Chance of Tropical Development in the Northern Gulf This Week

July 10, 2022

The National Hurricane Center is watching an area in the northern Gulf for tropical development. A cold front has stalled along the coast and energy associated with this front has a 30% chance of developing into a tropical system over the next 5 days. This will be slow to develop and I don't expect anything to happen until midweek or later. Models are in fairly good agreement that something will happen but not when or where. The yellow spot highlighted by the NHC tells the story but I think development in the eastern half of the yellow area between the mouth of the Mississippi and the central Florida Panhandle is the more likely spot. As far as intensity goes I think we're looking at tropical storm strength at the most at this point. That being said there is no model consensus. Some models (and some model runs for the same model) show little to no development and others show a decent tropical storm develop. There are a few ensemble members that show a storm of hurricane strength developing but I think those are outliers.

To summarize, we'll probably see a tropical depression, maybe a tropical storm, form later this week in our general area. The main impact will be rain and gusty conditions for whoever is on the eastern side of the storm. This will add to the rainfall totals that are already expected through the next 7 days and it may be longer than that before this wet pattern moves out of the area. Rainfall through 7 days is shown below (this is not really including what we may see from any tropical development that may occur).

That's it for this evening. Nothing to be too concerned about, I don't think we're looking at a high impact event but stay aware of the weather later this week. I'll send out another update around midweek.

Have a good week.

Chris