Overall, the rest of this week through this weekend looks quiet across the Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf with no tropical development expected.
Turning to next week, there is the possibility that there could be some sort of tropical mischief over the northern Gulf during the middle and later parts of next week. The weather setup next week that could cause this to occur is connected to a piece of energy breaking off this weekend from a stationary frontal boundary that’ll be positioned along and offshore of the Mid-Atlantic coast. This piece of energy could push southwestward reaching the northeastern Gulf around the middle part of next week and the north-central Gulf during the later parts of next week.
There is uncertainty as to how far offshore of the northern Gulf coast this piece of energy will be during the second half of next week. If it tracks over the very warm waters of the northern Gulf, then there’s going to be a legitimate chance for development. On the other hand, if the piece of energy stays right along the coast or just inland across the northern Gulf coast, then development would not occur due to land interaction.
As for the latest model guidance, the GFS model seems to be showing a tropical depression forming in the north-central Gulf around next Wednesday and then tracking westward reaching the southwest Louisiana and upper Texas coast around next Friday as a depression.
The latest European model guidance doesn’t forecast any sort of development, likely due to land interaction. The Canadian model is the same way, in that it shows no development due to land interaction.
The GFS ensemble model guidance does have a couple of members that do show development in the northern Gulf late next week. Overall, the chances from the GFS ensembles are very low.
The European ensemble model guidance is even quieter than the GFS ensemble model & only shows a couple of members forecasting development right along the northeast Gulf coast. The chances from the European ensemble model guidance are nearly zero now.
At this point, I think that while there is certainly a possibility of tropical development in the northern Gulf during the second half of next week, the chances for it to occur are very low. I think that there’s probably a higher chance that nothing comes of it due to land interaction. Either way, I’ll be keeping an eye on things and will have updates as needed.
Finally – There are some subtle signals in the data that activity may begin picking up across the Atlantic Basin near the end of this month into the first half of August. An upward motion pulse of the Madden Julian Oscillation is expected to make its way into the Atlantic during this time period, which would invigorate activity.
The extremely long range model guidance are actually beginning to show this possible uptick in activity. The European ensemble model guidance shows upwards of a 20-30 percent chance for tropical development in the area of the tropical Atlantic between the Lesser Antilles and the coast of Africa. The CFS model, for what it’s worth, shows several robust tropical disturbances moving westward off of the coast of Africa towards the eastern Caribbean and then towards either the Bahamas or the Gulf beginning during the last week of this month and continuing through the first 10 days of August.
For now, this is something to just keep an eye on, but it’s certainly nothing to be concerned or worried about.
The next tropical weather discussion will be issued on Friday.