Tropical Storm Fernand: There’s not much to say about Tropical Storm Fernand, except that it is headed out into the open Atlantic and likely doesn’t have much longer until it begins to weaken.
Fernand is headed on a north-northeasterly track today and is likely to turn more to the northeast and east-northeast over the next couple of days. This track will lead the storm safely out into the open Atlantic.
Additionally, it is likely that Fernand will run headlong into an area of very strong wind shear by late today or Tuesday. Because of this, its window for any sort of strengthening is about to be closed & I expect that Fernand will begin weakening by Tuesday and become a non-entity by Wednesday.
Fernand, we hardly knew ye.
Invest 99-L Located Over The Eastern Caribbean: After looking quite robust all weekend long, Invest 99-L has completely fallen apart today due to low-level divergence and strong westerly wind shear.
It now looks highly unlikely that much, if anything will come from Invest 99-L as it heads westward across the Caribbean this week. This westward track will lead this disturbance to move inland into Central America by Wednesday or Thursday.
All model guidance have backed way off on showing any sort of development with Invest 99-L & I have to agree with this.
Coastal Storm Possible For Early Next Week Along The US East Coast: Pretty much the only thing to really keep an eye on over the next week or so is going to be the possibility of some sort of coastal storm forming near the Southeast coast of the United States around next Monday and then heads northward along the East Coast of the US as we get into next Tuesday and Wednesday.
Both the GFS and European models do show this potential coastal storm, which in all likelihood will probably stay non-tropical in nature. That said, it’s quite possible it could try to become some sort of hybrid storm that has both non-tropical and tropical features, but is never named.
What this coastal storm may end up doing is bring a few days of squally, rainy weather, along with gusty onshore winds to much of the East Coast of the United States, from coastal Georgia through the coastal Carolinas up to New England during the first half of next week.
I’ll keep an eye on this coastal storm possibility, in case it does trend towards being more tropical in nature.
The Rest Of The Atlantic Will Take A Snooze For A While: It appears that the rest of the Atlantic will go to sleep for the rest of this month. This snoozing of the tropics looks to last into the first part of September.
The overall conditions across the Atlantic are expected to be unfavorable for activity across the tropical Atlantic for at least the next one to two weeks. So, we are probably looking at about 10 to possibly 14 days without much going on across the Atlantic.
Does this mean Hurricane Season is over?? ABSOLUTELY NOT!!
It looks as if by about September 10th or so that a new upward motion pulse of the Madden Julian Oscillation will make its way around into the Atlantic & this is when things may start picking up again. In fact, I suspect that we could see an active second half of September and first half of October across the Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf making another back-loaded season quite possible.
So we can enjoy the rare late August and early September break in tropical activity before things get more active again.
The next tropical weather discussion will be issued on Wednesday.