Few storms Fri. & Sat.; wetter Sunday

Storms took a long time to develop this afternoon and tended to be more prevalent near I-12 from Hammond to parts of Slidell. I expect shower activity to be lower than normal (20%) Friday and Saturday where showers will be mostly confined to those areas near I-10/12 where the sea breeze runs out of steam plus the Southshore. Amounts should be lighter. Once that upper level trough moves back west of us late Saturday and an influx of Gulf moisture arrives from the SE, showers and storms will be more prevalent Sunday reaching their peak on Monday and Tuesday.

In the tropics, it’s the same story: Nothing of concern for the next 10 days, but there’s a system that models are zeroing in on for future development that could threaten the U.S. in a few weeks. Details in “Long Range Ramblings”.

The Foreca graphic shows the break in the rainfall for Friday and Saturday along with slightly higher temperatures. 92 in Slidell might mean 94 20 miles inland.

Sunday is a transition day where showers and storms will probably start on the Southshore and near the Lake and Sound in the early morning hours. It’s an open question how far inland they will get that afternoon. I can certainly see those I-10/12 areas getting some by mid-day, but I’m not sure that the push is there for them to reach Bogalusa-Poplarville.

Monday and Tuesday look wetter than normal with high stopping in the mid-upper 80s due to storms that could happen at any time. In general, this coming work week looks wetter than this week.

The NHC graphic looks like a play book from a Penn State football game with multiple X’s and O’s. It shows that Dexter has lost its tropical characteristics in the North Atlantic, another system off the Carolinas that I was a bit worried about last weekend, is heading out to sea with only a modest chance of development (the yellow area), and that the third system, with the greatest chance of development (orange X), is heading NW and will likely curve out to sea & not effect anybody. The system that is most concerning is not even shown, probably because it is just emerging from the African coast. It is labeled as “Future Wave”.

So why watch a future wave? Three leading and really different models are showing this developing into depression and then tropical storm and hurricane somewhere slightly north of the Virgin Islands or Puerto Rico next Saturday or Sunday, the 16th-17th. General movent is to the NW where this could threaten the US 3-5 days later. This graphic shows the ECMWF forecast for next Saturday. Note, it’s not forecast to be a powerful storm then, but could well become one later IF it makes it to this point.

I’ve seen these models catch lightning in a bottle and also look as silly as Johnny Carson when he played Carnac, the Magnificent. Though conditions are NOT favorable over the Eastern Atlantic due to dry, dusty mid-level air and only average water temperatures, conditions become increasingly favorable from the islands west to the U.S. — so it’s wait and see time over the next five days to see if the wave makes it through the Eastern Atlantic and if the models stay in consensus.

Looking at the season as a whole, I expect a flurry of activity in the next three weeks, then settling down to maybe a few “fish” storms that stay in the Atlantic threatening nobody. However, activity will probably pick up towards the end of September where storms tend to move more south to north. That means we’ll have to be watching the Western Caribbean.

Foreca graphic for Pensacola Beach shows a break in the weather there, too. Friday and most of Saturday look nice (but the nice weather vanishes on Saturday if you venture closer to Panama City). Then, it’s back to the storms for Sunday through Tuesday.