ORLANDO, Fla. – The special tropical outlook from the National Hurricane Center definitely took the majority of us by surprise.
As much as I love tropical meteorology myself, I can’t say I’m consistently looking at models for the Atlantic basin or watching for any signs of tropical activity.
National Hurricane Center will typically issue recurring tropical weather outlooks starting May 15, the commencement of the East Pacific hurricane season, through to about Dec. 15. The subtle extension beyond the end of November is to encompass whatever late, late season bloomers we may have in the Gulf, the Caribbean, or even the Atlantic.
We’ve only had a very select few tropical or even subtropical disturbances earn named storm status this early in the year. You could count on one hand how many named storms we’ve tracked in the month of March through tropical recorded history.
But I know you’re not reading just for the sake of counting how many bona fide cyclones we’ve tracked in March. Let’s talk a bit about what this rogue spin in the central Atlantic could tell us for the upcoming hurricane season.
I’ll start off by mentioning, the ocean waters across the basin have actually COOLED from what they were starting in late 2022, and through 2023 and 2024. The tropical Atlantic in fact right off the west coast of Africa is cooler than average for this time of year.
The water temperatures being as finicky as they are, and the current warm versus cool “configuration” as we call it will have implications on the hurricane season if things don’t change.
Where we stand now, our warmest waters are actually closest to home. They’re right off our west coast in the Gulf. Temperature anomalies are incredibly high when compared to the climatological norm. The physical temperatures themselves are already capable of producing a tropical storm, if the other parameters required were able to be satisfied (moisture, low wind shear, upper level exhaust to name a few).
Warmer waters, like daytime heating we experience here in central Florida that can fuel rain and the development of thunderstorms, are not only fuel for tropical cyclones but provide areas of instability out over open water too. It’s the same principle as when we show you all the “storm energy” charts on air, breaking down where it is we could see some afternoon showers and storms given how much lift there is in our local area.
Warm water acts as a lifting mechanism, especially in the tropics where we don’t typically have any other forcing outside of warm oceanic temps to produce their own upward vertical motions. Near the equator, Coriolis force (deflecting objects to the right in the northern hemisphere as a result of Earth’s rotation) is nil to none.
As a result, we don’t typically have the classic trigger we’d see here in central Florida. The last couple of tornado events we’ve battled through were a direct result of low level instability reacting to the introduction of a cold front/upper trough or jet max coming across our area.
We don’t get those kind of instigators of storm formation out in the tropics. So we have to rely solely on the warm ocean temperatures and a LACK of substantial wind flow above the surface.
So after that quick crash course, where does this area of interest come into play??
If you look at our water anomaly chart, the greatest focus of our warmth is in the Gulf, the western and central Caribbean, into the subtropical Atlantic. There are three different “segments” dividing the Atlantic. We have the true, genuine tropics closest to the equator. The subtropics north of that latitudinal strip. Finally, further north from there are the mid-latitude regions, where we track the west to east flowing jet stream carrying the winter or spring time storm systems we’ve witnessed together the last few months.
The fact we have generally warmer subtropical waters than tropical waters could result in greater development north of where our tropical waves typically migrate across the Main Development Region.
We’ll also be closely monitoring the instability and localized lift provided by the Gulf, especially at the beginning and latter segments of the hurricane season. Lastly, these very warm waters close to home coupled with the Central American Gyre which has spawn some very infamous storms (Michael, Idalia, Helene, to name a few) could become nasty business at a moments notice.
Plenty more discussion to come as we move along through the rest of March and especially April into May.
For now, these warm pockets from the Gulf across the Atlantic could change how the hurricane season behaves. The warmer waters also play a role on the pressure patterns which drive these tropical features. We’ll continue to monitor all of these variables in the pinpoint weather center, so stay tuned for more!
