ORLANDO, Fla. – In this weekly tropics update, Africa keeps spitting out tropical waves, but the Atlantic thankfully keeps destroying them.
Dry air and sinking air continue to dominate the main development region, between the Lesser Antilles and Africa, of the Atlantic basin. As expected, the hostile conditions gobbled up two juicy tropical waves that emerged off Africa last week.
The Monday satellite shows another robust tropical wave over the eastern Atlantic, but most model guidance shows limited development at best.
Dry air in the mid levels of the atmosphere continue to plague thunderstorms that try to develop over the extremely warm waters of the Atlantic.
In addition to the dry air, sinking air is dominating the basin. Thunderstorms need air to rise to grow and thrive.
Until these two factors change, it will be extremely difficult to get one of these waves to develop.
El Niño is expected to get stronger into September and October. This should help to increase wind shear across the Atlantic basin, making it even more difficult for tropical development.
The next 10 days, through the middle of August, should stay quiet. The time to watch would be as these continued waves roll off of Africa and meet up with the climatological peak of hurricane season.
That would be from the third week of August through the second week of September.