TL;DR: There’s no there yet, no “magic words” in NHC’s outlook, no clear threat. Nothing actionable. Check back Monday. Sleep in, celebrate Haustblót or go to Church.
Still reading? Sigh. Yesterday NHC upgraded the Tropical Weather Outlook and now the blob in the Gulf is up to 70% chance of at least a depression forming. Be careful: this is the chance of something tropical forming, not the chance of a hurricane or something really dangerous, which is a lower (and at this point unknown) probability. Here’s the map from this morning:
The global models all show some kind of low pressure system with tropical characteristics forming once the wave crosses Yucatan and enters the Gulf midweek, but that’s about it. Run to run and model to model consistency just isn’t there yet. Some runs show a big messy rain system, some spin up a hurricane. Here are what the GFS and ECM runs show for Thusrday evening at 8pm. This is the 850mb height, wind, and relative vorticity, which tells us a lot about how strong and organized the system will be …
The top image is from GFS. Notice how tight and circular the wind field and colored area is (indicating higher vorticity)? That indicates a stronger system. Notice on the second map, from the European IFS model, the low is more elongated along the northwest axis – indicating shear and a potentially less intense system. The 06Z runs are just coming out for GFS (ECM takes longer), at it too shows a tropical storm/minimal hurricane making landfall in the Big Bend area of Florida next Friday morning.
So, all that said, bottom line is if live on the Gulf or US Southeast coasts and you have a hurricane plan (which you should have every year), there isn’t anything to do or worry about at this point. Don’t stress over it. Hopefully things will start to become clearer tomorrow, when there will still be plenty of time to prepare as needed. At the moment the thing, whatever it is, looks to come ashore Friday or Saturday and make for a messy weekend across Florida and Georgia, and it’s possible a tropical storm or hurricane will form. But, again, at this point saying more than that is just clickbait.
The other blobs aren’t anything to worry about, although the one off of Mexico (lower left corner of the TWO map above) may be a problem for Mexico next week.
This morning at 8:44am is the fall equinox – the point at which the sun will be directly over the equator, and astronomical fall begins. On satellite images it is one of two times when the terminator (the line between night and day) is straight through the poles. Here is the view from GOES East at 7am this morning:
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