No Sally Yet...

There's lots of  activity as we reach the peak of hurricane season with 2 Tropical Storms (Paulette & Rene) in the Atlantic and several other areas of interest.  Since the storms in the Atlantic will not head our way, I won't spend time on them.  However, the system coming off of Africa will be at a lower latitude and one model (GFS) actually brings it to the eastern Gulf in 2 weeks.

 On the other hand, the Euro model turns it northward into the Atlantic much like Paulette and Rene.   I still think this system will be named Sally, but it's way out there so we'll be watching it for many days.

Behind what might be Sally are 2 more waves that are heading to the west over Africa.  We need about another 2-3 weeks and we can start to forget about those long track Atlantic storms.  Right now NHC has highlighted 2 areas of interest closer to home giving the area east of the Bahamas the better chances for development.

The area moving into the Bahamas has a circular look, but I can't find any low level swirls.  NHC says it won't likely develop until in moves into the eastern Gulf on Saturday & Sunday.  Models are not showing any development and that's not surprising since the MJO remains in the unfavorable (sinking air) phase.

There appears to be a weak swirl (arrow) west of Tampa Bay at the base of an old frontal boundary across the eastern Gulf.   This deep tropical moisture will head westward bringing us an increase in rain chances for Friday and Saturday.  IF the disturbance over the Bahamas starts to develop once over the eastern Gulf on Saturday, we could see a brief break in the rain chances before they go back up for next week.  The cold front got close, but it has stalled to the west of Houston.  As I said this morning, rainfall for the next 5-7 days could be 3-5", but if spread out over many days, that should not cause major problems.

The stalled upper low centered over Utah & Colorado has cleared the air over much of the western states.  however, many major fires continue burning and the smoke is extreme in California & Oregon.  Note how far out over the Pacific the smoke plume extends.  Pray for your friends out west that their rainy season gets an early start.  Stay tuned!