TS Ophelia popped up late last night and has winds of around 45 mph.

BY: Josh Martin -

Extreme Storm Central Staff

TS Ophelia popped up late last night and has winds of around 45 mph. Just looking at early morning visible satellite images, you can tell that the environment around the storm is not ideal. Strong winds aloft are pushing the deep convection away from the low level center and without the proper alignment of the thunderstorms, Ophelia will not strengthen much, if at all. The foreacst track takes the storm towards the northeast Caribbean Sea as has been the case with just about every Cape Verde system this year. Luckily, conditions will only worsen along Ophelia’s path and it will not bring much in the way of wind to the islands. However, the threat of heavy rain will be the big story, especially if the storm tracks closer to Puerto Rico than forecast. Interests in the region should closely monitor the progress of Ophelia and remember that even a tropical storm can cause major problems, esepcially from torrential rains. There is no indication that the storm will have any impact on the U.S. as a huge trough of low pressure is forecast to develop off the East Coast and keep Ophelia well offshore.

In the eastern Pacific, TD 9E has developed just off the coast of Mexico. It is forecast to become a hurricane, the first since Greg almost a month ago. While the track will be fairly close to the Mexican coastline, the developing cyclone should stay far enough offshore to keep the worst effects away from the resort areas. As usual, heavy rains from the outer bands will likely cause some local flooding issues if they manage to work their way on shore. The rest of the eastern Pacific is quiet.

The next area to watch will be the western Caribbean Sea. As we leave September, climatology favors development in this region due to a change in the pressure pattern across North America and the very warm and as-yet undisturbed waters of the western Caribbean. Add to this a very favorable MJO or Madden-Julian Oscillation phase forecast to set in by the first week of October and it should add up to producing at least one significant tropical cyclone in the region. The MJO is more or less a period of either favorable or unfavorable upward motion in the atmosphere which, in turn, supports the development of deep tropical convection. The latest GFS output for the 15 day MJO forecast indicates quite a favorable upward motion pattern developing. I have been very careful not to jump on the “it could be a big October” bandwagon because any October could be a big one. What makes this October special? The only additional weight that I can see placing on this year is the re-development of the La Nina, which typically means less wind shear over the Caribbean Sea and the high heat content of the region. There might be a slightly higher than normal chance of development as we progress through the next few weeks for this region but until I see consistent development in the global models, I will not get to worked up about it. Right now, it’s a case of now you see it, now you don’t. Some runs of the GFS produce a tropical cyclone in the western Caribbean while the very next run shows nothing. The ECMWF or Euro model shows lower than normal pressures in the western Caribbean in the long range but nothing significant and certainly not a powerful hurricane. The bottom line is that we are moving in to the time of year when we would expect development to take place in the western portions of the Atlantic Basin. There is no indication as of yet that we’ll see such development anytime soon. For now, we’ll watch Ophelia and TD 9E and will just wait and see about what October will bring when we get there. I’ll have another update here tonight.

Josh Martin