After days of struggles through the hostile deep Atlantic – barely holding on most of Thursday as a naked low-level cloud swirl – Gabrielle is staging a comeback today that should take it to hurricane strength before the weekend is out.
The mid-grade tropical storm is churning harmlessly over the open Atlantic some 600 miles northeast of the eastern Caribbean and is forecast to recurve northward early next week, posing no threat to the United States.
As Gabrielle becomes better organized, confidence is increasing that its center should pass east of Bermuda by late Sunday and Monday.
Interests in the British Overseas Territory should continue to monitor trends in the forecast, but for now the most likely impacts will be marine hazards – such as dangerous swells and rip currents – generated by the strengthening storm.
More conducive conditions to strengthening ahead
Unlike yesterday when Gabrielle was absent any persistent thunderstorms near or over its circulation, the storm is finally firing convection closer in, fighting against nagging wind shear that’s been plaguing its development and opening a lane for dry air to puncture its core.
Though Gabrielle was still disorganized Friday morning thanks to slow-subsiding wind shear, the shear will lessen considerably by later today which should allow thunderstorms to rebuild over Gabrielle’s center, helping it to strengthen at a quicker pace.
Intensity guidance is in much better agreement today with taking Gabrielle to hurricane strength over the weekend, with some aids suggesting it perhaps even flirting with major (Category 3) hurricane status on Monday or early Tuesday before wind shear ramps back up and it quickly weakens over cooler waters.
So far this hurricane season, the Atlantic has only recorded one hurricane – Category 5 Hurricane Erin back in mid August. Typically we’d expect 4 hurricanes to have formed by this point in the hurricane season. It’s been 31 years (since 1994) that we’ve seen so few hurricanes this deep into the hurricane season, a remarkable (and welcome) feat given the pre-season expectations for another active hurricane season.
Down the line
The only other area of interest on NHC’s map today is a tropical disturbance off Africa, which poses no threat to land in the week ahead.
Our longer-range models are beginning to sniff out a development signal into next weekend (the weekend of September 27th) closer to the U.S. in either the southwestern Atlantic or western Caribbean. It’s important to note it’s still early and it’s primarily the newer (and less tested) AI camp of models that show this development signal, though even some of our conventional physics-based models are beginning to advertise this possibility.
The source of what some models are sniffing out appears to be a tropical wave currently over the eastern Atlantic and ahead of the disturbance off Africa that NHC is tagging today for low odds of development.
It’s worth noting that waters are at record or near-record warmth closer in to South Florida and the U.S., so we’ll want to be mindful of any systems sneaking up our direction for late September and October.
For now, we’ll just file this one under something to check back in on next week. It’s always good to be aware, but the signal isn’t strong enough yet for us to worry about it.
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