Storms return for Thursday & Friday

Our slightly less humid spell will barely last two days. A quick one for this afternoon. Upper level ridge suppressing showers today will start breaking down tomorrow allowing some showers to creep into some western areas Wednesday evening (Tangipahoa and Washington Parishes) before fizzling out. Thursday and Friday look to have more than average coverage of showers and storms (70%), with some areas picking up an inch. Then ridge builds back in from west reducing showers for Saturday - Monday, except for areas to our east such as Mobile and Pensacola.

Erin is crawling northward and will not travel any further west than its current longitude. High surf, gale force winds, and undermining of a few coastal roads and structures are expected on the Outer Banks. Elsewhere, there are no threats as I’ll explain in “Long Range Ramblings”.

The Foreca graphic has the right idea with adding some rainfall for Thursday and Friday, but I think their display of heavier storms on Saturday is displaced. Those storms should be from the Biloxi area east. . Highs come down only a few degrees with the showers to near 90.

Then, back into the sun, with only widely scattered late afternoon showers Saturday-Monday and highs in that 93-95 range. Next batch arrives late Tuesday or Wednesday and could linger awhile. Some of us need the rain.

This is the latest NHC tropical graphic minus the cone. Erin is heading north and out to sea though there will be some Outer Banks impact. The next system, represented by the orange X, is looking less impressive on the satellite imagery, and will be encountering less favorable conditions than Erin. The latest European model doesn’t show any development. Recall: That’s the system that the American GFS built into a Gulf hurricane in its Saturday morning runs.

The next system (yellow X) looks more impressive on the satellite image, but will run into less favorable upper air conditions. Besides, it’s a long way out.

In general, we are entering into a phase of the Madden-Julian oscillation (that upper air wave that I discussed a few weeks back) that is much less favorable to support hurricane development. Unfortunately, models are placing the Atlantic and Gulf back into more favorable phases in three weeks. So enjoy the brief respite - we may be back into looking at areas to develop by September 5. One saving grace has been that the Bermuda High is so far to the east, systems head north well before they get to Florida - hope this continues but I’ve seen years where this has been the rule except for the one week you needed it to be east.

Foreca graphic for Pensacola Beach shows a few nice days when we are wet - then this weekend goes down the dumper (as Bob Breck used to say).