Low Chance of Tropical Development in the Gulf This Week

October 10, 2023

The National Hurricane Center is watching an area in the southwestern Gulf for development. This area, designated Invest 93L, has a 30% chance of development over the next two days or so. A frontal system is expected to develop over the western Gulf tomorrow and this interaction will limit how strong 93L can get. At this point I'd be surprised if it even becomes a tropical depression but that is a possibility. Either way, expect windy and rainy weather Wednesday through early Friday along the northern Gulf Coast. Some localized flooding is possible but otherwise no impacts are expected. The system out in the East Atlantic (Invest 92L) is not expected to be a hazard to land.

Some of you probably don't need a reminder but today is the 5th anniversary of Hurricane Michael's landfall in the Mexico Beach and Panama City area in 2018. The hurricane season is starting to draw to a close this year and I'm cautiously optimistic that we will not see any major impacts from here on out. That isn't certain of course and we may need to watch the Caribbean for development during the last few weeks of the month.

We'll get another cold front this weekend and along with it another round of below average temps that may last all the way until the end of the following week (October 21st). Unfortunately it doesn't look we'll get a lot of rain from this front so the only real chance of breaking this dry spell will be from the tropical system that will bring maybe several inches of rain to the near coastal areas before the front moves through. It looks like a wetter pattern may return around the end of October into November. The El Nino pattern we are in is expected to bring a cool and wet winter but we'll have to wait and see if that comes to pass.

That's it for today. Hopefully we get some rain this week. Enjoy the cooler weather though, it has been a nice break from the above average temps we had this summer.

Chris