is not expected to get close to hurricane intensity, before it starts weakening again.
Fay is expected to dissipate, again, on Saturday. We'll see if it sticks this time.
Elsewhere, Invest 90L is the wave I discussed in Monday's post. It is currently just barely off the African coast, southeast of the Cabo Verde Islands and is forecast to move toward the northwest in the coming days.
In a normal year, these large robust tropical waves would be cause for potential concern in 10-14 days on the other side of the Atlantic basin, but this is not one of those years, thanks to the developing very strong El Niño which has suppressed activity across the deep tropics so far this season.
This has pretty decent model support to develop into the next named storm, Gonzalo, rather soon. After that, dry air and vertical wind shear will start to impact it and it could dissipate later in the weekend. There is no model support for it reaching hurricane intensity, which means the record hurricane drought in the Atlantic continues.
Fay's resurgence has nudged the Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) up to 8% of average for the date... still a record-low value for this point in the season by a big margin during the reliable satellite era (mid-1970s). Prior to the satellite era when some activity was certainly missed, only three years were lower: 1914, 1907, and 1905.
No comments:
Post a Comment