Saturday, August 11, 2012

East Atlantic About to Get Much More Active

The Eastern Atlantic is about to get much more active over the next several days.

Satellite imagery shows a couple clusters of intense convection in western Africa at this time. As these disturbances move west, they will certainly pose a tropical development risk as they move offshore. I have not seen clusters this strong this season in the time I have been monitoring the East Atlantic / West Africa.

The steering layer for the East Atlantic shows that these systems will likely start out their journey in the ocean by moving west. A big player in the track of each of these disturbances will be how far south they start when they move offshore. For instance, some disturbances will be too far north and end up swinging north into the middle of the ocean, whereas others will be far enough south to keep a westward track and possibly eye the Caribbean.

If I were to take a guess on the track of each of the two disturbances shown on the satellite image shown, I would say that the first cluster closest to the ocean will probably end up going out to sea, whether immediately after leaving Africa or just before entering the Caribbean.
I do believe that the second disturbance shown has a better threat to aim for the Caribbean, due to its dislocation to the south of the first disturbance.

Andrew

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hey Andrew, I haven't been on your site in a while but I wanted to go back on your website because I remembered that there was some good articles! I think the website has changed but it looks so much better! I see you have been seriously monitoring the tropics which I deeply appreciate. There has also been some chat as we surly are moving into the autumn/fall season and the unusually strong chain of lows dropping the temps by the Great Lakes/Northern Plains a good 10 - 15 Degrees F. Is there a chance that the Northeast (more specifically Southern New England) could see some of those cold fronts drop the temps a little? (It's been very hot and humid here - Dew Point reaching 80 degrees+) The cold front passing through now is suppose to deliver much drier air, but just returning night time lows to normal levels (about 60 F) It would be nice if I had a cool fall for the long-awaited weak/moderate snowy El NiƱo here on the East Coast! Thanks again, Andrew!

- RW