2026 Atlantic Hurricane Season

[WxWatcher007]

On 6/7/2026 at 9:11 AM, GaWx said:

Thanks. The 0Z EPS cut back significantly on the % of members with Gulf TCG vs yesterday’s 12Z run. It will be interesting to see how future runs compare.

 The 6Z GEFS has significantly increased activity vs earlier runs.

Edit:  The 12Z GEFS is significantly quieter than that more active 6Z GEFS.

Looking more like a Campeche window than Gulf now. Would be a win for AI. 

10 hours ago, A-L-E-K said:

zzzzzzzzz

Forget hitting the snooze button. Pull the alarm clock out the wall, chief. 

[WxWatcher007]

First lemon of the season in the BoC.

[jconsor]

Seeing some potential interesting tropical mischief in the GOM next week. 

A stalled frontal boundary providing vorticity, remnant energy from the system entering the BOC this weekend dragging up lots of tropical moisture, and indications of a pocket of lower shear and diffluence between central US trough and a persistent GOM ridge:

https://x.com/yconsor/status/2065067111521652967

[WxWatcher007]

Just now, WxWatcher007 said:

Time for the first analysis of the 2026 season. 

As @nw baltimore wx notes, our area of interest, which was the first lemon of the season deep in the Bay of Campeche, is now a banana, which scrapes the western Gulf. 

1. Western Gulf:
A broad area of low pressure has formed over the far southern Bay 
of Campeche and is producing disorganized showers and thunderstorms. 
Environmental conditions are forecast to be only marginally 
conducive for development before the system moves inland over 
eastern Mexico late Saturday or Sunday.  The system could re-emerge 
over the northwestern Gulf on Tuesday and Wednesday while 
interacting with a frontal boundary, but there too, conditions are 
only expected to be marginally conducive for any development.
* Formation chance through 48 hours...low...10 percent.
* Formation chance through 7 days...low...10 percent.

You can see below that we have a broad area of spin, and in the Bay of Campeche, where the concave nature of the coastline allows for consolidation of vorticity, this may be a favorable factor that's now being picked up by the AI models--which have frankly outperformed the legacy models recently. 

Aside from being buried currently in the geographically favorable BoC, the conditions for tropical genesis look marginal. 

SSTs are fine, but they're marginal. Nothing too surprising for this time of year. 

 

Wind shear currently isn't an issue, but upper level winds do not look favorable outside of a small window, with a huge ribbon of high shear across the Gulf and through the Caribbean and Atlantic.

 

That said, you don't need much for marginal development this time of year, and while the legacy models (GFS/Euro and their ensembles) were bullish earlier on central/eastern Gulf development that ended up being wrong, with AI so far winning out on the possible zone of development. 

While the legacy ensembles quickly bury this broad low in Mexico and crucially--keep it there.

 

The AI models pick up the low before it gets too far inland. That keeps the window open for development as it curves around the western Gulf. Note the difference between the EPS and AI EPS!

 

Google DeepMind, which I believe performed the best in highlighting tropical genesis signals last season, is starting to show more interest in this idea as well. 

 

This one has a chance for some marginal development, if it can stay offshore for an extended period of time. Either way, this continues to highlight the signal I've mentioned before for heavy rain in the southeast. 

 

[WxWatcher007]

For those still watching, the last two Euro runs do something very weird with our area of interest. It tries to organize it well inland and treks it across the south. Can't say I've seen that before lol. 

 

Still a chance for some marginal development later in the week as a front tries to get involved in the NW Gulf. 

[Boston Bulldog]

It's not much, but this lemon is enough to get me thinking about the tropics again. Always fun to start a new season, though I'd expect this one to be a bit rough in terms of overall HU activity. Do yourself a favor and take a look at the westerly wind burst on going in the Nino zone. There is a gigantic pool at the subsurface that is primed to get churned up by downwelling oceanic kelvin waves during any westerly burst events. This Nino is going to get strong very quickly barring an unexpected downtrend.

Anyways, take a look at recent Euro depictions of this AOI (partially ex-Cristina) once it gets inland over the SE USA. I spy a major brown ocean effect bias within the Euro that is once again showing up, though GFS and other do manage to retain a somewhat competent vorticity packet while over land. This soon to be invest is going to be a real feature, but a storm essentially RI'ing over land is not a realistic outcome.

My thoughts: A depression making landfall in Texas will NOT intensify into a 985mb borderline hurricane over Shreveport (0Z 6/14 Euro begs to differ) . I doubt this thing intensifies on an organizational or SLP sense once inland, rather its injection of moisture and vorticity into the trough will help boost an already volatile severe weather look for mid-week across the Midwest and Ohio Valley. 

 

[vortex95]

55 minutes ago, Boston Bulldog said:

It's not much, but this lemon is enough to get me thinking about the tropics again. Always fun to start a new season, though I'd expect this one to be a bit rough in terms of overall HU activity. Do yourself a favor and take a look at the westerly wind burst on going in the Nino zone. There is a gigantic pool at the subsurface that is primed to get churned up by downwelling oceanic kelvin waves during any westerly burst events. This Nino is going to get strong very quickly barring an unexpected downtrend.

Anyways, take a look at recent Euro depictions of this AOI (partially ex-Cristina) once it gets inland over the SE USA. I spy a major brown ocean effect bias within the Euro that is once again showing up, though GFS and other do manage to retain a somewhat competent vorticity packet while over land. This soon to be invest is going to be a real feature, but a storm essentially RI'ing over land is not a realistic outcome.

My thoughts: A depression making landfall in Texas will NOT intensify into a 985mb borderline hurricane over Shreveport (0Z 6/14 Euro begs to differ) . I doubt this thing intensifies on an organizational or SLP sense once inland, rather its injection of moisture and vorticity into the trough will help boost an already volatile severe weather look for mid-week across the Midwest and Ohio Valley. 

 

Glad you pointed this out.  ECMWF was unrealistically showing tropical deepening well inland from MS to the Carolinas.  18z backed off and looks more reasonable.  And now the GFS has the same idea.

Excellent point about how this may play a role in the SVR later in the week.  It seems up until now, rich deep moisture was lacking as noted by not so high CAPE even in the Mid-Atlantic, but this tropical low could make a huge difference as to sensible svr wx, esp. NYC to DCA.