00:00This time of the year, the Atlantic typically heats up. In fact, two-thirds of all tropical
00:03activity in the Atlantic Basin happens between August 20th and October 10th. So around September,
00:10plus 10 days on the bookends of that month, approximately. And we're into that window of
00:15time here. In fact, we're within about the top 40 to 45 days of tropical activity, typically,
00:20in the Atlantic Basin. We're watching one beefy tropical wave that will have some obstacles in
00:25its path. But also, there are some large patches across the Atlantic where there's limited wind
00:30shear and a little more moisture presence. So here's the tropical wave, and we're watching this
00:35one. It moved west of Africa a bit ago, and it's going to continue on its journey west.
00:39We will continue to track this one as it moves through an area of less wind shear for a short
00:46time before another zone of stronger wind shear materializes. We'll look at that in a few seconds.
00:51But overall, look at this. A lot of dry air on the northwestern fringe of this storm system.
00:56A whole lot of dry air. There's not much cloud cover out there. And a better
00:59assessment of the nature of that air mass is with the water vapor loop. This is giving us the
01:04x-ray of the atmosphere, and there's a lot of yellow here in a broad zone here across the Atlantic.
01:12And some of this, again, this is very dry. I'm going to just put some streaks through it so you
01:16can see
01:16more clearly. This is where we're going to see a few hurdles for the storm,
01:20but also zones of stronger wind shear will be a concern as well. So we have dry air for some,
01:26also some patches of wind shear. The deep purple on the map is where we have very strong wind shear,
01:31and that is where there would be disruptive flow in the ambient winds of the atmosphere,
01:36keeping this lopsided. Now, there is also kind of a brick wall for a chunk of the western Atlantic as
01:43you get closer to the Caribbean. And for now, lots of wind shear across the Caribbean as well. But on
01:48the
01:48other hand, we're going to go back to green here, there are areas of slightly more favorable,
01:53less wind shear, and a bigger patch of less wind shear that could open the door once again if the
01:59dry air doesn't prevent it from organizing into the west central Atlantic. So we want to take a look at
02:05some of these computer models and so forth. And here you can see the GFS. And to give you a
02:12sense of
02:12what we're looking at here, I think you can see the U.S. pretty well here, Florida and so forth,
02:17and
02:18east coast. There's Africa off to the east. But this zone of stronger lift in the atmosphere,
02:26and we're actually looking at vorticity spin in the atmosphere. That's producing some lift. That's
02:31our disturbance. That's our tropical wave. So we can track this. You can see that it remains fairly
02:36ill-focused into Friday. But you might remember that under the belly of this ridge to the north,
02:42big ridge of the Bermuda Azores High, there's a zone of less wind shear for a time, but it remains
02:48fairly disorganized here at this point as we're moving through the west central Atlantic into Friday
02:53evening and Friday night. And then you can see a chunk of this begins to tighten up a little bit
02:58after crossing an area of limited wind shear. But then it enters the area of, again, some more wind
03:04shear off to the west. So kind of alternating zones of wind shear and less wind shear, dry air, and
03:10then
03:10a little bit less dry air. So the door opens and closes. But you can see Sunday night into Monday,
03:15we may be dealing with a tropical depression, perhaps a tropical storm, near the northern Lesser Antilles,
03:20the Leeward Islands. And as we move forward in time, that would encounter some extra wind shear again.
03:25Remember, there's a wall of wind shear out that way. And it may fracture where a chunk of the energy
03:31from that storm may pull north, a chunk of it may make it farther west. And if it survives that
03:36time,
03:38we could be dealing with a system somewhere near the southeast coast. In the GFS depiction of this,
03:44it would not be much of a threat. We would have some residual circulation near the Straits of Florida,
03:50some, again, some of the circulation from another tropical wave may be a little bit north of the
03:55Greater Antilles. And you have this big trough off the east coast that would scoop some of the
04:02residual circulation away to the north if a fragment of that drifts north. Let's go to the European.
04:07The European model, again, it fractures it and it really doesn't organize swiftly. But then we have
04:13this area of circulation that would be broad and not very focused near the Lesser Antilles,
04:19really the Leeward Islands, the northern Lesser Antilles. So here would be 8 p.m. Sunday in the
04:24GFS, 8 p.m. Sunday in the European. Pretty good agreement that something is going to be in that area.
04:29And then we have questions. We got questions about will it move west or could it be really just eroded
04:35away into basically the paper shredder of wind shear. And the European does not hold it together
04:42much. We got just too much wind shear out here. And again, there won't be a whole lot of wind
04:48shear,
04:48but it'd be enough to disorganize it. The AI version of the GFS has kind of an interesting scenario where
04:53we follow that system similar in location Sunday night. And this actually continues to hold a remnant
05:01of that intact. And you can see there's some energy over the area around the Bahamas and Cuba
05:08around Wednesday night of next week with the AI sibling to the GFS. And that could be a concern.
05:13I don't want to lock, again, this particular model into saying Florida would be the impact,
05:19but it just opens the door for some aspect of this to be somewhere near the broader southeast coast,
05:25whether it's the Carolinas or Florida. The AI is hinting at that. And then here's the Canadian
05:29where Sunday night, very similar agreement. I think there's great agreement. This is going to be near
05:34the Lesser Antilles on Sunday evening, whether it's a depression or not at that time. And then the
05:40Canadian keeps it farther south. And you can see a lingering aspect of this strong tropical wave
05:47or perhaps a depression could be near the Straits of Florida. So we need to keep an eye on that
05:51whole
05:51zone. And you can see as we carry it out through Labor Day weekend, some activity in the GFS near
05:58Florida. The European is shredded away. The AI version of the GFS, there it is trying to round
06:03the bend somewhere near Georgia, South Carolina coast. And also the Canadian, this little swirl of
06:10trouble near South Florida would be seeded by this tropical disturbance.
06:15Now I'm going to briefly show you the precipitable water. This is the moisture content in the
06:20atmosphere. And again, we've got some dry air in the path of the storm, but there's less green and
06:25a little more yellow. The green is actually dry and the yellow and orange, more moisture out there.
06:31So there's going to be a fork in the road here as we move forward. And whether a part of
06:37this gets
06:38shredded away by wind shear or drifts north and gets fractured, the fork in the road after the point
06:44of good agreement would be at the end of next weekend after it's near the Lesser Antilles.
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