November 1, 2024
TL;DR It's possible a tropical cyclone may develop in the Caribbean in a few days. While there are some model solutions you may have seen showing otherwise, and yes there is still some uncertainty, it is not expected that a tropical storm or hurricane will cross the Gulf this time of year and bring significant impacts to the northern Gulf Coast.
Getting to the full discussion, I hope everyone had a good Halloween. It's hard to believe that it is November. Also, the time changes this weekend and I am not ready for that. Anyhow, it is still hurricane season for the rest of this month and there is an area in the Caribbean we need to keep an eye on. After Milton there were two other named storms, Nadine and Oscar, but they were not a concern for the US. All the same the tropics are expected to be active at least through the middle of the month. That may sound unusual, but historically the first part of November sees about the same level of activity as the end of July. One key difference is that a lot of the storms this late in the season stay away from the US as I will explain in a moment.
First, let's take a look at the 7 Day Outlook. There are three areas being watched but the only thing we're concerned about is the red area in the Caribbean. There's nothing going on right now but over the next few days an area of low pressure is expected to develop which will probably further develop into a tropical cyclone. The NHC is currently forecasting a 70% chance of development through 7 days and a 30% chance through 3 days with the expectation that a tropical depression will form this weekend or early next week. Beyond that the future of this system is uncertain but I think it is fairly unlikely that we'll see major impacts along the northern Gulf if it heads this way.
Getting into the details, the NHC first highlighted this area for development last Saturday. I haven't mentioned it until now for a few reasons. One is that some of the model solutions were exhibiting biases, that is generating storms in a manner that doesn't make sense given what we know about development in this area this time of year. There also hasn't been a lot of consistency in timing or location of development. Originally the NHC was expecting development of a previous area of disturbed weather that has since dissipated. So this has been another case of kicking the can down the road. As of yesterday there was finally a strong and consistent enough of a signal to start paying more attention despite the fact that you may have seen scary looking posts on the internet for a week now.
So what happens if this does develop in a few days? As mentioned above, that is uncertain at this point but I'm not too concerned. There have been model solutions on and off that show a strong storm in the Gulf at some point with various tracks towards land but the strong solutions are in the minority. Also, it is fairly rare to have significant tropical impacts in the northern Gulf this late in the season. I know it hasn't been cool for the most part, but we are in the time of year when regular cold frontal passages create strong wind shear in the Gulf and especially the northern Gulf. So while conditions in the Caribbean are still able to produce tropical cyclones, they typically will not survive if they move north. The steering winds are also typically such that they get blown off to the northeast instead of being pulled to the north. I like pictures so I'm going to illustrate this with a few below. The first shows historical development locations and tracks for the first 10 days of November. You can see there's been plenty of development but only a few tracks north. The second image shows the number of named storms that have passed within 150 nautical miles of a location over a 100 year period for November. The entire Gulf Coast is in the less than 10 category. We could argue that due to a warming climate or whatever and the fact that it's only November 1st and not halfway through the month that we are really in a more "October-like" climate. Even then you'll see in the third image for October that the majority of storms avoid the northern Gulf and the same pattern we see in November showing development in the Caribbean with storms moving northeast is present. All this is to say that history is no guarantee of the future but when we see model solutions for the first week of November showing a strong storm in the Gulf we take it with a grain of salt unless there is a compelling reason to believe otherwise and currently we are not compelled. This is something we should watch but it is fairly unlikely we will see any impacts other than rain (which would be welcome) if it did move to the north and not somewhere else.
In other news I have been getting a lot of questions about when we will get rain and when it will cool down. The short answer is that I don't know. A front moved into the area yesterday but stalled just short of us. Still, there have been some showers the last few days and while this will continue through today and maybe tonight the accumulation amounts will not be significant. Another front will move through Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday and while precip chances will increase most of us will not see more than half an inch. Short of anything tropical, it looks like it may be pretty dry and warm probably through the end of the month. Maybe something will change and the pattern will break, but right now that looks to be well in the future. I know people that prefer cool weather aren't crazy about prolonged warmth, but the weather has been amazing, the dryness notwithstanding. Enjoy it if you can.
That's it for today. If it looks like the storm in the Caribbean may be a threat I'll let you know.
Have a good weekend.
Chris
