Jason M wrote this discussion... FEW indications we may have to start watching the Mean Development Region more closely in the upcoming weeks...

(unofficial) IWIC Atlantic Tropical Weather Discussion - 24 June 2004 - 8:20 PM EDT

Shower and thunderstorm activity in the northwest Gulf of Mexico is associated with tropical moisture being drawn northward into a land boundary over the southeast by the Atlantic ridge. Tropical development will not occur. The remainder of the Atlantic Basin is still very quiet. Upper level lows enhancing strong westerly shear is controlling much of the weather in the Caribbean in western Atlantic.

As stated yesterday evening, the potential for a named storm forming during the last few days of June look very slim at this point. Our seasonal hurricane forecast released on May 25 called for no June storms, so this is a good way to start the season. Now we begin to look forward into the month of July. We're forecasting 1-2 tropical storms to form next month. None of which are expected to reach hurricane status. The primary area we're going to focus on is the Mean Development Region (the area between the Lesser Antilles and the coast of Africa). The runner-up region is the western Atlantic. The 384H GFS forecasts often change numerous times, but these runs are somewhat useful for getting the general idea of what we might expect over the next couple weeks. The GFS does indicate that a series of waves will exit Africa, with the last one shown on the run being the strongest, 1010MB. Now if this were August, it probably wouldn't be anything special. However, the North Atlantic Oscillation is expected to return to neutral during that timeframe after going positive during the first week of July. The likelyhood of tropical development is slightly greater when the NAO is negative as the subtropical ridge weakens a bit. In addition, the western edge of the negative phase of the MJO will likely still be over the central/eastern Atlantic by that timeframe. But remember, we're looking as far out as July 10th, so we have a lot of time to go over model runs and TC parameters before we suggest that anything has even a 50/50 shot at development. But being that the MDR will be a place to watch next month we wanted to at least mention it.

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