Tropical Development Possible in the Caribbean - Could Move Into The Gulf

October 23, 2020

The yellow area in the Caribbean (which is now orange) has now been designated Invest 95L by the NHC and they are now indicating a 50% chance of development over 2 days and 60% over 5 days. This changed fairly quickly overnight, going from a 30% chance at 8 p.m. EDT still headed to the northeast, to 40% headed north and then east at 2 a.m., to what you see now. Needless to say I'm a bit caught off guard.

None of the models are showing any strong development yet. I think the NHC upped the chance for development based on a much stronger presentation on satellite that occurred overnight. You can see the system below. 

Looking at the models, the GFS brings a messy system across the Gulf towards Mississippi, Alabama, and the Florida Panhandle late next week, what it shows probably wouldn't be much more than a tropical depression. The Euro splits this energy to the west and east with one piece going out into the Atltantic and another going towards Louisiana also as a messy system late next week. The GFS ensembles mostly show the previous solution, a weak system going across Cuba to the northeast into the Atlantic with a few members showing tracks towards the northern Gulf Coast, again no strong development is indicated. The Euro ensembles have nearly all its members still showing the northeast track with maybe 2-3 members showing weak tracks towards the northern Gulf Coast and 1-2 more towards Mexico. So right now none of the models are excited about this, including the UK and Canadian. I will caution that we'll probably see some changes in the models later today and through the weekend. Now that this is an invest the the models will get a better look at, so it's possible that everything I described above showing very little development could be due to the models just not seeing the system yet.

The good news is that conditions in the near term don't look that favorable. 95L is in a somewhat favorable environment at the moment, but as it moves into the southern Gulf it will encounter stronger wind shear which should limit development until maybe midweek. After that conditions may get better but we're too far out to know. The Caribbean is still plenty hot but the Gulf is a bit cooler. All the same there's probably enough energy to support a fairly strong storm if the wind shear dies down and it can sneak up to the north in between fronts. You can see the heat potential below.

Unfortunately this is something we're going to need to watch. Hopefully it doesn't blow up quickly in the Caribbean as that could change things. I don't think that's likely, but given how fast it changed overnight we need to watch it. We'll know a lot more over the next 24 hours but it'll probably be early to mid next week before we have a good feel for what's going on, assuming it is able to develop.

Have a good Friday and a great weekend. I'll send out another update by tomorrow.

Chris