00:00Tropical storm Dolly has formed.
00:02This storm is going to be one that has a bit of a bumpy road ahead, and there may be
00:07almost
00:07like a play, two totally separate acts to its life cycle.
00:12The one that we're most confident in is act number one, a lot of questions whether Dolly
00:17could perhaps ramp back up after battling a lot of wind shear this weekend.
00:23We expect that Dolly in the current iteration of this storm may only be with us as a tropical
00:29storm for a few days before some of the environmental factors around it take their toll on this
00:35storm.
00:36So Dolly formed at officially 11 a.m. Eastern Time this Thursday, and you can see it's a
00:41pesky system that will continue to move west through parts of the Atlantic.
00:47But as we take you into the current status, these are the numbers from 5 o'clock Eastern
00:53Time.
00:54And one thing that strikes me is it's really cruising west quickly at 24 miles per hour.
01:00Pretty swift motion to the west.
01:02And take a look at this.
01:04We have a lot of wind shear ahead of us with this storm.
01:08So the white zones and the lighter lavender shades are where we have limited wind shear.
01:13You can see that from the current storm's position, and even east of there where it came from, there's
01:18been limited wind shear, and that allowed it to organize a bit.
01:21But there is a lot of wind shear in two stripes.
01:24One moderate wind shear to the west of the storm in the next day or two.
01:30And then it'll be moving through an area with limited wind shear, but dry air.
01:33But then you'll notice as we get closer to the Eastern Caribbean and across the Central
01:38Caribbean, look at that.
01:39Strong wind shear.
01:40It's going to enter that zone in the northeastern fringe of the Caribbean through an area of
01:44very strong wind shear.
01:46So that's going to be a prohibitive factor here for this storm for a time as we track
01:53this storm that continues to move eventually to the west.
01:56And we're going to be dealing with this again as I'm going to bring this graphic back up
02:00here.
02:00I wanted to tell us straight on it here.
02:02This is the zone where we suspect it may enter that area as a tropical storm, but not
02:09leave that area as a tropical storm.
02:10I think that's going to be the zone where it becomes what we will call a tropical rainstorm.
02:15Now, there's another inhibiting factor in the path of this storm is in the form of some
02:20dry air.
02:21So while there's just modest wind shear over the next day or two, the next day, day and
02:26a half, some dry air may argue against any significant strengthening.
02:30I suspect it'll maintain its intensity as a tropical storm through that time.
02:34And our forecast team agrees with that.
02:36So you can see that we're dealing with a tropical storm tomorrow morning, 8 a.m. Friday,
02:418 a.m. Saturday, still probably a tropical storm.
02:43But remember, there was this ribbon, in fact, I can draw it on here, of some strong wind
02:49shear in this band that covers most of the Caribbean.
02:53But remember, there's that zone of stronger wind shear.
02:56And that's going to take it down from a tropical storm.
02:58This is our tropical rainstorm symbol, where we believe this is still worth tracking.
03:05And, you know, I learned a lot working with Bernie, worked with him for nine years.
03:08He's been here since 1990, I believe, at AccuWeather.
03:11And one of his rules of thumb is for a tropical system that's approaching land, we track it
03:16until it either totally dissipates or it moves over the continent.
03:21And islands are not big enough to totally disrupt it in terms of we're not going to track it
03:26anymore.
03:26So until this totally disorganizes, we're going to continue to track this.
03:31So one thing we could take to the bank this weekend, it will be tracking west through the
03:35Leeward Islands, probably as a tropical storm initially, and then as a tropical rainstorm.
03:41When the National Hurricane Center may say that it dissipated, we're going to still track
03:45the residual circulation because it may reorganize off to the west.
03:50We're going to talk about the fork in the road.
03:52So we're going to look at winds of 40 to 60 miles per hour, we're looking at rainfall
03:56of two to four inches through this area, and the impacts through the Caribbean will be pretty
04:03modest.
04:04We're going to go with an AccuWeather real impact scale rating of less than one.
04:07So it's not going to outpunch its weight class as a tropical storm as it enters, and it will
04:12probably weaken because of wind shear.
04:15With all that said, I want to bring up some modeling here, and this is what we're looking
04:19at.
04:21There is some question as to what happens with this storm after it enters the Caribbean.
04:27There it is in the GFS Sunday evening.
04:31Here it is in the European Sunday evening.
04:33Here it is in the Canadian Sunday evening.
04:35Here it is in the UK Met, another model from across the pond, Sunday evening.
04:41Here it is in the AI version of the GFS Sunday evening, and the European Sunday evening.
04:45Very good agreement that it will, at least as a rainstorm or as a true tropical storm, enter
04:51that area, and then watch what happens.
04:53The paths begin to diverge.
04:55We can track the GFS.
04:58It really fractures apart.
05:00It really fractures apart.
05:01But, but, as we take you into late next week, watch this, it'll be under the belly of a ridge
05:08of high pressure, another Bernie rule.
05:10Look under the belly of a ridge for a zone of more limited wind shear, and there may be
05:15less wind shear specifically under the belly of that ridge.
05:19And you know, we're going to be dealing with a system that may enter the Gulf and probably
05:24would not organize.
05:25But here's the European.
05:27Moves farther west.
05:27Moves farther west.
05:30Disorganized.
05:31But look at this.
05:31This may have caught your eye.
05:32The Canadian.
05:33Here we begin to spin back up as it would approach southeast Florida next Thursday, Friday.
05:40So this scenario would bring a remnant of former Tropical Storm Dolly.
05:44We'd be calling it a rainstorm during this period of lack of organization.
05:48It could spin back up.
05:49Here is the UK Met.
05:51And the UK Met actually is faster to spin it up.
05:54I'm a little suspicious that it would be this strong over the Turks and Caicos in the Bahamas.
05:58That'd be a hurricane there.
06:00I suspect we're going to see more weakening.
06:01Here is the AI GFS.
06:04Washes it out.
06:05And here's the European version.
06:07The AI sibling to the European.
06:09Pretty disorganized.
06:10So we need to keep an eye on a zone late next week where there would be limited wind shear.
06:16Limited wind shear.
06:17Stronger shear to the south, but limited wind shear to the north.
06:21Here's the UK Met.
06:23Less wind shear to the north.
06:26And again, we're going to play this here with this final graphic to summarize some of the
06:31things I was talking about.
06:33This is our updated graphic illustrating the fork in the road.
06:37If it can get to this spot north of Hispaniola, there's going to be less wind shear.
06:42If it stays south, too much land interaction, probably too much wind shear, and that would
06:46be the end of it.
06:47So we still need to watch this in the days to come.
06:49Good luck.
06:49Good luck.
06:49Good luck.
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