lamont
Contributor
Having learned from my last poor call, I'm being a little more conservative, but 98 looks like it has a strong potential to develop to a named storm. Its another tropical wave which has come off of africa and should head over the warm carribean waters similar to Dean / Felix
One thing that i've been reading on the forums on wunderground is apparently the paths that Dean and Felix are taking are *highly* unusual for storms this late in the season. Its more typical to see tropical waves coming off of africa which enter the carribean and turn into hurricanes to take a northerly jog and put the whole gulf coast of the US at risk from texas to florida. Either something very odd is going on this year, or we should see a reversion to the mean here and start seeing that kind of behavior in these storms...
From the Wunder blog:
98L
A tropical wave in the mid-Atlantic, halfway between Africa and the Lesser Antilles, has developed a closed circulation and some heavy thunderstorm activity near the center. This disturbance has been labeled "98L" by NHC this morning. The disturbance is under about 20 knots of winds shear from strong upper-level winds from the east-southeast, but this shear is forecast to gradually slacken over the next few days, and should be below 10 knots by Monday night, and under 5 knots by Wednesday. 98L is a threat to develop into a tropical depression as early as Monday. The 12Z (8am EDT) runs of the GFDL and HWRF models both develop 98L into a tropical storm, but keep it below hurricane strength. The storm will be approaching the Lesser Antilles Islands on Wednesday or Thursday. Given 98L's more northerly starting location, it may eventually affect Puerto Rico.
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=774&tstamp=200709
One thing that i've been reading on the forums on wunderground is apparently the paths that Dean and Felix are taking are *highly* unusual for storms this late in the season. Its more typical to see tropical waves coming off of africa which enter the carribean and turn into hurricanes to take a northerly jog and put the whole gulf coast of the US at risk from texas to florida. Either something very odd is going on this year, or we should see a reversion to the mean here and start seeing that kind of behavior in these storms...