>Sorry for the late post as I have slept longer this afternoon than thought (12.30pm to after 5pm) which is about a nights sleep for me…. I’m now off work till Monday…

Anyway, what’s been happening with the tropics these days?

I haven’t posted on the tropics of late simply because nothing has been happening. Unfortunate to me since I love to see hurricanes develop, of course I don’t like to see what they do to lives and properties when they come ashore but the overall beauty and power of them amaze me. I have enjoyed studying these great systems for several years now and this of course has been the quiest start to an Atlantic hurricane season in many years, in fact fairly tranquil worldwide..
What I have been seeing so far that’s been a prohibitor to tropical development.
1) There has been an amazing amount of Africa or Saharan dust blowing off Africa, as this intermingles with the mid and upper Atlantic atmosphere, it really chokes any kind of convection that you need to see thunderstorms blow up. The CIMSS site (university of Wisconsin) has a great tropical department and has great images of Saharan dust across the Atlantic. Major trough over western Europe, and Atlantic high, stronger than normal easterly trade winds have progressed any waves coming off Africa faster than normal, this faster surface flow and Saharan dust has prohibited any waves to develop. Another factor may well be lack of really warm waters so far, of course waters across the eastern Atlantic don’t typically heat to over 80 degrees until August and that’s when the Cape Verde season ramps up.
African dust is what I believ has been the major inhibitor to development but strong easterlies have also kept systems moving faster than what they’d like to allow the needed environment of lapse rate, vertical lift to support strong thunderstorms that can spin and cluster etc, if they move too fast, then this set up is supressed.
Another key issue so far has been strong wind shear in the mid to upper levels across the Caribbean and indeed across the western and central Atlantic. Strong trades verses apposing westerlies on top, do not bode well for tropical waves to grow and develop into warm core lows.
Nothing has even looked promising across the open Tropical Atlantic and even in the Caribbean and western Atlantic, too much wind shaer has battered the life out of storms. We will need to keep watch for fronts than push off North America and perhaps the tail of these fronts with their associated thunderstorms may create a situation where wind shear lightens up and with waters good and warm, that is the likely region that could allow thunderstorm clusters to get better organised.
There are two waves off the Southeast coast worth watching but I don’t see either become anything to be honest.
Coming soon I shall pull up some graphics etc to show you more on whats going on.
Be sure to check back later as I have my third interview with John Coleman, founder of the Weather Channel.
Thanks for reading.
-Mark