With Hurricane Hilary about to make a historic visit to Southern California, there’s already weather new besides the heat.
The slow Atlantic season is starting to wake up. Here are the disturbances:
#1 — also being called Invest 98. It has a 70% chance to develop in the next 2 days and in the next 7 days. I have been following this one and trying to develop a new analysis model — I would have called it a a tropical depression yesterday based on the wind field...but it does not have enough convection around it, It also seems to be more sub tropical in structure with the winds increasing further away from the center on average. This is a pretty big system, and interesting to mariner and math junkies like me.
#2 — also called Invest 99. This one looked better yesterday, but seems to have given up it’s surface energy to Inv-98. It has decent odds (50%/50%) because it will probably also go north into a region of very light steering currents. It might be one of those systems that linger and loop a bit, it might get flushed away in the mid latitudes.
#3 — Invest 90. This one is a sleeper, and has a little better odds in 7 days 60% than it has for the next 2. Many of us amateur watchers have been worried about any wave getting into the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico. Watch this one, I suspect it’s odds are going to become higher in the next couple days
#4 is a small wave that is hard to see at the surface, but shows up at 500 mb with a fair amount of energy. It’s heading for the Gulf of Mexico. So, anything that gets in there is going to have relatively weak 500 mb winds (i.e. low shear) and bathtub like water. Watch this one.
#5 is a wave just coming off of Africa — I suspect the upper level winds will move it north west and into fish spinner territory. There is still a fair amount of dust and dry air out that side of the Atlantic.
As for Hilary...oh boy. This is a well developed storm. The 500 mb flow shows the set up. There are not too many things to change the forecast now
A small trough is trying to intercede, but it’s too late. As the storm will be interacting with Baja California, it is likely to lose some strength. The waters usually get cooler towards San Diego...big fierce storm though.
Surface view
I would spend the time and analyze it now, but I don’t have that time available now. My wife broke her leg Wednesday and is coming home from the hospital in about an hour…
I’ll catch up when I can, probably later in the evening. Thanks for reading!
Be safe and stay aware!