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Tropical Questions

| August 20, 2016 @ 11:48 am

As I noted in the Weather Xtreme Video, we are going to have a lot to watch over the next 10 days as the disturbance labeled Invest 99L moves westward across the southern Atlantic. A lot to watch and a lot to talk about!

two_atl_2d1

As you can see from the satellite image above, 99L is still somewhat ragged. There’s kind of a hint of a circulation, but there is very little convection and most of the convection is a long way from what has been identified as the center. But as the NHC forecasters mention, it is moving into an area that is much more favorable for potential development. In fact, NHC puts a value of 50 percent on formation within 5 days. That number could go up.

AL99_current

The spaghetti chart of numerous models contains quite a spread from 72 hours out. The spread is not too bad for the first 72 hours.

gefs_AL99_2016082006

And then there are the runs from the GFS ensemble runs. It has a much closer packing on the future course for much of next week. Closer until it gets into the Bahamas. Once it reaches the Bahamas, even the GFS seems to be offering two tracks, one into the Gulf and one recurving along the east coast of Florida. Since I don’t think it is going to split and go both directions, we’ll have to wait and see which path the storm actually takes. The last ECMWF model run, the one that ran off 00Z data, favored the recurving path.

By the way, if this storm strengthens enough to be names, that is, achieves tropical storm status, it will be Gaston.

Over the next week or so, anyone with an interest in weather will be anxiously waiting for the next model run. I know I will.

-Brian-

Category: Tropical

About the Author ()

Brian Peters is one of the television meteorologists at ABC3340 in Birmingham and a retired NWS Warning Coordination Meteorologist. He handles the weekend Weather Xtreme Videos and forecast discussion and is the Webmaster for the popular WeatherBrains podcast.

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