Bertha Near Bermuda, Watching Wave East of the Lesser Antilles

Fun times for mid-July, huh? Well, obviously depends on your definition of fun, but so far for storm trackers, we've had some fish. That may change.

Bertha is eventually going to go out to sea, in good agreement with model guidance. SSTs aren't terribly warm as it moves north and east, but they are probably warmer than the upwelled waters we have now. Some daily SST products I've seen elsewhere show this remarkably well in both the actual SST fields and the day-to-day change in their anomalies. If it moves out a tad here soon, the SSTs and relatively low storm-relative shear should allow Bertha to at least maintain itself for awhile.

(As an aside, it will be interesting to see how the SSTs in that area S/E of Bermuda evolve over coming weeks. We're still in the time frame where they tend to increase through time, but Bertha has done quite a number there this week. Anything that ends up in that area for the next week or two will have a shallow/low amount of oceanic heat to work with.)

94L should become our 3rd depression sometime today, then our 3rd storm sometime in the next few days. Bertha is not likely to be big enough as a tropical system nor expansive enough as a transitioning system to provide more than a tug northward on this feature. How much of a tug it gives will likely be dependent upon how fast 94L develops and how slowly both it and Bertha move in coming days. It'll ultimately determine whether it ends up crossing parts of the Lesser & Greater Antilles or not. Given the strong influence the Greater Antilles can have on storm structure and intensity, it's really tough to have any confidence beyond five days in terms of a track forecast -- moreso than it would be in any other case. Long-range models haven't done well with the pattern across the US this summer, resulting in even less confidence. Summing it up: as always, long range speculation isn't exactly something to make time with right now and everyone across the islands into the Bahamas and the southeast needs to keep an eye on this one.

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