Eye on the Tropics: So now what?

It’s kind of crazy to think that our last full tropical update was two weeks ago, and we noted how things were about to ramp up. For many folks in Louisiana, the world is a much different place today than it was then. For Houston, I think we had a moment there. You exhale, but then you realize that nothing has really changed, and all it takes is one more storm to bring us right back to where we were sitting in the days before Laura. So will that happen? Probably not, but let’s walk through things.

Tropical outlook in a sentence

We expect several systems to develop over the next week or two across the basin, but right now only one of them is worth seriously watching and even it will be racing against the potential cold front next week.

Potential Tropical Cyclone 16

The system that we referred to as Invest 99L yesterday has been classified as Potential Tropical Cyclone 16 (PTC 16) in the Caribbean this morning, meaning it is expected to become a depression or named entity soon. It looks fairly healthy on satellite, and it will likely develop over the next couple days.

Fortunately, thanks to our oppressive heat in Texas, with sprawling high pressure over the Gulf of Mexico, this will keep PTC 16 well to our south. No need to worry about this coming to the Gulf. So what is coming after this system?

Behind PTC 16

It seems like all these systems have another one trailing them that’s of more interest to us than the first one. This case is no different. There are a number of different models and ensemble members at least hinting that the wave behind PTC 16 is going to broadly track toward the Gulf early next week and may slowly develop. The National Hurricane Center has even removed this wave from its areas to watch today. So the ceiling on this one seems fairly low, and current levels of support for this system are far lower than what we saw at this point in the run-up to Marco and Laura.

This wave is expected to come westward over the next few days and probably not develop. Eventually, as the ridge over the Gulf breaks down and the U.S. weather pattern makes a big time change that should allow a cold front into Texas, that system will get drawn back north toward the Gulf. Our gut feeling this far out is that the system is going to struggle even as it gets lifted northward. But there will be a small window for some possible development as it moves into the Gulf early next week. For the Euro ensemble in particular, only about 20 percent of the 51 different ensemble members develop this into anything worse than an invest-level system or depression by next Tuesday evening.

With the front penciled in for next Wednesday, that should be enough to either keep it squashed in the Bay of Campeche as a weak system or capture it and send it along the front north and northeast away from Texas. We’ll still keep tabs on it just in case the front fails or something, but at this time we are not really worried about this one becoming a big problem for us.

More to come

There is a good chance we will see at least two or three more names get used over the next couple weeks. In addition to PTC 16, we have Tropical Depression 15 off the coast of the Carolinas that is racing out to sea. There is only a slight chance it will garner a name. After the Gulf “noise” next week, we have three separate areas showing up in the Atlantic on the Euro ensemble, as well as on other models.

I would assume at least two of those clusters would develop into a named storm. So there is a good chance we will run through at least two or even three more names (Nana, Omar, and Paulette), possibly more over the next couple weeks. It is too early to say if any of these will ultimately pose a Gulf threat. Certainly, the prospects of a cold front next week has folks excited, but it’s important to remember that one cold front in early September doesn’t magically end hurricane season for us. Things can change, so let’s keep our head in the game for a few more weeks.