“How busy are the tropics?” you might ask. Well, if I told you that we have 1 hurricane, 3 tropical storms, 1 tropical depression, and 2 other areas of concern, you would say, “Yep… Pretty busy.”
Here’s a quick update on all of them except for Tropical Storm Sally:
Hurricane Paulette is now starting to pull away from Bermuda after making a direct impact. Winds are currently at 100 MPH and is moving to the north at 14 MPH. She’ll eventually curve more to the northeast and east-northeast and head farther out to sea.
Tropical Depression Rene is barely hanging on as a depression and should degenerate into a remnant low sometime today.
Tropical Storm Teddy is expected to start a curve to the northwest that will keep him away from the US, but the path may be heading toward Bermuda. Teddy has all the ingredients ahead of him to become a major hurricane by Friday morning. We’ll have to watch the NHC updates to see where he will go after five days.
Tropical Storm Vicky just formed within the past hour and is moving to the northwest at the moment, but a more westerly motion will start on Wednesday. The good news is that Vicky is expected to be a short-lived storm and become post-tropical late on Wednesday evening.
Now here is the latest on the two areas that are being watched from the NHC:
1. Disorganized showers and thunderstorms over the western and southwestern Gulf of Mexico are associated with a weak area of low pressure. Development of this system is not expected due to strong upper-level winds while it moves slowly southwestward and then southward over the western Gulf of Mexico during the next few days.
• Formation chance through 48 hours…low…near 0 percent.
• Formation chance through 5 days…low…10 percent.
2. A tropical wave near the west coast of Africa is producing disorganized shower and thunderstorm activity. Environmental conditions appear to be conducive for slow development of the system this week as the wave moves westward at about 10 mph over the far eastern tropical Atlantic.
• Formation chance through 48 hours…low…10 percent.
• Formation chance through 5 days…medium…40 percent.
That is all for now. We only have one name left in the list for 2020 (Wilfred) before we have to start using the names from the Greek alphabet. Those are Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, Zeta, Eta, Theta, Iota, Kappa, Lambda, Mu, Nu, Xi, Omicron, Pi, Rho, Sigma, Tau, Upsilon, Phi, Chi, Psi, and Omega. The last, and only, time the Greek Alphabet was used was back in 2005 when we had a total of 28 named storms. We have currently used 20 names.
Central Alabama Weather 