usually it's august 20th or so that we go into an active spell, as per the recent years where the atlantic THC is in overdrive. this year has been different so far (five storms between july 31 and august 13).. but with the arrival of the traditional time for things to start going off, the current wave train, occasionally nosediving SOI, and near-future arrival of MJO should get things started right back in a matter of days.
details some different from yesterday.
danielle is shearing out, going into loiter mode. gfs was on to something after all.. a compromise between it and the other globals leaves us with a recurving, weak system... that may want to drift around. the upper low to the northwest is neatly cut off and progged to retrograde east under a blocking ridge up to the north.. with a weak frontal tail low coming into the area from the west, and danielle's entrained energy.. there's a shot at some hybrid development, though models aren't jumping the gun on anything.
wave near 40w skewed by a trade surge, with the convection front and the now low amplitude wave tailing it. still a bit of convergence ahead, so some chance at it perking back up as it gets further west.. globals no longer predicting much, but some older runs did follow the recent succession of events more or less.. so it's still worth attention. don't know if that call for an invest by saturday is going to pan. and if it does there's always the fact that new storms entering the caribbean at low latitude tend to be typecast as speeding open waves.
higher amplitude wave crossing the coast about now.. expect 8pm twd to make mention of it's signature. it looks decent, but indications of it's mid level intensity will be more telling than meteosat IR stills.
earl went splat.. score one for the globals. those early recon fixes with the small center and the steady acceleration should have clued me in earlier.. but of course i'd just watched charlie ride the same wave to a different future and all memories of bonnie.. and chantal and jerry in 2001.. were on the back burner.
anywho, a break in the action as the heart of the season draws nigh.
HF 2244z18august