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AccuWeather's Bernie Rayno explains the key factors into developing homegrown tropical systems, which typically occur in the southwestern Atlantic, the northwestern Caribbean and the Gulf of America.
Transcript
00:00All right, it's time for our WeatherWise segment where we take something complicated
00:06in the field of meteorology and make it easy to understand. We're talking about homegrown
00:11development in the tropics. Tropical development occurring close to the United States. This
00:17usually includes the Southwest Atlantic, the Gulf of America, and also the Northwest Caribbean.
00:23Now, that happens when you get an interaction between the jet stream and the tropics. That's
00:28what we're seeing here where we go into this weekend. You see that dip in the jet stream
00:33here? What that does is it starts to process for showers and thunderstorms here. And when
00:39you look at where you see development during the month of July, where do you see it? In
00:45those three basins, Gulf of America and also Northwest Caribbean, and then off the southeast
00:51coast of the United States. By the way, this area in here across the eastern part of the
00:56Caribbean. This is late in the month of July. The early part of the month has the development
01:02close to the United States. So homegrown development. How does it occur? Dips in the jet stream coming
01:09on south. We're seeing that this weekend. And what happens is as that occurs, you bring
01:15fronts and upper lows into these warm waters. What does that do? It allows showers and thunderstorms
01:21to develop. Now, those showers and thunderstorms must sit over these open waters for at least
01:2748 hours and able to develop. So that area of low pressure forms and then slowly but surely
01:34it turns into a tropical system. You don't typically get development, though, farther out into the
01:40Atlantic because of all of the wind shears. So again, homegrown development. You see it during
01:46the months of June and July. And now you know.

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