Waiting For Tropical Activity, Muggies Return, Not Done With Summer Yet.

On this 60th anniversary of Hurricane Betsy, the Tropics worldwide remain asleep.  Betsy ('65) & Camille ('69) were the two storms everyone remembered when I arrived in NOLA back in 1978.  Unfortunately, many of those folks who weathered those storms have passed, taking away valuable experiences that were learned.   Satellite views back then were primitive, and the track of Betsy was plotted from Recon data.  She looked like she made the turn to the north away from the United States, but she made a small loop and headed back towards Florida.

As you can see, Betsy brushed South Florida and headed over the "loop current" (warmest waters), strengthening to a Cat. 3 Hurricane.  Fortunately, we have no Betsy-type storm anywhere on the planet this year.  However, that might be changing for the second half of September.  Here's two graphics from Weather Bell Analytics.  The top shows vertical velocities sinking (brown color) over our part of the Atlantic Basin for the next 7 days.

The bottom view has a flip-flop with rising air (green color) moving over us, the Caribbean & Atlantic.  Will that happen?  Don't know since it's just a model forecast, and models have been struggling with developing systems this summer.  Take the GFS.  The top graphic is yesterday's run, valid for September 20th, with a storm right over us.

The bottom view is today's GFS morning run.  Poof! Nothing is there.  My take is this.  The longer we can go with quiet, the better, since the peak of the Hurricane Season is tomorrow & the closer to October, the better, as cold fronts will start coming.  My fear is this year's season will not get cranking until the last week in September, lasting into the first 3 weeks of October.  It's what we talk about on my new podcast at bobbreck.com.

You can subscribe for $2/month and I will have some high-profile guests to announce shortly.  But you won't hear or see them unless you subscribe.  Currently, NHC has no areas to watch.

I always find something to point out.  We have two swirls showing up.  The one out in the Atlantic is at a low latitude, and no model develops it.  The other swirl is an upper low in the Caribbean interacting with a tropical wave.  Again, models don't develop it.  We still have a boundary along the East Coast into the Gulf.

A small rotation remains west of Tampa, and radar is indicating some heavy rains drenching much of central & south Florida.  For us, the muggies are back with local storms.

Today's storms are triggered by daytime heating as highs were back 90+. I don't see another front coming anytime soon, as the upper dip over the East Coast has lifted out.

So if you thought we were done with summer,  not happening this week.  Stay tuned!