TL;DR: Bret will be passing north of Barbados, and over St. Lucia, Martinique, and impacting Dominica tonight as a strong tropical storm, then should break up well south of the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. Tropical Depression 4 has formed, will likely become Tropical Storm Cindy, but shouldn’t impact land. Neither are a realistic threat to the mainland US.
For the official word on Bret, here are links to the latest Key Messages regarding Tropical Storm Bret (en Español: Mensajes Claves) from the National Hurricane Center. The peak winds are just short of hurricane force, but are more than likely confined to small areas of intense convection and the average winds are probably only a middling tropical storm. Impacts are likely to be pretty random depending on where the worst of the convection actually tracks, but unless something breaks that shouldn’t will hopefully be light. The big risk will likely be flash floods in the inland areas, and waves right on the coat. Here is the estimated damage swath from my TAOS/TC model using the latest (5am ET Thursday 22nd) NHC forecast:
Tropical Depression Four (AL042023) has formed out of Invest AL93, with NHC starting advisories at 5am. At this point it looks to stay far enough north of the Leeward Islands (Antigua, etc) to avoid any significant impacts, and is forecast to fade out by next week. Here is the damage swath, which as you can see is primarily of concern to fish and fish related interests …
The track line might concern those in the Bahamas, Florida, or mainland US. Don’t worry – the track and intensity models show the storm breaking up, and the remnants turning north towards Bermuda. Here’s the “spaghetti map” for those who wish to partake …
As often noted, the lines on the map are not the full story. If you look carefully you will see lots of the thin gray lines (the ensemble members, which as a reminder are not deterministic runs but alternate scenarios) – most of them fade out or are truncated because the storm weakened so much the computer lost track of it. The following graph shows the intensity forecast for several of the models:
You can safely ignore the green line (HWRF), it’s been bonkers lately. The black line shows the official forecast, and as you can see the rest keep the storm below hurricane force, and starting a downward trend in about three days.
Chuck. My usual link didn’t work. I cut and paste per instructions. When it opened I hit “subscribe “. It then said fill out the small field left of the word subscribe. Didn’t say what to write in. I hit Go and got here.
I would like to help you with the cost. Let’s talk when I see you, maybe in church.
Thanks.
Stratton Leopold
Should be fixed now – Thanks, will talk later!