Hot Here as Tropics Become Active

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The weather remains hot here as it has since about the first of June. And while we remain on the eastern periphery of a large upper ridge, the tropics have become considerably more active with Harvey moving into Central America and a slowly developing disturbance moving into the eastern Caribbean.

For us, the pattern remains fairly similar to what we’ve seen over the last several weeks with an upper ridge firmly planted just to our west. This has kept us in a weak northwesterly flow pattern and kept us out of the extreme heat we’ve seeing in North Central Texas and Oklahoma. The general trough position, weak as it is, will stay put over the eastern half of the country for much of the up coming week. As a series of strong short waves move across the Great Lakes, we will see a weak frontal boundary move across the area on Sunday and early Monday. I do not expect to see much of an impact with this weak boundary other than a slight increase to shower chances and perhaps a few degrees off the dew points by Tuesday.

Wednesday another strong short wave drops into the Ohio River Valley, and this should again provide us with an slight increase to shower chances. But this trough and its location will be a key player in the future course of what is likely to be Irene.

In the tropics, Harvey is approaching the coast of Central America as a tropical storm. Harvey will blow itself out over the Mountains there. In the meantime, however, we have a slowly developing tropical disturbance approaching the Lesser Antilles. This is likely to become Irene, but the problem appears to be the future track of the disturbance. The various computer models are in good agreement, but they all keep the storm very close to Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, and Southeast Cuba. And that means interaction with the rough terrain all of those countries possess. So I do not expect to see this disturbance really get its act together.

By Thursday and very early Friday, the storm could be approaching South Florida. With the general troughiness over the eastern half of the country, it is just a matter of timing on the storm recurving into the westerlies. The GFS on Friday brought the storm into the eastern Gulf, but the 06Z model run this morning has nudged it back toward the east. Timing is everything here as to when the storm will recurve, so it will definitely bear watching. On the currently projected track up the peninsula of Florida and into Southeast Georgia, Alabama will be on the western or dry side of the storm. This means we would probably see zip when it comes to rain. And for the month of August, my rain gauge has only seen about 2 tenths of an inch, so we could really use some rain.

As you know, specific storm track a week in advance is pretty hard to nail down. In fact, the ECMWF run at 00Z continued to suggest a track to the west of the Florida Peninsula. There will be variations in the path of this storm as we have nearly a week before it approaches the US, so I’m certain we will see some shifting. I will say that I was somewhat impressed with the run-to-run consistency of the GFS yesterday.

Voodoo country brings the ridge back in a big way by the end of the period, however, the GFS at 372 hours shows some mischief in the Gulf of Mexico. Since I’m not placing any bets on the storm in a week, I am certainly not going to latch onto the whatever that is in the Gulf at 372 hours.

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I’m planning a quiet day today and probably staying inside out of the heat. I do have some garage work I need to do, but I am not going to do it in the heat. So far this argument has worked well with my wife!! Godspeed.

-Brian-

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Category: Alabama's Weather