Thread: semii Monthly Hurricane Outlooks (Dr Jeff Masters)

Sr. Jeff Masters does an 'outlook' twice a month in his tropical weather blog. In it, he analyzes current conditions that might have an impact on possibke development of tropical systems, These conditions include Sea Surface Temperatures, wind shear, stearing currents, presence or absence of El Nino / La Nina conditions, trade winds, latest long range model runs, saharan dust, historic precedent, and probably a lot more.

Then, based on all this analysis, he comes up with a likelihood that a tropical system or systems will develop in the coming two weeks.

In this thread, I'll let everyone know what he is saying in his outlooks.

In his first outlook for the season, which covered the first half of June, Dr Masters gave about a 1/3 chance of a system developing.

At this point, Masters is saying we have a 20% chance of seeing something develop in the second half of June. AIntrestingly, he points to the waters off North Carolina as a specific area to watch in the very near term. See copy of his summary paragraph, below.



Summary
Recent history suggests a 29% chance of a named storm occurring in the second half of June. Given that the current SST pattern and two-week wind shear forecast look fairly typical for June, I'll go with a 20% chance of a named storm forming during the last half of June. There's currently nothing out there of note, but we should start watching the region off the North Carolina coast 4 - 7 days from now.

Summary
Recent history suggests a 71% chance of a named storm occurring in the first half of August. However, this is not a typical year. The ITCZ has been remarkably inactive, and there have been an unusually low number of tropical waves coming off the coast of Africa. Although SST anomalies should continue to rise and wind shear should slowly fall over the next few weeks, the computer models suggest no significant changes to the current inactive weather pattern. I'll go with a 30% chance of a named storm forming in the first half of August.

Wunder Blog : Weather Underground

An interesting little tidbit from his blog yesterday evening:


we should keep a close eye on the waters between the Bahamas and North Carolina by Wednesday. There could be two triggers for tropical cyclone formation then--the remains of the cold front that will be pushing off the U.S. East Coast this weekend, plus a tropical wave. The Western Caribbean also may be prime for some development late next week, as well as the region off the coast of Africa.

I'm afraid I missed some of these... there has veen so little going on in the Atlantic Basin this season...
Anyway, a new ibe us out today. I'll bost it now

The forecast
The last Atlantic hurricane season that was this quiet was the strong El Niño year of 1997. That year, we got two weak 45-mph tropical storms in October to finish out the season. I predict that for this season, we will also finish out the year with two more named storms, with one of these reaching hurricane strength. The most likely land areas such a storm might affect are along the Western Caribbean, Gulf Coast of Florida, and the Bahamas. The most likely time these storms may form is the period October 13 - November 7.



The above is th summary paragraph,. To see the reasoning that went into it, se the entire blog entry: Wunder Blog : Weather Underground

Thanks for the update!

Guess we'll have to keep a watch for them.

Su and I will be cruising the 11th - the 17th, which falls within that range, but we will be in the Eastern Caribbean, so if something develops in the Bahamas early in the period he mentions, that would be the only one that would affect our ship, I think. Looks good for our cruise

I well remember the last time you and Sue were cruising together ... in the middle of everything playing Jim Cantore!