Now another storm is trying to get named Adria

(CIRA/RAMMB)

The non-tropical system we were watching at the beginning of the week, then gave up on yesterday, is back in a big way. The system is producing hurricane force winds over similar North Atlantic waters that Wanda plowed last week.

This is the system that produced the extra-high tides along the East Coast. It never went away. The issue has to do with the fronts that have been attached to the circulation, a feature of non-tropical storms.

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By late tomorrow, the storm is likely to be pulled north over too-cold water and absorbed in a separate North Atlantic system, but before then it has a short window of time to separate from the fronts and be considered tropical enough to get a name.

Yesterday it looked like that window was going to be too short for the evolution to somewhat-tropical to take place. But it now appears the system might have enough time to make the transition before the window of opportunity closes. The National Hurricane Center is giving that a decent chance of happening.

(National Hurricane Center)

In spite of the hurricane-force winds associated with the circulation, the system would be named Subtropical Storm Adria – pronounced AH-dria.

Adria is the first name on the supplemental list we’re using this year instead of the Greek letters. This naming system only kicks in, of course, if we use all 21 names in the main list, which we did this year.

Potential-Adria would have to become fully tropical to be designated a hurricane. It doesn’t appear that the system will have enough time over warmish water to pull that off.

Storms are designated subtropical when they have separated from their fronts, but still have some characteristics of a non-tropical storm, including getting energy from strong winds aloft. It seems most likely that this system would fall into that bucket. But unlike Wanda, which hung around long enough to fully wrap up into a tropical storm, potential-Adria is not going to stall.

This doesn’t change the fact that a winter-type weather pattern has settled over Florida and the hurricane zone in the U.S. and surrounding areas. For practical purposes, hurricane season continues to be over… probably.