A strong tropical disturbance that rolled off Africa to start the week – since designated Invest 96L by the National Hurricane Center – is doing its best Little-Engine-That-Could impression this morning and appears to be nearing tropical depression or storm status in the eastern Atlantic.

Early Thursday, the National Hurricane Center upped development odds to 90% that 96L will become the Atlantic hurricane season’s next system.

The missing piece of information to give 96L the upgrade is whether its circulation is closed off, something not easily gleaned from traditional nighttime satellite. Daytime satellite should help in this determination, along with satellite wind estimates that arrive from occasional passes of certain polar-orbiting satellites.

Whether 96L becomes Tropical Depression Four or Tropical Storm Dolly, it looks to have a short shelf life thanks to a wall of wind shear it will run into this weekend as it approaches the easternmost Caribbean islands, something we’ve covered extensively in newsletters this week.

This ribbon of wind shear – anchored across the Caribbean and into the Atlantic’s Main Development Region – has been a thorn in the side of wannabe storms all season and is courtesy of the historic Super El Niño that’s developed over the eastern equatorial Pacific.

Intensity models show the most likely outcome, which is at most a weak and short-lived tropical storm.

Intensity guidance for Invest 96L indicating a weak and short-lived system due to largely hostile conditions ahead of it this weekend. Credit: TropicalTidbits.com.

Though 96L or what develops from it will move near or over parts of the Lesser Antilles starting this weekend followed by Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti for early next week, it won’t pose a serious widespread wind or heavy rain threat.

Re-development next week unlikely

The big question earlier this week was whether 96L would survive the shear zone and try to stage a second act over the southwestern Atlantic for the middle part of next week. That question appears to have a decided answer today.

The one-two combo of high shear and interaction with the Caribbean islands early next week should keep 96L sufficiently disorganized and weak that it won’t be able to recover on the other side. The already low odds of a comeback have continued to trend lower and that scenario is off the table for now.

Probability of the center of a tropical cyclone developing from 96L passing to within about 75 miles of a given location from Google DeepMind’s 1,000-member machine learning-based ensemble system. Although the model has ratcheted up short-term development odds with 96L, consistent with NHC’s increasingly bullish odds Thursday, the modeling system has trended downward on a re-development scenario over the southwestern Atlantic for the middle part of next week (odds now below 5%).

So it appears this year’s Super El Niño will claim another victim with 96L, extending the Atlantic’s hurricane drought into September and ensuring any storm contenders have an uphill climb as we approach the traditional peak of the hurricane season.

Invest 96L trying to form, but unlikely to get very far

This year’s Super El Nino looks to claim another victim of the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season

Re-development next week unlikely

About The Author

Michael Lowry