An early season wave off of Africa has forecasters a bit concerned...only 3 named storms have formed in June deriving from African waves...or so I read a few days ago when this was a yellow X still on the continent.
From This article I see the details
Only three of 79 June storms since the 19th century have formed east of the Lesser Antilles, according to NOAA's database.
Two of those formed in the past six years. What would later become Hurricane Elsa first became a tropical storm just hours before June ended in 2021. Tropical Storm Bret in 2017 was a short-lived storm that eventually fizzled after soaking Trinidad and Tobago. Tropical Storm Ana in 1979 was the only other such June MDR (edit ** MDR — “Main Development Region”) storm in NOAA's database.
As luck would have it, if this current disturbance does become a storm, it would be named Bret, since the hurricane name list repeats every six years unless a storm is so destructive or deadly to be retired from use.
According to the model data I see at Tropical Atlantic’s website, there is pretty good dynamic agreement for a few days for this system, keeping it at lower latitudes. Obviously this increases the risk for the Caribbean islands.
My typical approach to looking at the models is to select all “Early Cycle Models” then subtract out:
- the Extrapolation
- Any official forecasts
- The “Trajectory and Beta” (TAB) models
- The statistical models
This leaves me with the dynamic models, giving me a feel for how well they agree (or not) with the physics we can measure and model…
There seems to be a hope at the NHC that this recurves into the open Atlantic before reaching the islands. The dynamic models are not that optimistic.
The local dynamics of the storm itself is currently a bit disheveled — Tropical Atlantic says the “center” is at about 10oN/26.6oW. I saw a 500 mb center on Nullschool at about 9o/27o an hour ago...it looks more like an open wave now:
The surface still has a closed low, but ahead of the now deteriorating 500 mb “center” by about 100 miles
The location of that surface center is approximately 8.7o/29.4o. It’s possible it stays disorganized for several days.
The NHC forecast:
Tropical Weather Outlook
NWS National Hurricane Center Miami FL800 AM EDT Sat Jun 17 2023
For the North Atlantic...Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico:
1. Eastern Tropical Atlantic (AL92):A tropical wave located several hundred miles south-southwest of the Cabo Verde Islands is producing a broad area of disorganized showers and thunderstorms. Environmental conditions appear conducive for additional development, and a tropical depression is likely to form by the early to middle portion of next week while the system moves westward at 15 to 20 mph across the eastern and central tropical Atlantic.*
Formation chance through 48 hours…medium...40 percent.*
Formation chance through 7 days...high...70 percent.
Forecaster Bucci