Elsa Still Struggling, Splitting Goalposts between Jamaica & Cuba...

Tropical Storm Elsa has not gotten stronger today despite remaining on a track over open warm water.  NHC does not forecast her to regain hurricane strength since she will past over Cuba later tonight and on Monday.  Her past track has been very stable since forming back out over the Atlantic and now appears to begin her turn to the north.

The bottom two satellite views show the visible pic having a circular pattern that tropical system usually have.  However, look at the colorized infrared that has just a disorganized  clusters of storms well away from the center (arrow). The 4 PM NHC advisory has no surprises as they maintain their forecast track just off the west coast of Florida and then to the NE along the east coast re-emerging back out of water.

Note, once she clears the NC coast, her intensity should go back up to Tropical Storm strength.  The question to ask is...how close will Elsa come to the coast of New England?    They are in the left side of the error cone and she could bring impacts to the NE later next week.

We really were unlucky as the frontal boundary almost made it to us.  Just to our north are the 50s & 60s dew points that show where the good feeling air is.  We remain soupy with dew points in the mid 70s.

Draw a line on the radar from Hammond to Bogalusa and north of it there are no showers while scattered storms have bubbled up to the south.

We need to get this lingering frontal boundary to move away or dissipate and I'm thinking Elsa might be our friend.  As she tracks up Florida to our east, perhaps her circulation will drag down some drier air over us?  That would be nice.  The bottom graphic is NHC's predicted rainfall with 4-6" along Florida's west coast.  This is Florida's storm but we will just go back to our daily scattered storms for most of this week.

All the clouds and showers have kept us less hot.   The 7 day becomes pretty useless in the summer.  We know what to expect.  Hot, humid with spotty mainly daytime storms.  

Finally, I took this from Zack Fradella's morning weather program.  Many seasons with early storms usually end up with a very high number of named storms.  Elsa is # 5 which usually doesn't happen until the end of August!  Unless the MJO switches out of the favorable (rising air) phase, 20+ names will happen with no problem.  After Elsa, none of the models show any tropical activity for the next 10-14 days.  That's what we need, some quiet time.  Stay tuned!