Tropical Wave Being Watched for Development in the Caribbean

August 23, 2022

I was going to wait another day or two for my next update but I wanted to get one out this afternoon in case you see a scary looking model run on social media. There are three areas on the 5-Day Outlook but I'm mainly going to focus on the yellow area in the eastern Caribbean. 

This area is a tropical wave that was just pushing off the coast of Africa when I wrote my update last Wednesday. For the record I stated that I didn't think this would develop into something that would be an issue for the Gulf Coast based on models at the time. That may end up being incorrect but we'll have to wait and see. Currently this wave is approaching the Lesser Antilles and has been given a 20% chance of development over the next 5 days. Models haven't been really bullish on development until today. They're still not bullish as a whole, but the GFS run from this morning develops this wave and brings it towards the northern Gulf Coast around the end of next week as a pretty strong storm. Images from this solution are what you may see floating around the internet, don't let them be a concern. While this is a bit of an interesting model forecast, there isn't a ton of support from other models. Even the GFS ensemble (which is 31 different runs of more or less the same model) doesn't strongly support the operational model. I'd think if the operational model was catching on to something we'd see a good bit of ensemble support. Also, the latest runs of the Euro and Canadian model do not develop this system at all, but there is some support from their ensembles. So other than one scary looking run there isn't a strong signal yet that this is going to be a problem.

The other areas farther east are two more waves that need to be watched. I won't go into the details because frankly it's a bit frustrating watching what the models have been doing with these from run to run, something that has been a trend this season. Just know that there are some other areas to watch that won't be a concern, if at all, for well over a week.

That's it for today. We'll know more about this system in the Caribbean later this week.

Have a good week.

Chris