Cape Verde Season Beginning To Hit Its Stride

It might be a good thing that I began firing up articles in the blog at hurricaneville.com again in the past week.  Not only have we seen three named storms develop in the last seven days, but there are more disturbances on the way, especially across the Sahel or sub-Sahara region of  Africa.

Besides a formidable tropical wave in the Central Atlantic, there is perhaps the strongest wave to date this season in the Atlantic Basin in the Eastern Atlantic.  The wave had departed from the West African coast on Thursday, and immediately drew attention from the National Hurricane Center.  The latest wave in the Eastern Atlantic may just be the tip of the iceberg as the Weather Channel indicated that more waves were lining up behind it across Africa.

According to the latest Tropical Weather Outlook from the NHC on Friday, both the waves in the Central and Eastern Atlantic have medium chances to developing into a tropical cyclone in the next 48 hours.  The wave in the Central Atlantic is located some 800 miles to the East of the Lesser Antilles, and is moving Westward at 20 miles per hour.  The wave is becoming better organized, and environmental conditions are slowly more favorable to development.  Probability of tropical cyclogenesis over the next 48 hours is 40 percent.

Meanwhile, the wave in the Eastern Atlantic is associated with a broad low that is becoming better organized.  Located some 175 miles to the Southeast of the Cape Verde Islands, the low is producing a large amount of showers and thunderstorms, and upper level dynamics are becoming more favorable for development over the next couple days.  Heading to the Northwest to West-Northwest at 10 to 15 miles per hour, the wave has been given a probability of 50 percent of becoming a depression or storm in the next 48 hours.

There are bigger concerns further to the east though as we have four distinct areas of disturbed weather pushing westward toward the Atlantic across the Sub-Sahara region of Africa.  The most immediate threat of these thunderstorm clusters is spreading showers and storms across Mauritania, Mali, and Burkina Faso.  Further to the east, there is another area  of showers and storms moving across Southwestern Niger and northern portions of Benin and Togo.  

An even larger thunderstorm cluster is off further to the east over Western Sudan, Chad, the Central African Republic, and Cameroon.  Finally, we have scattered showers and storms spreading throughout much of Ethiopia into Eastern Sudan.  As we move into the Cape Verde Season and the peak of the Atlantic Hurricane Season, the African Pipeline appears to be hitting stride just in time.