2026 C and E Pacific tropical activity

[GaWx]

Naming a TC after a teletubby? 

[WxWatcher007]

Unfortunately, it looks like there won't be much if any more recon of Lala as recon is flying back to the mainland. 

The storm has struggled to organize a tight inner core, which makes it very hard for any kind of meaningful intensification to happen, but it's trying. We knew that would be an uphill battle. This morning's IR loop shows an attempt to wrap convection around the center, which is necessary for a faster pace of organization and intensification. 

 

Whether it truly gets there however, remains to be seen. Shear in the immediate vicinity doesn't look too bad at the moment. 

Lala remains embedded in a very dry environment, and although today it looks like it has more effectively fended off dry air intrusions, any ingestion of that dry air could disrupt an effort to organize and intensify. Marginal SSTs don't help either. 

All that said, the forecast looks on track. This is a higher end tropical storm, and with time and a somewhat conducive environment for organization and intensification a hurricane is certainly plausible. We're well within radar range now and can now watch for lower level organizational trends. 

Compared to this morning where there was a well defined but broad and ragged center, now we have what looks like a tightening inner core trying to form. Still, we don't have deep convection wrapping fully, but it's trying. 

Notice the wobble south too. As a chaser, once you get to this stage every wobble matters (even though you care about the long term movement still). It's still not a guarantee that we see an official landfall here, though impacts will be significant regardless.