A robust tropical disturbance moving through Belize, northeastern Guatemala, and the Yucatán Peninsula of southeastern Mexico is headed toward the Bay of Campeche and extreme southwestern Gulf of Mexico, where it’s set to emerge briefly Friday and Saturday.
Though its development window over water is narrow, environmental conditions look reasonably conducive for a quick spinup if the area of thunderstorms can stay concentrated within the broader disturbance.
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Forecast models aren’t particularly keen on development, but as we’ve seen most recently with Invest 98L, tropical systems have a tendency to overperform in this neck of the tropics.
A general rule I follow is to never bet against the Bay of Campeche. Regardless, the upshot will be a surge of tropical moisture and beneficial rains into northern Mexico –perhaps making it as far north as Deep South Texas – on Saturday and Sunday.
Elsewhere through the Atlantic, the tropics are on script for the time of year except for overall tropical activity, which remains a paltry 16 percent of where it should be by mid-August.
Waters in the Main Development Region of the Atlantic – the part of the tropics where most of our strongest hurricanes form – are at their warmest of the year so far, and for August running only behind 2010, 2005, 2020, 1998, and 2017, all very active hurricane seasons.
Storm-busting Saharan dust is also collapsing across deep tropics, as it typically does by late summer.
The biggest prohibitive factor so far this hurricane season seems to be a stable eastern Atlantic, which inhibits the growth of tropical thunderstorms.
This increased stability can be the result of a number of things, including the intrusion of drier air from outside the tropics. Aside from this, there’s no obvious large-scale reason why storm activity wouldn’t pick up as climatology suggests in the weeks ahead.
As we’ve discussed in previous newsletters, long-range models indicate an uptick of disturbances in the eastern and central Atlantic later next week, but nothing yet to write home about.
In the meantime, we expect to round out another quiet week for South Florida in the tropics.