Forget the 'canes; it's the drought

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Forgive us weather geeks if we get too wrapped up in hurricane talk; the real news here is the drought. With little rain in the last 10 days, we face another week or longer with no rain and 90-degree heat. Widespread watering is warranted or we’ll start to look like Texas. The culprit is a slow moving upper level ridge or heat dome just to our west. That gives us NW flow aloft and a mid-level dry cap on the low level heat and humidity.

On the hurricane front, something could develop this weekend in the Atlantic, but won’t impact us. Our real concern is something “home grown” in the Southern Gulf of NW Caribbean, but that won’t happen in the next week, probably two. See “Long Range Ramblings”.

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Can’t argue with the Foreca graphic. Highs of 92 each day at the Slidell Airport - a degree or two cooler right on the Lake or Sound, and a degree or two warmer further inland. Low temperatures upper 60s warming to the low 70s through the week with increasing humidity. Southshore lows won’t drop below low- to mid-70s. There’s virtually no chance of rain.

As the upper level high moves to the East Coast a week from now, upper level flow turns east and low level flow southeast. This will probably bring back scattered showers and thunderstorms by next Friday. Models disagree on timing and amounts, so just keep watering.

In the tropics, models agree that a system coming off Africa should develop by late this weekend. NHC is only giving this a 30% chance, probably because of their busted outlook last week. However, the upper level conditions will become more conducive for development in about 3 days, so my guess is that this will become Gabrielle. and head north of the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico following a similar track to Erin.

The area we have to watch is the Southern Gulf and NW Caribbean. Here’s the latest ECMWF Week Three probabilities for a tropical storm during the week starting Sept. 29. It continues to show the Bay of Campeche as an area to watch, but has kicked the can a week further into the future. Bottom line: There’s a week or two period in late Sept. and early October where a tropical storm or hurricane could develop in the Southern Gulf and head our way before the westerly winds aloft set in, sending cold fronts our way ending the threat. I’m not saying it’s going to happen, but there’s some meteorological reasons why this could happen.

Foreca graphic for Pensacola Beach shows really nice weather. Sunny. Highs about 85, lows about 75. Funny how the temperature curve for some days has an afternoon squiggle..