Tropical Storm Gabrielle: Gabrielle remains a sheared storm with most of the convection occurring to the east of its low-level center. That said, Gabrielle does look more organized than it did at this time yesterday.
Gabrielle is heading in a west-northwest to northwest direction today and it looks likely that it will move to the northwest throughout this weekend before it turns to the north and northeast by early next week. Additionally, the wind shear that has been affecting Gabrielle is expected to decrease during this weekend & this should allow the storm to strengthen to probably a hurricane sometime between Sunday and Monday. Gabrielle will then maintain its hurricane strength as it heads in a northeasterly direction next week.
It continues to look very likely that Gabrielle will not be a threat to the Bahamas and the United States.
As for Bermuda – At the time of this writing, it looks more likely than not that Gabrielle will pass far enough to the east of the island to not be a serious threat. That being said, those of you in Bermuda should keep close tabs on the progress of the storm throughout this weekend just in case it trends closer to the island. For now though, the biggest threat from the storm looks to be rough surf and rip currents.
Model Track Forecast:
Satellite Imagery:
Finally – It looks like it will be a quiet weekend across the rest of the Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf with no other areas to be concerned about in terms of development. I’m still keeping a close eye on the area from the western Caribbean to the Bay of Campeche and the southern Gulf for later this month. At this point though, there are no changes at all to what I wrote in yesterday’s update. Those thoughts were that I do think that the area from the western Caribbean through the Bay of Campeche and the southern Gulf will definitely need to be watched closely for possible tropical development during the week of September 29. Nothing concrete or likely at this time, but it is something to keep an eye on.
The next tropical weather discussion will be issued on Saturday.