WxWatcher007

It’s curtains for anything in the tropical Atlantic developing out there and impacting the continental U.S. That ship has sailed. Best chance would now come from the homebrew regions…which as we saw last year can still produce monsters.

Even though we have two highlighted areas by the NHC, the basin is definitely starting to wake up. It’s weak right now, but there is a signal on guidance for possible development off the SE coast from a wave or disturbance that ejects out of the Caribbean early next week, and a signal late month for a possible CAG, which better fits climatology than what models were previously showing with a CAG mid-September. There are still headwinds with wavebreaking induced shear, but it seems to me that activity will gradually pick up as TC climo shifts west.

Nope, non-tropical. It’s still attached to a frontal boundary.

LWX is back up.

Tropical Storm gusts are being reported along the NJ and DE coast

It’s a really impressive radar presentation. Look at that banding on the northern and western sides.

It’s a very impressive radar presentation. It’s faux tropical but it’s legit.

Totally agree with Andy. The only real shot of continental US impacts at this point would come from homebrew off the coast/Gulf or from the Caribbean.

Pretty good radar depiction right now of the coastal low.

It’s over increasingly marginal SSTs and doesn’t have a lot of time before it’s either onshore or tucked into the coast. If that boundary weren’t so clear I’d say it has a solid chance of subtropical development, but I just think this one isn’t going to get there. I don’t think the NHC would pull the trigger on that. Not this year at least with them missing/slow to designate two TCs this season. If this were off of Wilmington, I think it’d be a different story given SSTs. It’s firing good convection, but you really want to see it over the center. On radar though the presentation is actually pretty nice with some spiral banding evident. Worth a casual eye in case my analysis is wrong lol.

It’s still clearly baroclinic—attached to a frontal boundary. You can see it clearly in the visible satellite. Same impacts as a TS, but just not tropical.

Yeah that's in the back of my mind, but I think the distinction here is the much larger moisture envelope and ability of this one to keep up convection. Environment looks pretty favorable for development/intensification in the subtropics too, which worked well with Fernand.

I don't want to get too ahead of my skis, but the EPS and GEFS have been gradually showing the basin opening back up between 92L, the wave behind it, and perhaps some subtropical/tropical development in the homebrew region.

Models are quite robust once 92L gets north of the islands.

It’s just so devoid of central deep convection though. If the center was tucked under the convection it’d be a different story. Same impacts at the end of the day.

Not tropical but plenty of impacts

I think the tropical Atlantic will continue to be a loss for activity, but I’ll want to see if waves survive the trek into the Caribbean and SW Atlantic after 9/20 or if the basin is just relying on CAG potential and stalled fronts. It’s easy to be prisoner of the moment, but the run up to the peak last year was historically inactive too…until the lid over the basin blew off.

Halfway through September, things have gone about as I expected, though I did not foresee the relentless wave breaking that has reinforced stability and wind shear in the basin. I didn't expect things to pick up until around the 20th, and it looks like that is on track with the newest cherry increasingly likely to break the drought later in the week. After that however, it's pretty unclear how the season will progress. It looks like the tropical Atlantic is a dud, but as climo shifts to the Caribbean and homebrew region, I do think the lid will come off.

Maybe, but keep in mind that these large scale oscillations have a far reaching impact that go beyond SSTs. The atmospheric changes that provide cooling to the basin also impact things like steering patterns and shear. But with all that being equal, if you have large scale warming of the whole basin you'd still end up with what we've had going on this decade--stability issues across the basin and especially in the tropical Atlantic. You need contrasts between the MDR and subtropics to generate the instability necessary to keep waves convectively active.

The Atlantic has been exceptionally quiet for a second consecutive September, but it looks as if the basin is trying to wake back up with a robust tropical wave heading through the tropical Atlantic. The wave, focused near 30W, is most likely still a few days away from consolidating and kicking off the process of tropical genesis, but with a strong model signal from operational/ensemble/AI models, and the wave producing much more convection than the failed development of 91L, this one looks like it will become a TC eventually. There are still some headwinds, figuratively and literally. In the image above you can see stable air to the northwest of the wave. Further west, there is wind shear evident with what little convection being blown over. Long term though, once this wave is able to consolidate, it will have a chance to intensify. Long way away from that however.

There should be some rain but I am still a bit skeptical of whether the heavier rain gets into the DC area given the gradient and potential track of the low.

We’re on to 2026.

Saw my first wooly caterpillar mowing the backyard today.

We uninstalled. Could’ve done it a week ago.