TD 19 Forms East of Florida

September 11, 2020

The NHC has started issuing advisories on TD 19 (previously Invest 96L) located east of South Florida, the forecast cone is shown below. TD 19 is only 5 knots away from being a tropical storm so it's likely we could see it get named before it makes landfall near Miami overnight. After that, the storm will cross the Peninsula and enter the eastern Gulf on Saturday. Once over open water it is expected to steadily intensify. The official intensity forecast stops just short of hurricane strength but the NHC cautions that their forecast is conservative and could likely be increased. Regarding the track, the NHC states that there is considerable uncertainty beyond 48 hours and that areas well outside the cone should remain aware.

Computer models are now showing more development than they were this morning. The hurricane specific HWRF, which started to run when this became 96L, shows a strong category 1 hurricane skirting the coast near Pensacola with the storm making landfall near the western end of Dauphin Island, AL early Tuesday. The Euro shows a similar solution but brings the storm in close to the coast off of Panama City and then keeps the storm just off the coast with it making landfall near the MS/LA border late Tuesday as a category 1 hurricane. The GFS takes a weak tropical storm into southeast Louisiana Tuesday morning. Several of the intensity models have solutions showing the storm making it to hurricane strength. Based on all of this I think it is more likely than not that TD 19 will become a hurricane, maybe as early as Sunday night if not by Monday. Fortunately I don't think it will have enough time over open water to strengthen much beyond a category 1 storm. The track guidance seems to be consolidating around a landfall somewhere to the west of the Florida Panhandle, but as mentioned above there is a lot of uncertainty with this right now.

A couple of points of caution. One is that models are just now getting a good look at this so we may see some changes as they start seeing the storm better. We should get some hurricane hunter flights and that will help feed the models with better data. Also, the more time this spends over water the stronger it may become, there's really not much to inhibit its strength. That being said more time over water probably means a track farther west as well.

That's all for today, I'll send out another update in the morning.

Chris