Atlantic Blobette: May 24, Update A

So… we have a blobette off south-eastern Florida and over the Bahamas. I watched her as she came up from the Caribbean and crossed Cuba today. The NHC currently give her a 60% chance of being a fully-fledged tropical storm on Saturday, but I’m not sure yet. It is certainly possible because the circulation in the lower half of the troposphere was quite good earlier today and she is in the Gulf Stream region, so she has plenty of warm water to munch on. However, in the past few hours it looks like the circulation has weakened a bit, for a couple of reasons. First, she is in an area of very high wind shear from the southwest. You can see this if you look at the satellite image… the clouds are all to the northeast of the ‘center’:

And her other problem is dry air, which is to her west and south and is also being blown into the system. If it wasn’t for these pesky little problems, I’d say she would definitely be a storm. At the moment it looks like the wind shear might hang around, so we might get away without seeing Beryl (the next name) for a bit longer.

I was kinda wondering if I’d be back before the official start of the season… a couple of weeks ago there were signs in the experimental long-range computer models that there would be some sort of low pressure just off south-eastern Florida today (although I don’t remember seeing any signs of Alberto in there, so he just snuck in as far as I can tell ;-)). Of course I was a teensy-weensy bit skeptical (yes, moi! ;-)), but ta-da, here we are. I think it’s very groovy that models are being developed that can forecast these sorts of blobs and blobettes up to 10 days ahead of time (even if they are still a bit blurry around the edges)! J I know they were doing well a couple of years ago and I will be curious to see how they do this season.

As The Terminator said, “I’ll be back” (tomorrow). And one of these days I’ll get to the official welcome message… I might have to sneak it in before June 1 if these early storm shenanigans carry on though!  

Ciao,

J.

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DISCLAIMER: These remarks are just what I think/see regarding tropical storms - not the opinion of any organization I represent. If you are making an evacuation decision, please heed your local emergency management and the National Hurricane Center's official forecast and the National Weather Service announcements. This is not an official forecast. If I "run away, run away" (Monty Python), I'll let you know.

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