Two systems in the Atlantic, the rapidly falling apart Francine, and the slowly developing but not threatening TD7, along with two boring and one sort of interesting disturbances. Bebinca in the West Pacific may hit China as a powerful typhoon in four days. Here’s the details …
The NHC Tropical Weather Outlook this morning might look dire, but a closer look at the details it isn’t so scary.
Invests AL92 and AL94 (confusingly labeled “2” and “1” respectively in NHC’s Outlook) have almost no chance of developing. The nameless yellow blob just off the US Southeast is a low that might be developing out of the cold front that passed through this weekend. It might develop in to something in a few days that might or might not have tropical characteristics. GFS hs been pretty consistent in a weak storm of some kind impacting North Carolina early next week. No “magic words” in the outlook, probably worth watching the weather if you are in the mid Atlantic states (northern SC, NC, and Virginia), but not worth getting too excited about it until you have to (which may well be never).
Francine is raining out over the Gulf Coast this morning. Here’s the rainfall totals as of 5am, mostly aroun 6-10″ but over a foot in places:
There are still tropical storm warnings up for the New Orleans area, but those should be ending soon. Damage appears to be relatively light as early reports come in – mostly power outages and flooding reports from areas especially vulnerable to flooding. The oil and gas infrastructure should have weathered this with little to no problems as long as nothing broke that shouldn’t have, and normal production from shut in facilities resuming quickly. Overall economic impacts should be in the $2 Billion range, mostly due to disruptions rather than overt physical damage.
Tropical Depression Seven is way out in the eastern Atlantic. As NHC notes in this morning’s discussion, it should become a tropical storm today, but probably won’t gain much intensity over the next five days as it moves westward.
The major long term models (GFS, ECM) turn the storm sharply northward towards the end of the forecast. So for now nothing to worry about.
In the Pacific, Tropical Storm Bebinca is tracking towards passing through the Ryukyu Islands just north of Okinawa on it’s way to the major port complexes and population centers around Hangzhou Bay, China as a Typhoon. It is forecast to be equivalent to a Category 3 storm on the Saffir Simpson scale at landfall, and has the potential to cause upwards of $10 Billion in economic impacts in China:
This will need close watching in about two days. It will likely disrupt shipping and supply chains out of China for several days.
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