Tracking chances for tropical development

AccuWeather

AccuWeather's Alex DaSilva was live on the AccuWeather Network on July 10 to discuss the chances of tropical development.

Transcript

00:00Outside we go right now to Panama City Beach of Florida. Things pretty quiet here and of course

00:04tropical systems also are heavy rain producers and flash flood producers as well. So we always

00:12want to keep an eye out and keep our eye ahead to see what's brewing in the Atlantic Basin. With that

00:18joining us right now is AccuWeather lead hurricane expert Alex DeSilva. And you know Alex I think

00:23it's a lesson for us on how quickly things can change in the Atlantic Basin. It was about two

00:29weeks ago that we didn't have any storm, no prospects for storms. All of a sudden we have

00:36three storms and I got to hand it to you and the long range team. You warned us back in early March

00:42that we would have an early start to the hurricane season or what I should say is early season

00:47development. And boy did that occur over the last 10 days. Yeah it certainly did. We were concerned

00:54way back in March that we could see early season tropical development. The water temperatures

00:58especially close to the United States are way warmer than average for this time of the year.

01:03And so we thought that that would happen at the beginning of the hurricane season and throughout.

01:07And then like you said boom boom boom checking these names off the list. The next name on the

01:12list is Dexter and we're already starting to highlight the potential for that in the next week or so.

01:17Just to give you some historical context here. I mean we're running now about

01:22about a month ahead of historical averages.

01:28Yeah we indeed are. The average third name storm which we just saw is at the beginning of August.

01:33And we typically wait until August to see our first hurricane. Of course we have not seen our

01:38first hurricane. That usually comes all the way on August 11th. So typically early in the tropical season

01:45we see some tropical storms. The hurricanes are usually a little bit later in the tropical season

01:51as we decrease some of that wind shear and increase those water temperatures.

01:55What we're seeing right now in the Atlantic is nothing unusual. We see this a lot this time of the year.

02:01It is very difficult to get tropical waves to bust through Saharan dust and also wind shear.

02:07And that's why what happened last year with Beryl coming out of the Atlantic and coming into Texas was so unusual.

02:15Yeah that was such an incredible storm. The fact that we had the earliest Category 5 on record by a whole two weeks

02:22coming right through the Caribbean during early season was very very unusual. Nothing like that coming up here

02:29over the next couple of weeks. Way too much dry air coming off of Africa and a lot of hostile winds across the Atlantic.

02:35If anything is going to develop I think over the next week or two it's going to be close to the United States.

02:42Certainly many are familiar with the term El Nino and La Nina. But some recent research now starting to point us also

02:53where El Nino and La Nina deals with the tropical Pacific. There's new research looking at water temperatures

03:01off the west coast of Africa Alex. Yeah this is a very active area of research. A lot of papers have come out

03:07over the last couple of years really talking about this Atlantic Nino or Atlantic Nina in this case

03:13which is this boxed area off the west coast of Africa. You can see how much blue is in this area right now.

03:19So we're in an Atlantic Nina right now and you can see how blue it is in that area.

03:23And what the research has found is especially down in that eastern main development region, so right off the coast

03:30of Africa there, this tends to slow tropical development. So I'm thinking that if this holds on through the middle

03:37of the hurricane season, we could see a lot less of these robust tropical waves coming off of Africa

03:43and developing. On the contrary, if this area warms up and we see an Atlantic Nino, that tends to aid in tropical

03:51development, especially in that eastern main development region.

03:54It's all about homegrown development this time of the year. When you have that jet stream coming on south,

03:59you can bring frontal boundaries, upper lows. That could produce showers and thunderstorms. That's what happened with

04:04Chantel. And as we've been talking about, Alex, we're a little worried middle part of next week.

04:09Yeah, we're going to have to watch cold front coming down and we're going to have a dip in the jet stream in that area as well.

04:15Little bit of spin going on in the atmosphere through there, but the question we always have to wonder is,

04:21is it going to be sitting around long enough for things to take shape? Chantel just made it.

04:26There was enough time where that area of low pressure was able to build over the Gulf Stream.

04:30We're going to have to watch this one carefully as well. Looks like it would be in the northern Gulf.

04:35There is still a chance it could pop off the southeast coast towards the middle of the month, but low chance right now.

04:40But we're keeping an eye on it. Hurricane, lead hurricane expert, Alex De Silva.

04:45Thanks for joining us, Alex. We'll talk to you at 10-15.

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