AccuWeather's Bernie Rayno and Alex DaSilva monitor the Caribbean for potential tropical development from Oct. 30 to Nov. 2, as we head into the late stages of hurricane season.
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00:00Let's talk about the hurricane season and where we are.
00:03A lot of people may say, hey, it's late October, we're almost done, we don't have to worry
00:07as much.
00:09History tells us otherwise.
00:10Yeah, it certainly does.
00:12The hurricane season doesn't officially end until the end of November and we've seen many
00:16powerful storms at the end of October and even into the beginning of November, so we
00:19certainly don't want to let our guard down here.
00:22You can see the chart.
00:23Yes, we're going down the roller coaster per se, but we can still see very impactful storms
00:28here over the next couple of weeks, climatologically speaking, and I am concerned about an area
00:33in the central or western Caribbean here, end of October into November, that could potentially
00:39eventually affect the United States.
00:41Not much right now.
00:42It is quiet, but Oscar, Tropical Rainstorm Oscar, continues to lead, but this is the
00:48area that we've been highlighting for quite some time.
00:51In fact, we highlighted first on Monday and we upgraded to a moderate risk, I believe
00:58it was on Tuesday, Alex.
01:01Yeah, this is the area where you would typically look late in the season, a little bit closer
01:05to home, more homegrown development.
01:07You would look in the Caribbean, you'd look in the Gulf of Mexico and you'd look off the
01:10southeast coast, but in this case, we are concerned about the central and western Caribbean
01:15here for development.
01:16Again, timing of that would be the very, very end of October into the beginning of November.
01:21Now, here's the pattern and if this looks familiar to anybody, you would be correct
01:27because this is a very similar pattern that produced not only Nadine, but Oscar.
01:34Yeah, it certainly is.
01:35We're going to have a big area of high pressure to the north and a lot of times these storms
01:38like to develop underneath the bellies of these high pressure areas and so a lot of
01:42times we see a low wind shear environment underneath these, you know, in the belly of
01:47the high pressure area and you're going to have that stationary front there that's going
01:50to help to induce some of the showers and thunderstorms and I'm thinking that's why
01:53we probably see some sort of development here.
01:56Yeah, and the water temperatures, listen, they're always warming up for development,
02:00certainly in the Caribbean, but Alex, a little warmer than what they normally are right now.
02:05Yeah, we should be in the low 80s right now in the Caribbean for this time of the year,
02:09but we're in the mid 80s, so a couple of degrees above the historical averages for that area.
02:14Again, that's just more fuel for these tropical systems when they develop.
02:18Now this time of the year, wind shear plays the most critical role because the wind shear
02:22really starts to increase across much of the Atlantic Basin and that's why you start chopping
02:28off, let's say the eastern Atlantic, it's hard to get anything to develop in that part
02:33of the basin, but you'll notice the wind shear chart showing you the light, light purple
02:38in the Caribbean.
02:39Yeah, it certainly is.
02:41That area is like a bubble right now.
02:42It's very low wind shear, high water temperatures, and so it's a very conducive environment for
02:49development, and I think that wind shear is going to remain fairly low here over the next
02:53week or two, so I think that if a storm tries to develop, it would develop in this little
02:57pocket here in the Caribbean, low wind shear, high water temperatures.
03:01Yeah, and when you take a look at, you know, we always look at not only meteorology, but
03:05history.
03:06History is important, and as we get into late October, this is exactly where this would
03:12develop.
03:13Now the question is, Alex, where is it going if it does develop?
03:16Yeah, it's probably either going to move north or northeast.
03:19Now hopefully it just moves across Cuba and out to sea, but there are scenarios which
03:23could take this storm closer to Florida and even towards the southeast coast, so we need
03:27to watch this very carefully.
03:29We're still a week out, at least until the storm forms, so a lot can still change, but
03:34we're going to have to watch this one carefully, I think.