After a historically slow start – the slowest in almost 40 years by overall tropical activity – the Atlantic hurricane season will make another attempt to jump start its engine this week, first with a disturbance in the central subtropical Atlantic and then later this week with a strong disturbance rolling westward through the main development region of the deep tropics between Africa and the Caribbean.
Subtropical wasteland
The low-pressure area several hundred miles southeast of Bermuda – designated Invest 95L – has limited prospects beyond today. Although it could become a short-lived depression or storm, strong jet stream winds will rip it apart and whisk its leftover weather toward Atlantic Canada by tomorrow into early Wednesday.
Like Cristobal, the last named storm that formed around the middle of the month in the subtropics, this one won’t survive long enough to add much to the seasonal scorecard. The next name on the list is Dolly.
The first Cabo Verde storm of 2026?
The system that will take center stage this week is the one without an Invest moniker, at least for now.
The strong tropical wave that we first started discussing in this newsletter last Wednesday was added to NHC’s tropical outlook late Friday, as we indicated it would be in our newsletter earlier that day.
The wave is perhaps the most impressive we’ve seen yet emerge off the African coast this season.
As tropical waves often do, it’ll probably lose a little vigor today as it hits the Atlantic waters but should gradually pick up steam again in the coming days. With the exception of some drier air to its north and west, the environment ahead this week looks reasonably conducive to development, and the National Hurricane Center is giving the system a coin flip chance of becoming a depression or named storm before the week is out.
Forecast models generally agree, with the traditional physics-based European model being the more aggressive of our models in advertising development. Its AI counterpart, on the other hand, has been a little more hot and cold with the system.
Meanwhile, Google’s first-rate DeepMind machine learning-based 1,000-member ensemble system tends to follow NHC’s thinking (or NHC tends to follow its thinking), with a 40-50% chance of development over the coming week.
Interestingly, DeepMind suggests a development window over the next few days as it passes south of the Cabo Verde islands but then lower development odds until it lifts north of the Caribbean islands next week. This makes sense physically, as wind shear is highest and most pronounced from the Caribbean into the central Atlantic. If it’s able to survive into the subtropical Atlantic – north of around 20 degrees north latitude – and west of the islands, El Niño-driven wind shear becomes much less of an issue.
This is generally what other models suggest as well, with the possibility of a period of bona fide strengthening – perhaps into the season’s first hurricane – over the southwestern Atlantic in about a week or so. Of course, that assumes it stays a coherent system through the marginal environment this week.
There’s plenty of time to watch this one, so it’s not something we need to worry about for now. Any threat to the islands next week is low right now, with models largely indicating a track north of the islands.
However, given this is the first real long-track Cabo Verde contender this season, it’s one worth checking back on periodically this week.
Moke misses Hawaii
Moke passed about 250 miles safely south of the Big Island of Hawaii this weekend as a borderline tropical storm.
The Big Island avoided widespread heavy rains from Moke, with highest totals so far under 2-3 inches.
A Flood Watch remains in effect through Monday afternoon local time for lingering rains over still-saturated grounds from Lala, but any flood issues on east-facing slopes should stay localized.
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