As we head into August, we’re taking a look at what the month may hold with hurricane season, temperatures and precipitation. FOX Weather Meteorologist Melanie Black gives us the outlook:
The National Hurricane Center continues to predict an empty slate in the Atlantic, the Caribbean, and the Gulf through next week.
Saharan dust continues to spread across the tropical Atlantic from Africa, while El Niño-driven hostile upper-level winds blow across the Caribbean from the Pacific.
Yesterday, the long-range computer models were showing a mini consensus that something might try to develop between Africa and the Caribbean islands in 9 or 10 days.
This graphic shows there is no chance of tropical development in the Atlantic in the next week.
When multiple models show possible development in one area, it’s an indication that a pocket of atmosphere conducive to development might develop in or near that location.
This map shows possible positions of tropical low-pressure systems 9 days from now. Each model – the European ECMWF, the Google DeepMind AI, and the AIFS AI model from the European Center – can plot up to 50 Ls. So we can count the number of Ls and divide by 150 to get the odds of development, according to this consensus.
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Yesterday, there was a cluster that showed some measurable odds from all three models. The consensus probability was about 15% plus or minus. But today, the models are showing much lower odds.
This graphic shows what models are saying about chances for tropical development in the Atlantic.
(FOX Weather)
First, notice that almost all the dots are green – from the AIFS model. There is only one blue dot representing a 2% chance from Google and only a few red dots from the Euro. When only one model is excited, experience tells us to discount that enthusiasm and wait for a consensus.
Also, this season, we have seen the AIFS model return higher probabilities than the other models for the previous storms. We’ll need more experience with this current version of that model to know if it’s onto something or it has some tendency to print out spurious Ls.
If a tropical system were to develop, it would have to find a small pocket of atmosphere to operate in. Overall, the basin looks inhospitable to tropical development for the foreseeable future.
There is some slight chance that a non-tropical low might track west to east away from the U.S. East Coast and become somewhat tropical, but it would be an ocean event only.
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So all good for now.
