Couple Waves in Eastern Atlantic Could Become Trouble Spots Later in the Week

The Atlantic wound down again with Fernand dissipating over Mexico on Monday afternoon. We are still looking for our first hurricane of the season. There have only been six depressions and six named storms with many of the storms being modest at best, and none have really impacted the United States. Keep in mind though that we didn’t get our first hurricane of the 2011 season until Hurricane Irene developed towards the end of August that year, and we all know how that turned out.

With that in mind, we take a look around the Atlantic tropics tonight. First, we’ll take a look at our most immediate concern, which is an area of disturbed weather off the coast of South Florida. The disturbance is a product of an upper level low along with a weak surface trough. As of right now, this area has the best chance of development, and that is not saying much. Pressures are still high in this area, which means that you don’t have enough rising air to create the type of thunderstorm development essential for tropical formation. No significant development is expected with this disturbance over the next 48 hours to 5 days.

Moving further to the east, we find that there are a couple areas of possible trouble on the horizon. There are two tropical waves in the Eastern Atlantic. One is several hundred miles to the west-southwest of the Cape Verde Islands while the other has just moved off the coast of Africa. Both of these waves currently have a low probability of developing over the next 48 hours, but their probabilities increase as we head further along in the week. Wave number one has a 30 percent chance of development over the next five days while wave number two has a 20 percent chance.

As we approach the Labor Day holiday and the end of meteorological summer, we also enter the peak of the Atlantic Hurricane Season with the classic Cape Verde storms more and more a possibility. The statistical peak of the Atlantic season falls on September 10th. So, despite the somewhat sluggish start to the season here in the Atlantic, nobody along the United States coastline from Maine to Texas is off the hook yet. There is still a lot of season left to produce just that one storm like Hurricane Andrew (1992), Hurricane Floyd (1999), Hurricane Katrina (2005), and Hurricane Sandy (2012). Hurricane season usually ends on November 30th.