Storm may strengthen over Gulf this week

AccuWeather

AccuWeather Lead Hurricane Expert Alex DaSilva discusses upcoming trouble in the tropics.

Transcript

00:00I want to bring in AccuWeather hurricane expert, Alex DaSilva.

00:04You know, Alex, yesterday you and the team had your hands full

00:07because you decided, hey, listen, we think this is at least going to be a tropical rainstorm.

00:13There's going to be a center of circulation, and we're going to track an eye path.

00:19And much of the guidance didn't even have a center of circulation yet,

00:22but our eye path that we issued yesterday pretty much held true so far today as well.

00:27Yeah, it certainly did, and like you mentioned, the storm has certainly gotten a lot better organized here

00:32over the last, you know, 12 hours or so.

00:35And I think if it had an additional 6 to 12 hours, you might even have a name east of Florida,

00:39but it's going to run out of time.

00:41It's going to move into Florida here over the next couple of hours,

00:45bringing rain all the way across the peninsula.

00:47But you can see how tight of a circulation it is, just missing those thunderstorms on the northern side.

00:52If it had that, I think we would be dealing with a named tropical system.

00:55But nevertheless, we'll be tracking this across Florida during the day today.

00:59It's going to emerge back over the Gulf, I think, sometime tonight.

01:03And then it's got about 24 to 36 hours over those warm Gulf waters,

01:08where if that circulation is able to survive the journey across the peninsula,

01:13that's where there could be a concern that this could ramp up to a tropical storm.

01:17You know, it is concerning that it's over the Gulf of America for that long, 36 hours.

01:25And the concerning thing, as you mentioned, it's not just warm water,

01:28but water temperatures are running well above the historical average.

01:31Yeah, they certainly are.

01:32You need about 80 degrees Fahrenheit water temperatures or so for tropical systems to survive and thrive,

01:37and we're well above that.

01:39We're in the middle 80s, 1 to 2 degrees above average for this time of the year.

01:44So plenty of fuel to work with, and it's deep warm water as well.

01:47So that is really the concern.

01:49If that circulation, and that's the big question mark,

01:52if that circulation is able to survive that journey across the state of Florida,

01:57we could be looking at a storm that could try to intensify once it gets into the Gulf.

02:01Now, the limiting factor appears to us to be wind shear.

02:05That's a stronger winds coming in out, in this case, out of the east-northeast here.

02:10Now, we have that area marked. It's along the southern side of an area of upper high pressure

02:15or high pressure in the upper atmosphere that's moving eastward.

02:18So it's like the moderate wind shear, but as you and I always talk about,

02:21it's just not the strength of the wind shear. It's the direction.

02:25Yeah, it certainly is.

02:26If the direction of the wind shear is moving opposite to the storm, it really disrupts the storm.

02:30And then we probably wouldn't have development at all.

02:33But this wind shear is going to be moving at the back of the tropical system.

02:36It's essentially going to be hitting it in the back.

02:38So while it's going to disrupt it a little bit, and this is why we don't think it's going to become a hurricane,

02:44it's probably going to be low enough that the storm can still intensify at least into a tropical depression,

02:51which is what we are currently forecasting to then move into Louisiana sometime Thursday morning.

02:57Now, the other concern we have is that this can stall.

03:03And if this stalls across Louisiana over the weekend, we could be looking at a major headache here.

03:09In fact, on the AccuWeather Real Impact Scale, while this isn't forecasted to be even a tropical storm,

03:15we're going to have an AccuWeather Impact Scale of this as a 1 in Louisiana

03:20because we're so concerned about the flash flood potential with this.

03:25Yeah, absolutely.

03:26We are watching this trek westward, and that's being pushed by the Bermuda High right now.

03:30So right now it's going to move across Florida.

03:32It's not going to stall over Florida.

03:33But then what happens as it approaches Louisiana,

03:36it stops feeling that influence from that Bermuda High.

03:41And what can happen is the storm can drastically slow down.

03:45It might not stop, but we're still expecting it to slow down,

03:48and then that can lead to big flooding issues.

03:51Right now we have a pretty large swath of 4 to 8 inches from Baton Rouge to New Orleans.

03:56But my concern in looking at more data suggests that there's a greater chance of this starting to stall as it gets close,

04:02and that would mean that we would potentially need to put on a higher rainfall amount on this map.

04:07I think the best chance for that would likely be just west of New Orleans,

04:10but there could be areas west of New Orleans that could see a foot of rain.

04:15ACCUA, the lead hurricane expert, Alex DaSilva, thanks for joining us here.

Category

Transcript

Recommended