INVEST 91 - GULF DISTURBANCE

Our little early season disturbance in the western Gulf is raising some eyebrows. Identified as Invest 91, which is what the NHC gives systems with the potential to develop, this thing has a chance to make history. All models indicate this system will come ashore along the Texas coast, most have it somewhere near Matagorda Bay. In recorded history, there has NEVER been an off-season system at tropical storm strength or better, strike the Texas coast. NEVER. There was a tropical depression that affected Texas in 1936, but that's it.

If this system develops into a tropical, or even a subtropical storm, in which it will still get a name, it will be the 1st ever to make Texas landfall before June 1.



The system clearly has a low level circulation that is easily seen from satellite. The thing is, if you can clearly see the low level spin, it means storms are not forming around it's center. And the reason storms are not forming around the center is that it is sucking in a ton of dry air, as you can see from the browns, reds and oranges in the loop below.



This dry air, on top of the very little amount of time it has before it reaches the coast, which could be anywhere from overnight tonight (Friday) through late Saturday morning, plus a lot cooler water the closer it gets to the coast, should keep it from doing much, if anything at all. This loop does show that storms may be trying to fire to the south of the center. If that happens, and it starts to wrap around, we may have something in the works. So, not ruling out a named system, but I think the chances are pretty low, and if it is named, it will be no more than a minimal tropical storm at the most. And probably subtropical at that.

The wetter part of this thing is, of course, much farther out from it's center, to the north and east. That means if it goes ashore near Matagorda, the upper Texas coast would get most of the rain associated with it, development or not. In fact, rain is already crossing the coast from Galveston to High Island, and to the east of Houston.


So, coming off a record breaking 30 storm season last year, we're already flirting with the record books before the 2021 season even begins. Should be a fun summer.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TEXAS STRONG

Image
In a recent blog entry I talked about the strongest hurricanes there are, the CATEGORY FIVE . Since our emphasis here at Texas Tropics is, of course, tropical systems affecting Texas, I thought I'd talk about the strongest systems to ever make Texas landfall. There has never been a hurricane at category 5 strength make landfall in Texas. At least in recorded history (since 1851), that is. There have been a couple that have come close though. There have been 5 hurricanes that have made Texas landfall with winds of at least 140 mph. There's been just 6 hurricanes to make Texas landfall with pressure lower than 940 millibars. I'll save the strongest, most powerful Texas landfalls for last. 5th on the list for lowest pressure, and one of the 5 to make landfall with at least 140 mph winds was the Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900 . To this day the 1900 storm is the deadliest U.S. natural disaster ever, killing an estimated 8,000-12,000 people. This death toll could have been muc...
Read more

JULY '22 REVIEW

Image
July gets started where June left off with 3 marks on the map. A tropical wave with a 10% chance of formation east of the Lesser Antilles, Invest 95L in the northwestern Gulf of Mexico, and Potential Tropical Cyclone #2 in the SW Caribbean. We'll start with the tropical wave that entered the eastern Caribbean then fizzled out. Or to be more technical, conditions were not favorable for development and nothing becomes of it. Next was Invest 95L . This system had a mesoscale vortex form near Galveston, TX that literally moved most of the rain out of the Houston area. The Golden Triangle area ended up getting the bulk of the rain from this system, leaving much of the rain starved central Texas coast pretty much high and dry.  The final holdover from June was PTC2. On July 1st, this system had been designated a PTC for a record 6 days. The NHC only started referring to these systems as a PTC since 2017. Incidentally, the record PTC2 broke was that of PTC1 last month. So finally after 6...
Read more

2024 PREDICTIONS

Image
It's that time of the year again, a little over 8 weeks until the "official" start of the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season. Of course Mother Nature doesn't adhere to a schedule and tropical systems can spin up at any time, but 97% of tropical storms form between the "official" designation of a season (June 1 - November 30). Dr. William Gray Early to mid April is when most of the more reputable sources that cover the tropics release their preseason predictions of what they expect to happen in the tropics. One of the top authorities in this regard is the the tropical weather and climate research team at Colorado State University (CSU). They have been issuing tropical weather predictions since 1984 under the guidance of Dr. William Gray. He passed away in 2016, 2 days after issuing their predictions for the 2016 season. Only since 1992 though, has CSU been making preseason predictions in April. Before that their predictions came out near the start of hurricane se...
Read more