Season's first hurricane may develop next week

AccuWeather

AccuWeather's lead hurricane expert, Alex DaSilva, explains how conditions could be favorable for the season's first hurricane to develop over the next few days.

Transcript

00:00getting ready for our first hurricane of the hurricane season. Joining me

00:04right now is Accuweather lead hurricane expert Alex DeSilva. Alex, let's get

00:09straight out to the satellite picture here. We'll begin with the infrared

00:13satellite picture. And certainly when we put this things put this in the

00:17motion, clearly this is getting better organized. Explain. It certainly is

00:23Bernie. And you know what? This is the end of june. And typically we really

00:26don't look this far out in the Atlantic to see development. However,

00:30a robust wave came off of Africa a couple of days ago. It's in a pretty

00:34good environment right now. And we've seen this thing uh escalate here over

00:38the last 24 hours. And by the way, if this thing develops today, this would

00:42be one of the earliest systems to develop this far east that we've ever

00:46seen. Let's take a look at the water vapor loop. Of course, we always look

00:50at two things. You talked about the water temperature. That's not a

00:53problem. Plenty warm enough. It's almost Alex and we've seen systems like

00:58this before. It almost as if it is pushing the dry air away and creating

01:04its own little area for development. Yeah, these things can certainly create

01:09their own environment. They can kind of create like a bubble around them and

01:12you see the clockwise flow at the top of the storm there. Those are the high

01:16cirrus clouds that essentially shoves any dry air away from the storm. And

01:20we're seeing that right now. Now I want to point your attention here to that

01:23area that dip in the jet stream to the northwest of the storm. We call that an

01:27upper level trough. Now, wind shear 95% of the time is bad for these tropical

01:33systems because it can share them apart. However, if this area of sheer kind of

01:39lifts to the north at the right timing, it can actually help to vent the system

01:44and strengthen the system before it gets to the islands. We've seen this a

01:47couple of times. The closest example I can think is back to Hurricane Lee. A

01:52couple of years ago, we saw this thing, um, you know, you know, vent the

01:56tropical system and it rapidly intensify. I'm not saying that's what's

01:59gonna happen here because it's all has to do with the timing of how when the

02:02storm gets there. But this is something we're gonna definitely have to watch.

02:06You mentioned that I've noticed this and this has been very persistent that

02:10trough or that the tuttegees called it or trough lifting to the north. I want

02:14you to see this as we go in the wind shear here. First of all, let's take a

02:20look. Water temperatures there are plenty warm enough. Alex, we've been

02:23talking about that over the last couple of days. But here's what's happening.

02:27Watch that dark purple area. Here's where we are on friday. We're gonna

02:31play this through and then you know, by saturday and sunday, your concern is

02:36being justified as we take a look at that wind shear, that light purple

02:40starting to get right toward the islands by sunday. Yeah, you can see

02:44that dark blue kind of lifting to the north again. That is that area that dip

02:48in the jet stream, lifting to the north, giving this thing potentially a

02:51pocket of very favorable winds to work with before it gets to the islands.

02:55Right now we're forecasting it to be a tropical storm by the time it gets to

02:58the islands. But I am growing more and more concerned that if this trough

03:02lifts out at the right time, this thing could intensify into a hurricane before

03:06reaching those islands. Now it's early in the game, Alex, but given the

03:09weather pattern that we see this big upper level high across the Atlantic,

03:13we could start ruling out some areas along in the United States for impacts

03:18from this system. Yeah, I think the east coast is pretty much in the clear.

03:22You never want to completely clear them, but right now it does look like an area

03:25of high pressure is going to build in off the southeast coast and essentially

03:29just keep this thing trucking on to the west. Now, once it gets to the western

03:33caribbean, it could move up into the gulf of Mexico, but it could also be

03:37shoved into central America. We're just going to have to see how exactly that

03:41high pressure plays out again. That's more than seven days away still. So

03:46some concerns here. Here's the accurate eyepath. By the way, we're the

03:49only ones that are showing an eyepath this early. Notice that we use models

03:53here to forecast the weather. The models don't do the forecasting. Alex,

03:58you're concerned that that eight a.m. Point on monday could be a hurricane.

04:03Absolutely. We're gonna have to watch this very, very closely here over the

04:06next couple of days.

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