ORLANDO, Fla. – In the tropical Pacific, we have two tropical storms right up against one another.
Tropical Storm Barbara and Tropical Storm Cosme both formed over the weekend. Barbara is on its way to becoming the first hurricane in the northern hemisphere for the year 2025.
Cosme, the weaker of the two, is expected to continue some strengthening over the next two days before the interaction between the two storms inevitably leads to their demise.
The National Hurricane Center also has a third area they’re monitoring for the fourth named storm of the eastern Pacific hurricane season. The fourth name on their list is Dalila. Right now they’re giving this third area of disturbed weather a 60% shot at formation over the course of seven days.
This would put the Pacific basin far ahead of the Atlantic, but this is not unusual. Typically, the Eastern Pacific will see these bursts of activity early on in their season, especially when our side is quiet.
When we switch gears and turn our attention to the Atlantic, things are very quiet. There’s a reason why, which we’ll get to here in a moment. But first, despite the above average pre-seasonal forecasts, this is entirely normal. Last year was an excellent example of this.
We did get Alberto, Beryl and Chris to kickstart things a little on the early side. But per the calendar, and on average when looking at tropical climatology, or a history of what tends to occur in the tropics, our first named storm usually arrives sometime toward the end of June. Sometimes we’ll see our first system finally come together as late as July.
There is no connection between early season activity, and what to truly expect for the duration of the hurricane season. Just as Beryl showed as last year, an explosive storm early on doesn’t equate at all to the rest of the season being just as devious.
Right now, we have an aggressive area of high pressure over the Central Atlantic. This is our Bermuda-Azores high, the strong area of high pressure plays a role on winds that flow east to west from the coastline of Africa towards Central America and Mexico.
Over North America, we’re also continuing to see strong ridging blanketing the south and east. The combination of a potent Atlantic high with the ridging we’re seeing stuck over our heads in Central Florida only amps up how fast the winds through the tropical Atlantic move.
Tropical features don’t like strong winds. Sure, they’re very capable of producing them on their own. But when it comes to winds on the outside, they’re very susceptible to seeing their thunderstorms and rains toppled over like a tower of building blocks.
These strong east-to-west winds also help bully any spin in the atmosphere that may try to develop into something more directly into land. We’ve seen a few tropical waves crash land over northern South America. It ups their rain chances, but prevents anything more than clusters of showers and storms from taking shape over open water.
This is also likely why the East Pacific is so active. The basin is actually “borrowing” energy from our neighborhood and spinning it up in a different ocean.
Down the road aways, perhaps around Friday, June 13, and thereafter, models do expect a bit of a weakening in our high pressure combo which will help winds relax some. I will caveat by saying, long-range computer models have been struggling with when this will occur.
The Euro for example has been back and forth the last several days with predicting a weakening ridge and then an intensifying ridge. This tells us meteorologists, confidence is low that the model has a good handle on what conditions are expected to play out.
Back up over the U.S., we’re watching to see if our pattern starts to flip flop again. The central areas of the country have been battling severe weather, which is usually a sign there changes on the way even if they be temporary.
Our most prime spot for any tropical development, IF ANY, remains the western Caribbean and especially the Bay of Campeche. This would be almost a replica of what we saw last year with Tropical Storm Alberto. This system formed after a favorable phase of our MJO came through, and high pressure weakened some up over the east US.
That allowed a pocket of energy to lift into the Bay of Campeche and build into a broad tropical system. Ensembles hint that we could see a similar end result play out before the month is over with.
We’ll keep watching! For now, no stress at all. The hurricane season remains quiet, and if anything changes you can count on your News 6 Weather team to update you as early as we can to give you the information you need.
